The sealing of the bluestone quarry exits: another five-star fantasy

 

The dig site at Carn Goedog.  The three labelled features are inventions -- as is obvious to anybody who inspects the site.

One of the more extraordinary claims made by MPP and his colleagues is that the so-called "bluestone quarries" at Craig Rhosyfelin and Carn Goedog were used on an industrial scale for the production of bluestone monoliths intended for Stonehenge.  Rhosyfelin was, of course, famously described as "the Pompeii of Neolithic quarries", and for some years the pretence was maintained that scores of monoliths or orthostats were taken from these sites and transported to Stonehenge.  That fantasy had to be abandoned when it was accepted that there is not a single orthostat at Stonehenge that is proved to have come from Rhosyfelin, and that only four or five of the spotted dolerite monoliths at Stonehenge might have come from the Carn Goedog area.  The quarrying story always was absurd, of course -- as pointed out by Dyfed Elis-Gruffydd, John Downes and me in 2015.  The range of rock types in the "bluestone assemblage" at Stonehenge is so great that they cannot possibly all have come from bluestone quarrying sites.

Then came the "lost circle" diversion centred on Waun Mawn, with more wild claims initially made and subsequently quietly forgotten.......

Then we have the latest idea, namely that Rhosyfelin and Carn Goedog were used for the extraction of just one or two very special or sacred stones that were intended as tribute stones to be taken to Stonehenge as part opf MPP's grand unification process.  The timing of that exercise is of course completely unsupported by radiocarbon and other dating exercises, but we'll let that pass.

One of the most egregious claims made by Parker Pearson in print and on the telly is that the two quarries were "sealed" by the deliberate placing of large boulders across the "export trackways", to prevent the removal of any further stones by other tribes or marauding stone-stealing groups.  There were no export trackways, of course, and if there were quarries the stones could have been removed to the right, or to the left, or to any number of other access points.  The whole idea is proposterous and ludicrous.  More serious, however, is the invention of evidence. Parker Pearson claims, at both Carn Goedog and Rhosyfelin, to have identified boulders that were deliberately placed as obstacles.

This is the Carn Goedog claim:  An 11m long, 3m wide ditch  was dug to a depth of 0.4 m, with its upcast deposited on the side away from the outcrop.  The ditch was then filled with large stones, creating a permanent barrier across which no monolith could be transported.  

In reality, careful examination of the site reveals nothing more complex than an irregular ground surface and a scatter of slabs and blocks, with some smaller angular stones or rubble here and there. There is no sign that sediments have been purposefully moved from one location to another, and if any stones had actually been deliberately moved into place they could certainly have very easily been moved away again!

At Rhosyfelin, MPP claims, in the Channel Four documentary, that there was a similar blockage of the "export trackway" in the Neolithic, designed to stop any further exploitation of the quarrying site.  In the film he seems to suggest that thye big stones in the image below were the obstacles.  But hang on a minute -- aren't these the very stones that were referred to, in the original research, as the remains of a revetment or quayside set up to facilitate the loading of monoliths onto rafts or sledges prior to export?

One five star fantasy replaced by another.  Well, that's what you get when evidence is invented....... it's all too easy to forget today what you claimed yesterday.  You just have to hope that you don't get rumbled.

Stones exposed at Rhosyfelin following the selective removal of sediment.  This site was originally called a revetment or quayside -- but now it is apparently a site to which large stones were moved in order to stop large stones being moved.  You couldn't make it up, could you?  Well actually, yes you could...........