Foel Drygarn winter -- with snow

 Thanks to Phil Saliba for this great photo published on Facebook.  Foel Drygarn and the Preseli ridge following the recent snowfall........

AI Man -- the latest strange phenomenon

One of AI Man's little helpers. If you want him to, he will quite happily write your articles for you, without you having to do any thinking at all. 

One of our contributors used this old quote the other day: "A Man sees what he wants to see......and disregards the rest".    By adding the letter "I" it becomes even more interesting:

"AI Man sees what he wants to see......and disregards the rest"

AI Man is making more and more appearances nowadays, and not just in the field of Stonehenge argumentation.  How do we recognise this strange and rather pathetic figure?  Well, his main characteristic is that he voluntarily gives up his capacity for rational thought and critical scrutiny, and asks AI to do it for him instead.   It is essentially a cowardly and somewhat pathetic act.  And AI, being what it is, is only too happy to oblige, even to the extent of writing detailed commentaries, reviews or articles which look for all the world as if they have been written by genuine human beings.

In theory, content generated entirely by AI should be prohibited or rejected outright by academic publishers. Academic platforms like Researchgate do not actually ban AI-generated materials, but depend on the publishers of academic journals to do the scrutiny job for them.  But the policy falls flat on its face with the online publication of "pre-publication" or pre-print versions of articles that may or may not be destined for journal submission.  I have used this "pre-publication" route myself either for articles that are in the journal publication pipeline or for articles intended to place new material onto the record or to stimulate discussion.  So the Researchgate platform provides a useful academic service in this regard.

But Researchgate has no editorial role, and refers to itself as a social networking site.  It does not screen out "pre-publication" articles that are written by AI, and that is a major failing.  So our friendly or unfriendly AI Man can publish material on the platform under false pretences, using his own name, or he can attribite the authorship to some weird AI bot either known or unknown to the readers.  There are plenty of them out there, including the one called Grok.   

We are in very dangerous territory here..........

 

On maul mythology

 

A lump of sarsen found at Stonehenge. Size unknown. Maul or hammerstone?  Are the scars caused by percussion damage?  Are they fresh, or old?  Could some of these scars have been present on the boulder or stone surface before it was collected and used in the stone settings?

On the matter of mauls, there is huge confusion relating to terminology.  Castleden refers to small mauls and large mauls used for rough dressing and hammerstones used for the finer work.  Cleal et al (1995) refer to 261 weighed sarsen 'mauls' at Stonehenge, all but 20 of which weighed less than 2 kg.  Others would refer to these as hammer stones.

As followers of this blog will know, I have voiced my doubts about the big Stonehenge mauls on many occasions on this blog.  Just use the search engine to find some of the relevant posts.....

Anyway, following the enquiry from an American friend the other day about maul dimensions and weights, and after looking at Phil Harding's recent paper in The Antiquaries Journal, I have done some digging and have discovered that much of what we read in the literature is very unreliable indeed.  Over and again we read that mauls in the 20 kg - 30 kg weight range were used systematically by the builders of Stonehenge to shape the large sarsen monoliths and even to shape mortice and tenon features. This is all based on what Willian Gowland said in 1902.  He claimed that very heavy mauls were used as tools for "pecking" purposes, as indicated by the physical condition of the stones themselves and by the traces left on the big monoliths.  Most of the so-called mauls were of course used as packing stones, and found in or near the sockets of the big uprights.

There is certainly surface "damage" on many of the stones described in the literature as mauls, but as far as I can ascertain, it is ALWAYS assumed that the damage has been done by human beings.  I would like to see some hard evidence in support of that contention.  Are the fracture scars always "fresh"?  Or could some of them -- or all of them -- have been present on the boulder surfaces prior to collection by human beings?  In other words, could we be looking at signs of glacial transport?

I don't know about you, but even when I was young and strong, I would have found it pretty well impossible to use stones heavier than bags of cement as "bashing tools" --- and that it would not have been any easier even if a mate or two had been helping me.  As Phil points out in his article, the term "maul" is a bit arbitrary anyway -- when is a hammer stone so big that it has to be referred to as a "maul"??  As he points out, some authorities prefer just to refer to "hammers" -- some quite small and some rather large and inconvenient.........

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquaries-journal/article/demystifying-sarsen-breaking-the-unbreakable/295466A7C6126D07D6987D7F042D603C

Quote:

Large sarsen mauls, which were up to 29kg in weight, were frequently formed from rounded quarzitic boulders that were obtained from gravel that is present in the coombes around Stonehenge. Gowland’s classification has been widely adopted,although Whitaker, in a comprehensive study focusing on the way in which they might have been selected and worked, has questioned the complex division, preferring to classify them collectively as hammers.

Quote:

Gowland proposed that monoliths might have been manufactured by percussion using massive mauls. When these were used in sequence, he suggested that the technique could be used to split large, naturally tabular blocks along a preconceived fracture line. This ‘sledgehammering’process could be improved by the prior use of fire to heat the stone. ........ Gowland’s model was endorsed by Atkinson, who, invoking techniques employed by sarsen workers and related quarrying industries, suggested that wedges might be used, replacing metal examples with wooden ones. This tenuous suggestion relied on conveniently located natural cracks in the sarsen to be successful. Its use remains entirely speculative, untested or confirmed in practice, and largely inappropriate for prehistoric sarsen shaping at Stonehenge. 

I think that the larger mauls -- maybe over 15 kg in weight -- were never used as tools, and that the "human" percussion marks displayed on many of them were made with smaller hammer stones to shape them or reduce their size so as to make convenient packing stones.  In other words, I do not believe the proposition that the big mauls were initially or primarily used as tools before being used secondarily as packing stones.

The myth of big mauls being used as tools has too easily been accepted, maybe because it reinforces the idea that the builders of Stonehenge were not just clever but also super-fit and superhuman -- and the idea of these powerfully built ancestors bashing away at the massive sarsens with huge unwieldy boulders is of course very handy if you are seeking to impress a busload of wide-eyed tourists on a tour of the ancient monument.........

I don't think our ancestors were that stupid. They knew all about expenditure of effort and cost-effectiveness.  When they built or partly built Stonehenge, they found lots o smallish sarsen boulders lying around, and they put these to good use as packing stones.  Some of them had to be reduced in size, and some were used as they were found, without any modification.  They were never used as tools.  

I have been checking up on the actual evidence in support of the "maul tool" hypothesis, and there is none.  It is all very circumstantial and speculative.  I have been having a protracted argument in AI mode on Google because it told me this: 

"Numerous practical, full-scale experiments and public demonstrations have been conducted. These have generally confirmed that the "pecking" method with heavy, handheld mauls or hammerstones is effective, though extremely time-consuming and laborious. This hands-on experience, involving archaeologists like Phil Harding and Julian Richards, has been influential in moving the consensus away from pure speculation to a practical understanding of the logistics involved."

When I challenged my AI friend on this, and said it was factually inaccurate, it had to admit eventually that there is no literature describing full-scale experiments and public demonstrations of the use of very heavy mauls for shaping big sarsens, and that it was simply seeking to justify "the consensus view."  

After much interesting and entertaining argumentation, this episode confirmed my view that while AI is useful in some circumstances, it would be better referred to as "artificial stupidity" because it is incapable of factoring in common sense, and always tries to please you by telling you the things you want to hear. It's essentially gullible, and does not seem to recognize a leading question for what it is.  It places undue emphasis on confirming the "establishment consensus".  It places undue trust in the weight or status of publications and in academic titles.  We have known all of that for some time now. 

Anyway, it was good to hear, on the R3 Today programme this very morning, the boss of Google and assorted other experts saying pretty well the same things as me.

 

BBC : "The truth is whatever we say it is........"

"Science is about evidence, not wishful thinking....."

I'm watching the developing crisis at the BBC with some concern, but I must say that I am not all that surprised.  In my own limited contact with the BBC over editorial standards, relating to my complaint about that absurd 2021 "Lost Circle" TV programme, I am appalled by the arrogance and complacency with which my comments were greeted.  First of all, putting in a formal complaint was not that easy.  It was initially not accepted by the BBC, which led to my making the complaint to Ofcom, who then shunted it back to the BBC.  In 2022 I provided even more detail about the nonsense contained within the programme, and the demonstrable falseness of many of the claims made by MPP and Alice Roberts,   At that time the programme had been broadcast six times. The BBC replied: 

".....we've received no information that would lead us to form the view that the film can't be shown again."  As I have pointed out before, that was extremely arrogant and complacent. The BBC did not ask for proof associated with my complaint, and they were clearly not prepared to check things out for themselves. 

As of November 2025, the programme has been broadcast on multiple occasions (at least 14), including a showing on BBC Four just a few days ago.  It has also been continuously available for streaming since it was first shown in 2021.   It is still promoted on Alice Roberts's Wikipedia page, which also quotes her as saying: "science is about evidence, not wishful thinking".  Hmmmmm......

 That notorious programme, based entirely on assumptions and speculations dressed up as responsible and reliable science, falls far short of the standards expected of the BBC. In my view it brings the BBC into disrepute, and I have said this many times before on this blog.

What makes things even more ironic is the latest BBC PR campaign, including lots of hype about "BBC Verify".  The corporation claims a commitment to the unvarnished truth on everything, to the extent that they ruthlessly strip out material that may be classified as misinformation or disinformation.  Well, they do nothing of the sort.  On the basis of my own experience, I can say that they make editorial decisions on the basis of "impact" and  financial benefit, not on the basis of hard science or factual reliability.  And when broadcast nonsense is pointed out to them, they go straight into defensive mode, trotting out platitudes such as that which I have quoted above.

Not good enough, BBC.  But it's rather sad that it takes a threat from that idiot in the White House Ballroom to force the Corporation to face up to its complacency and its highly defective editorial decision making processes.

Ailsa Craig erratics in Ireland

 An Ailsa Craig erratic boulder (much sampled by geologists) on the beach at White Park Bay on the north coast of Northern Ireland.  This is just the tip of the boulder -- it's the biggest Ailsa Craig erratic I have seen.

The pic is from Peter Wilson's interesting video on glaciation and glacial features of the Irish Mountains:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voQYLd5svmc

Peter mentions that Ailsa Craig erratics are found all the way along the eastern coast of Ireland and as far to the south-east as Cork Harbour.  That's 350 miles from the source in the Firth of Clyde.  Perfect spot provenancing?  Well, not quite, since we don't know how extensive the original micro-granite intrusion might have been before thye onset of glaciation and the recent (Holocene) rise of relative sea-level.

The bedrock in White Park Bay is Upper Cretaceous chalk or "white limestone".  As a matter of interest, one of the larger erratics found at Kenn, not far from Bristol, is made of "white limestone" and is assumed to have come from Northern Ireland -- transported by the Irish Sea Ice Stream.

Ken Follett jumps onto the Stonehenge bandwaggon

 

Here we go again.  One would have thought that there were quite enough dodgy Stonehenge novels, but here comes another.  I have not read any of them, but the feedback from those who have does not inspire confidence....

The best-known Stonehenge novel is of course the one by Bernard Cornwell, published back in 2011.  It had mixed reviews, but several reviewers referred to the novel's "well researched historical content" and its "historical authenticity"..........  what that means is that Cornwell has accepted and adopted the standard establishment  mythology about Stonehenge as the basis for his story, going on to build his own fantastical tale on top of it. You take "the truth"and then build on it.  That is what always happens with historical fiction -- I have tried to do it myself with my Angel Mountain novels. 

Of course Bernard Cornwell wanted to use Stonehenge as a setting for a novel because it's a guaranteed money-spinner.    I don't blame him for that........

Anyway, the latest venture into "Stonehenge fiction" is the novel by Ken Follett, published about a month ago and called "Circle of Days".  Again it assumes that the "basic facts" about Stonehenge (including the human transport of stones from Wales) are known and accepted as "the truth", and are then used as an underpinning for the fantastical story invented by the author. He puts people and their interactions into the setting.   Ken is a Welshman who has sold millions of copies of his books, and maybe the link with Wales gave him an extra prod for the writing of the novel.  He was on BBC R4 the other morning playing his part in promoting the book, as all top authors are encouraged to do by their publishers.  Again this novel has had very mixed reviews, but that won't worry either the author or the publisher, since you can't please all of the reading public all of the time.

So I'm not blaming any of the Stonehenge fiction writers for jumping onto the bandwaggon and writing their tales.  But this reminds us of just how successful EH and the archaeological establishment has been in their marketing of Stonehenge mythology, which is endlessly marketed as "the truth".  That marketing is what inspires authors to weave their tales for the entertainment of the novel-reading public -- and every new novel reinforces the myth.  The real truth?  To hell with the truth, when there is money to be made........

Stonehenge and climate change

Two men and a female colleague have been cleared of all charges, following a protest against the fossil fuel industry as part of the "Just Stop Oil" campaign.  They had sprayed some of the Stonehenge sarsens with an environmentally-friendly orange powder.  They had denied all charges of damaging an ancient protected monument and causing a public nuisance, after targeting Stonehenge as part of an ongoing fossil fuel protest by the direct action group.

What a waste of public money!  The trial lasted for 10 days.  Well, good for the jury.  The "public nuisance" was all down to the overreaction by Englishy Heritage, and the "damage" done to the stones was infinitisemally small,  compared with the damage done each year from starling and other bird droppings.

Since this blog site is all about Stonehenge and climate change,  I feel it is my duty to congratulate the protestors........

Could the Stanton Drew stones be glacial erratics?

See these:

https://davidrabram.substack.com/p/decoding-stanton-drew

https://usercontent.one/wp/ramblingon.mendipgeoarch.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Stanton-Drew-Sone-Circles_observations-and-notes-on-rock-types.pdf?media=1712675554

Thanks to Vince Simmonds for the followingn (2023):

Stanton Drew Stone Circles: observations and notes regarding the sourcing of the various rock-types used in the construction of the monuments.

Vince Simmonds BSc PgCert PCIfA FGS

The four main rock types represented in the Stanton Drew circles are as follows:

1.  Oolitic Limestone – Jurassic 205 – 142 Ma (figure 3). These rocks are a pale grey- yellow colour, although this is difficult to fully distinguish due to a substantial lichen cover. The surface of the blocks resembles a limestone pavement and has numerous cup-like depressions and pits that partly fill with water. Many rock art sites have flat slabs of stone open to the elements and, when it rains, the cup-and-ring marks fill with water, rocks with natural cup marks are often utilised for the same effect. It could be that places where rocks ran with water or held water were culturally significant in many ways (Fowler and Cummings, 2003: 10). It is possible that some of these limestone slabs at Stanton Drew were not intended to stand or were used as capstones.

2.  Silicified Dolomitic Conglomerate - Triassic 248 – 205 Ma (figure 4). These rocks have a wide range of colours from pale pink to orangey pink with some bright, sometimes ochreous orange, through to dark rust, and purple-red blotches, the red and orange colour is indicative of the mineral iron content of these Triassic rock types. The rocks have a glassy, metallic appearance and feel and the surface can be described as pitted, pock-marked, frothy, knobbly, and gnarly. There are abundant quartz geodes that make many of the stones sparkle, William Stukeley (cited in Lloyd Morgan, 1887: 39) remarks that “it shines eminently and reflects the sunbeams with great lustre”. Quartz was a highly significant and regarded material in prehistory as indicated through its use in various monuments (Lewis: online accessed 2010). There are some silicified fossil fragments from the remains of limestone clasts within the conglomerate. The varying clasts range from sub-rounded to sub-angular, fine to coarse gravel to pebble and cobble size. The majority of the stones have a substantial cover of lichen with some moss and grass.

3.  Dolomitic Conglomerate – Triassic (figure 5). This is a weathered pale grey-pink and has a lesser degree of silicification. The varying clasts range from rounded to sub- angular fine to coarse gravel, pebbles and cobbles of limestone and sandstone. There are also some silicified fossil fragments from the remains of limestone clasts within the conglomerate and the stones again have a substantial cover of lichen.

4.  Pennant Sandstone – Carboniferous 354 – 290 Ma (figure 6). These rocks are of a pink to fawn colour and distinct bedding layers are clearly visible in particular cross-stratification which is typical of material that has been laid down in deltas. There is a layer of rounded to sub-rounded fine to medium gravel of quartz.

=================

Vince and others are very reluctant to get into detailed provenancing, but it appears that the majority of the Stanton Drew stones have come from the SW, in or on the edge of the Mendips, around Harptree and the Chew Valley Lake.  The Stanton Drew studies do refer to stone collection, but Kellaway seems to be the only geologist who has seriously suggested origins as glacial erratics.  In most of the articles I have looked at, Kellaway is not even mentioned, and the only theory being considered is that of human stone collection.  That's not surprising...........

So let's revisit the idea.  Could the stones -- or at least some of them -- have been transported by ice and then gathered up from an erratic scatter?  Answer -- yes. The maximum distance of erratic travel may well have been about 8 km.   I have suggested many times that the Mendips might at one stage have hosted a small independent ice cap, and that this might at one time (or more often) have been incorporated into the far eastern edge of the Irish Sea Ice Stream.  If this was the scenario, ice might well have affected the Chew Valley Lake area and Stanton Drew, flowing from  south-west towards north-east.  If glaciological conditions were right, the entrainment and transport of boulders in this area was quite possible.

Too many "might" and "may have" provisos?   Quite so -- but this does justify some further consideration......... and I need to work out how topographic controls might have been exerted.

Rhosyfelin -- the story is changing

This is interesting.  After 15 years of maintaining the pretence that  the exposed rhyolites at Craig Rhosyfelin are unique, and characterised by a "Jovian fabric", Bevins and Ixer are at last admitting that things are a great deal more complicated than that.

On many occasions I have strongly criticized the use of the invented term "Jovian fabric," arguing that it is misleading and not a unique characteristic.  Similar foliated and lensoidal textures can be found in other heavily deformed rhyolites and volcanic tuffs across Pembrokeshire and other regions, as pointed out in my post:

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2024/02/the-special-rhosyfelin-rhyolite-triumph.html .

Using a non-standard and potentially common texture to claim a precise, small-scale provenance is scientifically unsound.  I also have serious reservations about the widespread use of the term "rhyolite with fabric" by Bevins, Ixer and Parker Pearson.  What on earth does that mean?  It appears to mean -- in the Ixer/Bevins lexicon  -- a particular type of secondary fabric arising from post-depositional deformation or stress.  They refer particularly to foliation and flattened lensoidal clasts, but fail to demonstrate that these features are absent from all the other related ourctops of rhyolite on the north flank of Mynydd Preseli.

In standard petrology, the textures of igneous rocks are classified using widely accepted terms like aphanitic, phaneritic, porphyritic, and vesicular, which describe grain size, crystal formation, and gas content.   Terms like "foliated" and "lensoidal" describe structural characteristics, often related to metamorphic processes that affect igneous rocks, and these are far from unique to one location.  A rock with a fabric resulting from intense tectonic stress is not an anomaly; it is a common feature in many geological settings where ancient volcanic rocks have been subjected to mountain-building events.
In summary, the "Jovian fabric" is a non-standard, invented term. Its perceived uniqueness has to be questioned, and its use as definitive proof for the human transport of the bluestones is frankly absurd.

Ten years ago Ixer referred to "sub Jovian" and "semi-Jovian" fabrics at Rhosyfelin, in recognition of the fact that there is considerable variation across the rock outcrop.  I think there was a reference to another three rhyolite types at Rhosyfelin -- and now, in the article on the Cunnington rock samples,  we see a reference to "Snowflake fabric" and "Zebra fabric".  These are not very technical terms, and they cover a multitude of sins........

I have made the point elsewhere that the Newall Boulder may share certain geochemical and petrographic characteristrics with some samples from Rhosyfelin, but it looks very different to anything I have seen at the "quarry" face, and it has NOT been demonstrated that it cannot have come from anywhere else.  Nor is it admitted that there are substantial variations within the Rhosyfelin collection of samples -- and again it has not been demonstrated that any or all of these cannot have come from anywhere else. I think that the extraordinary "spot provenancing"claims are in tatters. 

Can the "rhyolite with fabric" debitage all have come from the natural fracturing or human breakage of a a single boulder?   I think there is too much variation for that, and we still do not know what the full range of rhyolite characteristics may be across the Crosswell - Pont Saeson - Brynberian area.  I saw somewhere a claim that there have been over 200 samples now taken by Bevins across the area, mostly within the valleys of the Nevern and Brynberian streams.  Bevins and Ixer have told us that "Rhosyfelin foliated rhyolites with the same petrography and geochemistry" do not occur except at Rhosyfelin, but they have simply told us that, and we are expected to believe them.  Very dodgy.

This strange little map purports to show the sampling points in the valleys of the Nevern and Brynberian streams and in the Carnedd Meibion Owen area. How many oif these samples have actually been analysed?  And where are the results? 

To summarise, there is no "demonstrable" exclusivity.  Because a complete geological survey and analysis of every potential rhyolite source has not been conducted, it cannot be definitively proven that the Rhosyfelin rock type does not exist elsewhere. The possibility that a similar geological signature exists in an unsampled or poorly-sampled location remains, creating a "sampling bias" that undermines  the claim.

If the specific rock type exists elsewhere, as I suspect, it weakens the claim of an exceptionally precise match "within a few square metres" at Rhosyfelin.  The precision of the match is contingent on the uniqueness of the geological fingerprint, and if that uniqueness is not proven, the accuracy of the source identification is brought into question.

According to the Hitchens Razor, extraordinary claims require support from extraordinary evidence.  The jury is still out, and the evidence we need is still missing. 

As I have said many times before, the biggest mistake ever made by Bevins and Ixer was get sucked into the quarrying debate.  As soon as they started to refer to bluestone quarries in their papers, they opened themselves up to criticism on the grounds of sampling bias and circular reasoning.  They also chose to publish preferentially in archaeological journals rather than geological ones, in which the standard of peer review was inevitably much lower.  So we find them arguing (in their abundant articles) for the presence of a Neolithic quarry at Rhosyfelin on the grounds that rock samples from there were a reasonable match for some samples from Stonehenge.  And they argue that some of the stones that ended up at Stonehenge came from Rhosyfelin, because that is where the quarry was located.  Round and round.......

Where it all started:

Ixer, R.A and Bevins, E.R (2011) Craig Rhos-y-Felin, Pont Saeson is the dominant source of the Stonehange rhyolitic ‘debitage’; in Archaeology in Wales 50, 21-31

https://d1wqtxts1xzle7.cloudfront.net/31544116/rhos_AW-libre.pdf?1392324523=&response-content-disposition=inline%3B+filename%3DCraig_Rhos_y_felin_is_the_dominant_sourc.pdf&Expires=1761393598&Signature=Yj4RhTm3v7hNwk~odIMOfA1HpJ8yHo6T-D8XyR~75k8ov8gAkbYXPe54NEG9IYTq-0RnBBmK3HhPJ0qrLd8Jl-XHtD2EctMepawi5xsAGc9bdtFyoVSosA1OgWMokStJchCH47fdDcpmy9ZRDBlKyhp5FJOaIZqMNTiVOAFXJFMpiCMb5M7CK5GHmM2jom7vO4r65niW7ZQbz-2amM9mJTXHQiuifE9W9HUtfOmcvTOJDIvwOKHlZowb4f1WjiyiFccRisLymkOflRSyqnRxVJTgljCzIv-fd5DHNymBdlcAYtHPWGNzp1uOrM4EarJwXEgt4LS60OTATqQ55SqCFA__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAJLOHF5GGSLRBV4ZA

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2011/12/on-significance-or-otherwise-of-999.html

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2021/02/geology-sampling-progress.html

More on the Silbury Hill bluestone fragments

Thanks to Paula for the photo

We have talked a lot about these fragments in the past -- use the search facility to track down previous posts. Now there is a new note by Ixer, Bevins and Pollard which examines the petrography of the stones in more detail and which suggests matches with other bluestone fragments scattered across the landscape. 

Details:

"Bluestones from Silbury Hill" by Ixer, Bevins and Pollard
Wiltshire Archaeological & Natural History Magazine, vol. 118 (2025), pp. 270–309

https://www.academia.edu/144003051/Slbury_Hill_lithics

There are four or five bluestone fragments derived from mixed / disturbed / undisturbed contexts near the summit of the mound. Four of these were described by Ixer in 2013, and it appears that these are all made of spotted dolerite. This short article describes another of the samples (Wilts 391) in more detail. It is concluded that it is related to Andesite Group A. Quote: Andesite Group A is defined as a foliated, lithic tuff and as debitage is widely distributed throughout the Stonehenge Landscape.  Another sample (661) is described as a typical dolerite or "preselite" flake.

So far so good.  But then the authors get onto a discussion of origins and significance, and set off by saying (about the dolerite flake):  "....there can be no doubt but that it is a flaked piece of Stonehenge ‘preselite’ debitage."  That is a completely unsupportable statement. No link with Stonehenge can be assumed.   Even if this flake has lithological similarities with some orthostats or debitage at Stonehenge, it simply shows that material of this type is quite widely distributed across the landscape.  Nothing more, nothing less.

In the "Discussion" section of the article things get even more dodgy. The authors refer to the suggestion that the occurrence of bluestone fragments at Silbury Hill appears to support the hypothesis of glacial bluestone transport. They say this idea was "soundly refuted by Ixer (2009) and by Leary (2010)."  Here Ixer, somewhat absurdly,  is citing himself  -- not in a learned article but in a book review.  The citation of Leary 2010 is equally strange -- it seems to point to a letter in a popular glossy magazine, not a considered scientific analysis. 

It gets worse.  The authors then suggest that the foreign fragments at Silbury Hill are "post-prehistoric  adventitious introductions" and even possibly "evidence of the emptying of antiquarian or archaeologist's pockets."  That's stretching things a bit -- why should people carry around Stonehyenge fragments in their pockets and then choose to empty their pockets when standing on top of Silbury Hill?  Ixer and his colleagues provide no evidence whatsoever to counter the argument that the fragments have been at Silbury Hill since the time of the building of the mound (or possibly since the end of an early glacial episode), and that they may have come from broken or destroyed glacial erratics -- incorporated either knowingly or unknowingly into the building materials.

The bias continues.  The authors refer on P 274 to Wilts 391 coming from "a tuff from Stonehenge" and even from buried orthostst 32c.  I repeat.  The Stonehenge connection is entirely speculative.  Then they refer to "the four pieces of Stonehenge bluestone...."    Four pieces of identifiable bluestone maybe, but why cannot the "parent erratic" not have been deposited in the Silbury Hill area instead of further afield?

In referring to the possible "prehistoric introductions" of foreign rock fragments into the building of the Silbury Hill mound, the authors talk about "those responsible for reducing monoliths and distributing fragments" -- again making the huge assumption that everything started off at Stonehenge, having been brought there from West Wales,  and then ended up somewhere else.   In the final paragraph the authors refer to fragments of volcanic ash and dolerite being "brought to" Silbury Hill. Then they bring the granidiorite lumps at West Kennet into the frame, and say: "Transporting small rocks and depositing them on and within major monuments could have served to connect in a token fashion disparate places and events."

The authors conclude: "The finding of five samples of Stonehenge debitage, one in a secure Neolithic context, supports the suggestion that all were brought to Silbury in prehistoric times and can no longer be dismissed as extraneous."

What on earth is the word "extraneous" supposed to mean in this context?  Of course the fragments are extraneous.  They are erratics in the true sense of the word, whether or not they have been transported by ice.

Sorry, but this piece is so full of speculations and unsupported assertions relating to Stonehenge that it really adds nothing to our understanding of the mound we refer to as Silbury Hill.

Jehu on Pembrokeshire's Scottish connection

Geologist TJ Jehu

One of my great academic heroes is TJ Jehu, who was decades ahead of his time in his analysis of the glacial landforms and features of North Pembrokeshire.

The Glacial Deposits of Northern Pembrokeshire. By T. J. Jehu, M.D. (Edin.), M.A. (Camb.), F.G.S., Lecturer in Geology at the University of St Andrews. 1904.  TRANS. ROY. SOC. EDIN., VOL. XLI. PART I. (NO. 4).

I was looking something else up, but was reminded of the fact that he was Scottish and knew his Scottish geology rather well.  In his great article he flags up with some enthusiasm the widespread occurrence of Scottish erratics in North Pembrokeshire, including some from the Western Isles.

He also flags up the occurrence of Ailsa Craig microgranite widely across North Pembrokeshire -- and his listing of erratics of course has a bearing on the recent Altar Stone debate -- confirming that material from Western Scotland could well have been transported southwards -- and indeed up the Bristol Channel -- by the body of ice that we now call the Irish Sea Ice Stream.

Jehu also has no time for the ice rafting idea.  He is quite sure that the abundant erratics in the shore zone around the Pembrokeshire coast have simply fallen from the till and other glacial deposits as coastal exposures have been eroded away.  That's fair enough, on the basis of the evidence he collected, but it's a bit more complicated.  Fot example, I am rather sure there is a "lag deposit" of large boulders underneath what Jehu called his "lower boulder clay" -- see my posts on Whitesands for the details.

Rockfall scar, East Greenland

 

I'm not sure of the location, but this is somewhere in the East Greenland fjords.  If we zoom in we can see the effects of spalling or exfoliation on the curving rock faces (we see similar features on granite domes and prominent peaks such as El Capitan).  But by far the most spectacular feature here is the massive scar left by a single rock face collapse.  We don't see much sign of different generations of slope failure here, but there may have been several "events". The essential mechanism is almost always pressure release following deglaciation.

Anyway, if there was a single big event here, it must have been quite something...........

They MAY have intended us to take it with a pinch of salt........... and maybe not

Photo from the 1958 excavation

I have received the following from Jon. He makes an interesting point, and it is worth sharing.  

=====================

The significance -- or insignificance -- of distant stone sources
(an external view of the wording)

Jon Morris

If the builders of Stonehenge wanted stones from everywhere in order to cement a "unification project", why have the stones all come from one narrow compass direction? It's a good question and one I wondered when I read it the first time. But the paper itself has a specific wording in the introductory Abstract: “Such connections may be best explained through Stonehenge’s construction as a monument of island-wide unification, embodied in part through the distant and diverse origins of its stones.” This is a true statement. They may be. That particular use of language indicates a likely outcome in the author's opinion. There's a useful blog about it here: https://www.grammarly.com/blog/commonly-confused-words/may-might/

But we have no way of knowing because there is no agreed framework of experts, to which the public can refer, to get an idea of the most likely answer (or answers). One can also substitute other hypotheses into this wording. To take an extreme example, let us say that the alternative hypothesis was that Stonehenge was built by Aliens (possibly with bases in Scotland and Wales). “Such connections may be best explained through Stonehenge’s construction as a monument of Alien origin.”

This is also a true statement. They may be (again in the author's opinion). We have no way of knowing because there is no agreed framework, to which the public can refer, to get an idea of the most likely answer (or answers). One can also substitute other hypotheses into this wording. For another less extreme example, let us say that the alternative hypothesis was that Stonehenge was transported by glaciers).

“Such connections may be best explained through Stonehenge’s construction as a result of happenstance due to glacial transport.” This is also a true statement. But again we have no way of knowing. One can also substitute almost any other hypotheses into this wording.

Moving on to the conclusion:

Finally, the distant origin of the Altar Stone confirms Stonehenge’s unique status as the one stone circle built entirely from non-local stone; a material microcosm projecting at an enormous scale. It is consistent with recent interpretations of Stonehenge as a monument whose builders attempted – ultimately unsuccessfully – to establish some form of political unification and shared identity across much or even all of Britain, bringing together these extraordinary and alien rocks which symbolised and embodied far and distant communities within a complex material and monumental expression of unity between people, land, ancestors and the heavens.

This is also a true statement given the use of “may” in the introductory abstract, (rather than “can” or “is” or other related more definitive verbs), These findings are consistent with a possibility (that may be true) for which no probabilistic evidence is given as to its likelihood.

It's perhaps unfortunate if the paper has given the impression that this hypothesis might be a best explanation. However, it might well be. Nevertheless, the paper doesn't say that it is the best explanation. If the paper had said that it is the best explanation, then it would have to have provided evidence of comparison to other hypotheses.

================================================================

My own view is somewhat less charitable!  Although the word "may" is used in the Abstract, and may pop up here and there in the text (I can't be bothered to check), it is not used in the Conclusion, and that is what matters.  There is little doubt that we are meant to take this narrative seriously.  And MPP and his colleagues know perfectly well that when it comes to press releases and the media, qualifications and reservations tend to disappear without trace, and in no time at all wacky unsupported ideas are taken to be "exciting new discoveries that transform our understanding of Stonehenge." 

In this case the promotion of an unreliable narrative is even more serious than usual, because the press releases and the press coverage all happened before there was any published paper available for anybody to look at.  For over a month journalists and interested members of the public had no article to look at.   That was a disgrace, as I pointed out at the time.

MPP quote in the (extremely premature) press release:

“The similarities in architecture and material culture between the Stonehenge area and northern Scotland now make more sense. It’s helped to solve the puzzle of why these distant places had more in common than we might have once thought.”

 

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2024/12/the-stonehenge-narrative-becomes-even.html

The significance -- or insignificance -- of distant stone sources

If the builders of Stonehenge wanted stones from everywhere in order to cement a "unification project", why have the stones all come from one narrow compass direction??

I have been taking another look at this article, which was heavily promoted in the gullible media before it was actually published, and which demonstrates just how flexible the MPP / Ixer / Bevins belief system actually is.  It is apparently whatever you want it to be.......

Parker Pearson, M., Bevins, R., Bradley, R., Ixer, R., Pearce, N. & Richards, C., (2024) “Stonehenge and its Altar Stone: the significance of distant stone sources”, Archaeology International 27(1), 113–137.

doi: https://doi.org/10.14324/AI.27.1.13

The team, with or without one or two of its members, spends most of its time arguing that the 80 or so bluestones at Stonehenge were so highly revered and sacred that they were quarried from specific locations and built into sacred stone circles in West Wales before being transported overland from Preseli to Stonehenge as acts of tribute.  The stones were very special indeed, and Ixer and Bevins still spend much of their time arguing that the very small number of stone sources emphasises their value.  (I disagree with that, citing their own studies of individual lithologies which always seem to demonstrate that there are geochemical and petrological outliers and "odd stone fragments" in the collections that demonstrate MULTIPLE stone sources.)  

And yet, here we have an article which argues that the objective of the builders of Stonehenge was to obtain orthostats from as many different locations as possible, from as far away as possible, as part of a policical programme of unification.  In other words, multiple stone sources were all the rage, from as many different locations as possible -- which suggests that there was not much concern about the sacredness or the status of the quarrying sites from which the stones were taken. (Yes, they still want their quarries........)

To make matters more confusing, they don't want the Altar Stone to be called a bluestone at all, because they think it does not come from the right part of the British Isles.

Now, in the latest papers, Ixer and Bevins are back to arguing for a very small number of provenances, ignoring the fact that the majority of the "orthostats" have shapes suggesting that they were not extracted from the living rock but were simply picked up from the ground surface. 

Back to MPP et al, 2024.  From the conclusion:

Finally, the distant origin of the Altar Stone confirms Stonehenge’s unique status as the one stone circle built entirely from non-local stone; a material microcosm projecting at an enormous scale. It is consistent with recent interpretations of Stonehenge as a monument whose builders attempted – ultimately unsuccessfully – to establish some form of political unification and shared identity across much or even all of Britain, bringing together these extraordinary and alien rocks which symbolised and embodied far and distant communities within a complex material and monumental expression of unity between people, land, ancestors and the heavens.

This conclusion will no doubt be questioned in the specialist literature before long, but it does not withstand any sort of scrutiny.  The main problem is that the cluster of bluestones has not come from all over Britain, from all points of the compass, but simply from West Wales.  The stones have been moved broadly from north-west to south-east. And that happens to be exactly the direction of known ice flow involving the Irish Sea Ice Stream during two or more glacial episodes.

Where are the "extraordinary and alien rocks" from North Wales or from the Midlands?  Where are the exotic rocks from Eastern England, or from the South coast?  Or from Devon and Cornwall?

The bluestones at Stonehenge have to be glacial erratics.  Why on earth are we still arguing about this?

=======================

Parker Pearson, M., Bevins, R., Bradley, R., Ixer, R., Pearce, N. & Richards, C., (2024) “Stonehenge and its Altar Stone: the significance of distant stone sources”, Archaeology International 27(1), 113–137. 

doi: https://doi.org/10.14324/AI.27.1.13

Stranger than fiction............

 

Holger Danskes Briller trough, south-facing slope at the western end of the eastern lake.  The two huge rockfall avalanche ramparts are very prominent.......

In my novel "Icefall Zero", set in East Greenland ion 1962,  one of the critical incidents is a sudden rock avalanche which overwhelms and almost kills two of the heroes, in a glacial trough containing two large lakes.  The trough carried diffluent ice from the huge glacier that once flowed along Nordvestfjord. (See some recent posts.........)

When we were in East Greenland in 1962 we never got a good look at the trough because of bad weather, and its slopes were mostly enveloped in low cloud. Our maps and air pohotos were also of very limited use.  When I wrote the novel in 2014 the information was not much better, and satellite images of the area were of poor quality, partly because the details of the valley sides were often lost in deep shadow.  But I thought the steep slopes looked unstable, especially in the middle section of the trough, where there are some high buttresses and peaks over 1000 m high.

So I invented my rock avalanche and described its effects in graphic detail in the story..........

Imagine my surprise when I examined the new Bing / TomTom satellite imagery  some weeks ago and discovered amazing detail of the slopes in the trough, especially on the sunny (south facing) flank.  There are multiple gullies on the cliff face, with long histories of intermittent rockfalls and probably snow avalanches too.  But there are two especially prominent features, characterised by huge ridges or ramparts at their bottom ends.  These are much more likely to have been the result of single sudden catastrophic slope failures.  Such features are very common in NW Iceland too, beneath steep basalt cliffs subject to pressure release following deglaciation.

Each of the ramparts is about 200m wide.  On the satellite imagery the ramparts and upslope scree slopes have slightly different colourations, suggesting to me that the eastern one is somewhat youngerc than the western one.  How recent were these slope collapses?  At the moment, the jury is still out, but I would hazard a guess and suggest that they may be very recent, from within living memory.  In 1962, maybe.....??

I would not have liked to be anywhere in the vicinity when either one of these slope failures actually happened........

More on Cunnington's rock samples and slides

Two bits of "Lower Palaeozoic sandstone" found in Barrow 41, about a mile from Stonehenge.  The larger one is a cobble, about 10 cm long.

This is an unpublished catalogue recently placed on Academia -- and therefore not accessible to everybody.  It looks as if it is a prelude to a longer and more detailed paper due to be published next year by the Ixer / Bevins duo.  

https://www.academia.edu/144337293/Cunningtons_Stonehenge_rocks_an_archive_of_the_thin_section_data

Cunnington's Stonehenge rocks: an archive of the thin section data.
By Robert Ixer
referring to:  William Cunnington Stonehenge rock thin sections catalogue

Robert Ixer and Richard Bevins

The authors have examined 33 specimens -- thin section slides and hand specimens.  They are from a collection of 460 fragments (surface finds) collected in the period 1878-1881from excavations, chance finds in the turf, in waggon ruts etc in the Stonehenge landscape.  They are all "foreign rocks" -- so sarsen finds are excluded. (I wonder how many other erratic sandstone finds were excluded too, since in muddy field conditions they are not that easy for a non-specialist to differentiate from sarsen fragments......)  Most of the samples are as expected from the "known groups" of rock types represented at Stonehenge, but there were some "odd rocks" as well -- the authors mention a pyrite or marcasite sample which is not analysed here.

Quote:

The first important result is that all the major lithological groups and some minor groups are present and in their relative ‘correct’ (i.e. conforming to other collections) proportions and so this collection is comparable to all others that have been described. This is another confirmation that all collections of bluestone debitage from the Stonehenge Landscape comprise the same limited range of rock types. Rock names given by earlier workers, including Harrison and colleagues, have been equated with Ixer and Bevins’ 21 st century nomenclature, so eliminating incorrect or obsolete rock names. This is important as the plethora of outdated and disused rock names has been used by some to suggest that the range of bluestone rock types is far wider than it really is, in order to promote the belief that the debitage in the Stonehenge Landscape comprises random glacial erratics. 

This is the same tired old point from Ixer and Bevins -- in spite of having, over and again, demonstrated in their own papers that in all of the "groups" that they have examined there are ouitliers and exceptions that demonstrate multiple provenances.   In addition, they presume to know the makeup of erratic or fereign stone types in the Stonehenge landscape, in spite of the fact that 50% of the area within the circumference of the stone monument has never been excavated. That is very unwise........

The authors claim that seven "rhyolitic tuffs" in the collection are "clearly" from Craig Rhosyfelin, and they persist with this pretence whilst recognising that there are at least three different textures (three of them decribed as Jovian, Snowflake and Zebra textures).  Quote:  "Despite the range of rhyolitc lithologies suggested by Harrison et al (1979) all are very typical material from Craig Rhosyfelin...."  That sounds more like wishful thinking than science, and there is no way that this claim can be accepted.

In Table 1, where all of the samples are listed and allocated to the Ixer/Bevins groups, there is clear evidence of "forcing" lithologically different samples into predetermined groups.  Nothing surprising there, then........

There follows a group of Appendices with full descriptions of the samples and hand specimens, accompanied by useful photos.  Each numbered sample is allocated a predetermined category, although it is obvious that some are reasonable "fits" and others are not.

Most of the fragments examined are very small, but sample S52 weighs over 74 g.  It is difficult to see whether this is a discrete cobble or a knock-off from one or another of the Stonehenge orthostats -- and Ixer and Bevins have traditionally ignored this issue in their long string of analytical lithology papers.

Appendix 4 is interesting, referring to S1 as a lump of "Lower Palaeozoic sandstone" (about 500g in weight) found in Barrow 41, about a mile from Stonehenge.  There are five pieces.  Sample S69 is given the same label, although the term "Lower Palaeozoic sandstone" is so broad that it must incorporate many thousands of different lithologies and tells us nothing worthwhile about provenances.

Sample S74 is referred to as "volcanic with sub-planar texture" -- covering a multitude of sins.  Within Dacite Group B there is a large group and a smaller "sub-group", and it is clear from the cited literature that within the Stonehenge debitage collections there are "related" rock types from a large range of different provenances.

Sample S57 is described as "anomalous" but belonging to Dacite Group D, which is not reporesented in the othostat group of bluestones.  There are also two pieces of Greensand in sample 61.  These are also deemed to be anomalous and somewhat inconvenient. 

Appendix 6 deals with the Altar Stone -- and sample S45 in particular.  This is worth repeating:

Sample S45

The thin section has Altar Stone Stonehenge scratched onto it and is slightly thick in the centre; the 
Canada Balsam has yellowed with age. A uniform, fine-grained (fine sand ≤187 µm grain size), 
carbonate-cemented, poorly developed planar laminated sandstone is a dusky yellow (5Y 7/4 on the 
Geological Society of America Rock-color chart). Short and thin, 0.1 mm thick, heavy mineral bands are 
present and phyllosilicate-rich layers are more limonite stained. The centre of the slide is more 
limonite-stained than the edges but this might be a thickness effect. A sinuous ‘stylolitic’ band lies at a 
high angle to the laminae. Approximately 50% of the section is cloudy, suggesting the presence of 
carbonate.

Microscopical description of the thin section 

A fine-grained, well-cemented, calcareous sandstone. The planar fabric is picked out by heavy mineral 
and by phyllosilicate (muscovite, biotite, chlorite) bands/laminae, the latter are slightly more limonite- 
stained than most of the rock. Clasts display a severely restricted size range and are dominated by 
monocrystalline, sub-angular to sub-rounded quartz grains; quartz and feldspars show elongation 
within the planar fabric. Smaller heavy mineral grains are rounded, especially the opaques. In addtion 
to quartz, plagioclase, untwinned feldspar, muscovite, biotite and chlorite are the main silicates; rock 
clasts are common and are internally very fine-grained and appear to be clay-rich. Accessory minerals 
include opaques, zircon, tourmaline, apatite, probable rutile and garnet and possible amphibole. 
Monocrystalline quartz shows uniform extinction and ‘float’ within the carbonate cement. Where 
quartz grains touch contacts are sharp and there is no overgrowth or embayment. Unaltered, 
polysynthetically twinned plagioclase is more abundant than slightly altered pale brown plagioclase 
(altering to fine-grained white mica). Untwinned feldspar is pale brown and cloudy and may include 
potassium feldspar. Microcline was not recognised. 

Phyllosilicates are abundant and in order of decreasing abundance are muscovite, biotite and chlorite. 
All three form laths lying within the main fabric but also, rarely, occur at high angles to that fabric; all 
show kinking about quartz and feldspar grains. Some muscovite laths show splaying at their ends and 
some biotite is altered to chlorite. Chlorite also is present as, or within, fine-grained rock clasts. 
Chlorite with deep blue-green colours may be pumpellyite. 
Heavy mineral bands are quite broad and are dominated by rounded opaques and rounded to 
subhedral zircon, murky green-brown tourmaline, rounded to lath-shaped apatite and elongated 
brown rutile; rounded garnet and possible amphibole are also present. 
Rock clasts, many are rounded, are widespread and all are internally very fine-grained. Many appear to 
be phyllosilicate/clay rich or fine-grained micrite but some fine-grained polycrystalline quartz, 
including ‘chert’, is present. Feldspar-rich rocks, including graphic granite are very rare. 
Minor amounts of kaolinite, some associated with muscovite, is a very local cement. The main cement 
is carbonate; some is poikoblastic calcite. Two generations of cement may be present, namely an 
earlier high relief, brownish carbonate followed by clear, lower relief calcite. 

Earlier descriptions 

Cunnington (1884) recognised the presence of “micaceous sandstone” debitage and suggested that it 
might be the Altar Stone. Teall (1894) listed S45 within his “Grits and Sandstones”, suggesting that 
most “do not seem to be in any way remarkable”, while Judd (1902) noted that un-numbered Altar 
Stone was a micaceous sandstone but found with “other more micaceous sandstones”. Harrison et al. 
(1979) noted S 45 as “Fine sandstone, feldspathic, (0 06 mm) well-graded, carbonate cement; micas 
common, and heavy minerals conspicuous (garnet, tourmaline, zircon)”. 

There has been general agreement that S45 is from the Altar Stone, as confirmed by the present study. The Altar Stone has  been described in a number of papers, notably Ixer and Turner (2006), Ixer and Bevins (2013a), Ixer et al. (2019; 2020) Bevins et al. (2020a, b; 2022, 2023a, b) and Clarke et al. (2024).

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We clearly have not heard the last word on the Altar Stone! This is specialist stuff, but one component in the debate is the presence of garnet in sample 45 -- which may or may not indicate that Sample 45 did indeed come from the famous stone which is now deemed -- by some -- to have come from Scotland.

There is still doubt as to where the mysterious slide called Wilts 277 came from:

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2018/12/new-paper-on-altar-stone-or-is-it.html

Was it really from the Altar Stone?  .... and the "garnet problem" is another interesting one for geologists to sort out:

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2023/11/new-altar-stone-paper-professional.html

All in all, this is a welcome addition to the literature, but the authors are so stuck in their ruling hypothesis of a small number of rock types quarried in selected and sacred places that they fail to see the obvious conclusion coming from their own researches -- namely that there are so many exceptions, anomalies and outliers in the collections of Stonehenge fragments that they are clearly from multiple provenances, probably in the west. Most if not all of these locations are unknown.  It follows that the erratics were probably introduced into the Stonehenge landscape by glacier ice.

  

A classic lateral moraine in Kjove Land, East Greenland

 

Thanks to the new Bing satellite imagery, we can see extraordinary detail in Kjove land, East Greenland -- tha area dealt with in some previous posts.  Note the huge lateral moraine running along the mountainside to the east of the Holger Danskes Briller ice contact delta.  I have marked the key features on the above image.  In 1962 we were unable to examine this area in detail, as we had our work cut out in the examinations and analysis of the Gurreholmsdal raised delta complex a few km to the east.  Anyway, the moraine has a series of cosmogenic dates reported in the recent paper by Kelly et al, ranging from c 15,000 yrs BP to c 12,000 yrs BP.  So the moraine is assigned to the "older moraine complex" roughly coinciding with Zone I or Older Dryas in the old terminology.  

The diffluent glacier snout was grounded for at least 4 km to the east iof the trough exit, and must have been afloat in the Nordostbugt area.  The 134m shoreline is traceable downslope of the morainic ridge, but its precise relationship with raised marine deposits is still to be determined.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2025.109531

PS.  The eastern lake of the Holger Danskes Briller is now named Margaret Lambert Sø.  You can see the eastern edge of the lake in the image above.

Kjove Land -- ice flow west to east, or east to west?

New satellite image showing with great clarity the morainic ridge remnants in the vicinity of Hjörnemoraene (Corner Moraine) in Kjove Land.  It is clear from this evidence that a diffluent lobe of ice flowed down from the interior of the Pythagoras Massif.  This was probably contemporaneous with ice from the main Nordvestfjord Glacier spilling eastwards across Syd Kap Bay and possibly terminating at a floating ice edge near Nordostbugt.

Map of raised marine features in Kjove Land, from our 1965 paper.  With no satellite imagery at our disposal, we failed to recognise the evidence for the Pythagoras Bjerg diffluent ice lobe.

A fascinating new paper has been published:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277379125003518?via%3Dihub

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2025.109531


Relative summer temperature changes from glacial fluctuations in the Scoresby Sund region, Central East Greenland, during late-glacial time (2025) 
Meredith A. Kelly, Thomas V. Lowell, Brenda L. Hall, Laura B. Levy, Colby A. Smith, Katherine Salamido, Roseanne Schwartz and Jennifer A. Howley
Quaternary Science Reviews
Volume 367, 1 November 2025, 109531

Abstract

Understanding climate conditions in the mid-to-high-latitude North Atlantic region during late-glacial time can provide valuable information to test hypotheses concerning the mechanisms of climate change that ended the last glacial period. Glaciers (particularly mountain glaciers) are sensitive recorders of summer temperature change because of its influence on the ablation season, snowline elevation and, hence, glacier length. Here, we develop a record of glacial fluctuations in the Scoresby Sund region in Central East Greenland and use these data to infer the timing and pattern of summer temperature changes in the mid-to-high-latitude North Atlantic region. We present 64 new 10Be ages of glacial landforms and remap and recalculate an additional 65 10Be ages from prior work in the region. Even with boulders with inherited nuclides in some of the datasets, a two-step pattern of glacial fluctuations is apparent, with an outer moraine dating to ∼14.0–12.8 ka, an inner moraine dating to ∼11.7–11.3 ka, and ice retreat in the time between moraine deposition. A comparison of these data with 10Be chronologies of mountain glacier fluctuations in Northeast Greenland, Svalbard, Norway and Scotland, shows a consistent pattern throughout the mid-to-high-latitude North Atlantic region of summer cooling and warming during late-glacial time.

Quote:

In both Holger Danskes Briller and Kjove Land, prominent lateral moraines demarcate a relatively young landscape (proximal to the moraines) from this older, more weathered landscape (distal to the moraines). Lateral moraines occur on both walls of Holger Danskes Briller and mark the margins of a glacier that filled the valley and flowed into Nordostbugt (Fig. 3, Fig. 6). On the right-lateral (south) valley wall, these moraines are contiguous with moraines in Kjoveland that mark the left-lateral margin of an ice-sheet outlet that filled Nordvestfjord. All these moraines are relatively high relief and have high surface boulder concentrations. Based on the geomorphology and elevations of the highest elevation lateral moraines in Holger Danskes Briller (both ∼300 m asl) and Kjoveland (∼260–280 m asl), we assume that they were deposited at the same time. 10Be ages of thirteen boulders on these highest elevation moraines are ∼11.8–18.9 ka. Multiple lateral moraines occur on the slopes below the highest moraines. We dated five boulders on lower elevation moraines (∼190–240 m asl) in Kjoveland. Four ages are ∼12.1–16.4 ka and one (∼30.4 ± 1.1 ka, MKG-71) is a statistical outlier. Based on their prominence and position at a weathering boundary, we consider all of these landforms to be associated with the outer moraine set. They consist entirely of lateral moraines and lack terminal features, possibly because the ice terminated offshore. The peak age of the moraines is ∼12.2 ka (n = 17) and the youngest age is ∼11.8 ± 0.4 ka (MKG-179)(Fig. 6).

In contrast, on the Holger Danskes Briller valley floor, an ice-contact delta is spectacularly preserved, with a steep and boulder-covered ice-contact slope and kettles and meltwater channels on its surface (Fig. 3E). The upper delta surface is at ∼101 m asl. 10Be ages of seven boulders on the delta are ∼11.6–15.3 ka with a peak age of ∼11.7 ka (n = 7) and youngest age of ∼11.6 ± 0.3 ka (MKG-172)(Fig. 6). Given the substantial distance between inferred minimum terminal ice positions of the outer moraines and this ice-contact delta, as well as the fact that the delta grades to 101 m asl, well-below the 135 m asl sea level associated with at least one outer moraine in Gurreholm Dal, we conclude that the delta is associated with the inner moraine set.

----------------

The paper contains some fascinatingf material, particularly withy respect to the cosmogenic dating of assorted morainic features.  This is a wonderful image of the HDB ice-contact delta, associated with a sea level at 101m:

Because of its association with a sea level at 101m, the authors suggest that the HDB feature is one of the "inner moraines", linked in age (c 11,000 yrs BP) and origin to some of the moraines associated with the glaciers in the Schuchert Valley.

However, in trying to understand the complexities of the morainic topography of the area around Hjörnemoraene, I think the authors have missed the point that there was (1) a diffluent ice lobe coming from the Pythagoras Bjerg plateau, with a loop of moraines around 270m asl; (2) a series of lateral moraines at a lower level, around 200 - 190 m asl, associated with the Nordvestfjord outlet glacier; and (3) an intervening "proglacial" strip of land characterised by older morainic deposits and some washed surfaces. This can be picked up rather clearly on Figure 6 of the article:

Sampling point 83, labelled as "distal to moraines" should have been labelled "proximal to moraines" because it is inside the diffluent glacier morainic loop.  This makes sense, because the date (13,600 yrs BP) is younger than some of those obtained from boulders on the moraines themselves.

The highest ridge of lateral moraine associated with the Nordvestfjord Glacier at c 200m, near Hjörnemoraene.  Additional annotations by me -- on the authors' Fig 3.

My annotations on another of the authors' photos, in Fig 3 of the article. This is a close-up of the same ridge featured in the photo above.

All in all, a somewhat messy situation, with the morainic features of Kjove Land interpreted in three different ways.  In 1965 David Sugden and I interpreted the features as associated with two glacier retreat stages or readvances, coinciding with sea-level stillstands at 134m and 101m.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/262414669_The_Raised_Marine_Features_of_Kjove_Land_East_Greenland

We has no sophisticated dating techniques available to us in 1962, but we used shell faunas in the Gurreholmsdal raised delta staircase in our interpretations, and our estimates of the nature of the morainic and delta features and their ages were not far wide of the mark.

In some of the early papers on the Milne Land Stage it was assumed that the Kjove Land and Pythagoras Bjerg moraines were associated with an extended Schuchert Glacier, flowing down the Schuchertv Valley and then pushing into Hall Bredning and westwards across Syd Kap Bay.  That idea does not seem to be supported by any of the more recent papers.  The third interpretation, involving a lobe of diffluent ice pushing south-eastwards from the plateau of Pythagoras Bjerg, is one I am increasingly attracted by, as seen in assorted posts on this blog.

I think the landforms of the plateau suggest a long history of diffluent ice flow, maybe during several distinct glaciations.   But the most recent ice flow, associated with the creation of two sets of prominent morainic ridges above Hjörnemoraene, appears to have been associated with the Late Glacial readvance that occurred around 13,000 years ago.

The new work -- associated with an extensive cosmogenic dating programme -- confirms that the late-glacial readvance phases here were not very closely synchronised with the old Zone I (cold) >> Zone II / Allerodn (warmer) >> Zone III (cold) sequence.   Everything here in East Greenland seems to have been slightly out of step, for reasons still to be properly elucidated.

The "Younger Dryas Question" has still not been satisfactorily answered.......

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PS.  Some more old photos found in the slide collection:

View from one of the morainic ridges towards Syd Kap Bay

1962 photo of the highest morainic ridge -- virtually the same view as that in one of the photos published above.

B/W view of the highest shoreline against the morainic ridge.