My riposte to that very silly Limeslade rant

Just published:

Response:  The provenance of the Limeslade igneous erratic: a matter of no importance?
Brian John
Quaternary Newsletter 164, pp 19 - 27 (February 2025).

https://www.qra.org.uk/quaternary-newsletter/quaternary-newsletter-current/

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/389436022_Response_The_provenance_of_the_Limeslade_igneous_erratic_a_matter_of_no_importance

This is in response to the extraordinary rant published by Pearce et al (2024) in QN163:
Pearce, N., Bevins, R., Ixer, R. & Scourse, J. (2024). Comment on "An igneous erratic at Limeslade, Gower, and the Glaciation of the Bristol Channel" by Brian John. Quaternary Newsletter 163, pp 15 - 20.

In that article, they mounted what can only be referred to as an ad hominem attack, designed to demonstrate to the world my ignorance and incompetence, following my note describing some of the preliminary pXRF work done by Steve Parry and Prof Tim Darvill.  In attacking me, Nick Pearce and his cronies also questioned the integrity and competence of an experienced geologist and a senior academic -- and that is never a good thing to do in print, in a widely read journal.

Anyway, I may be old, but I still know what I am talking about, and I'm grateful to the editor of QN for giving me the opportunity to put the record straight. In the text, I point out how bizarre it is for a group of academics to attack a short preliminary note on the grounds that it was not more comprehensive -- especially since they could themselves have done more detailed work on the boulder if they had chosen to do so. 

They also accused me of having a preferred narrative driven by preconceptions, of ignoring clear and contradictory information, and of being ignorant of geological and geochemical processes. I pointed out the deep irony of reading these accusations coming from a team which has, over the last decade, refused to cite any "inconvenient literature" or to accept that any of their ideas are questioned or disputed by anybody else........

Then there was the accusation that I questioned the validity and accuracy of their data.  If they had bothered to read my article more carefully, they would have seen that I questioned their analyses and interpretations, not their data.

There were assorted other criticisms and rather snide asides which I will not bother with here -- they were too petty to justify the wastage of any more of our time.

My final paragraph:

Finally there is the parting shot (p 19) on the matter of John (2024): "This article merely represents a disingenuous cover to justify a rehearsal of the now well-worn and increasingly tedious debate concerning transport of the Stonehenge bluestones." Nothing can be further from the truth. The article as published was expanded and fashioned in response to the constructive comments of the journal editor and referees. The "tedious debate" to which Pearce et al (2024) refer has been fuelled and perpetrated by a stream of journal and popular science magazine articles which they themselves have written, many of them recycling the same basic data, designed to promote the hypothesis that the Preseli bluestones at Stonehenge were targetted, quarried and transported by our Neolithic ancestors. It is unfortunate that they are apparently unprepared to accept that others might question both their evidence and their interpretations.

Anyway, it is good to know that many readers of QN have told me how amazed they were by the vitriolic nature of the attack by Pearce et al, and I think we can take it as read that Pearce, Ixer, Bevins and Scourse have now done far more harm to their own reputations than they have ever done to mine.  

Myths, fantasies and now phantom articles

This is typical of the media feeding frenzy -- carefully orchestrated -- in the week before Christmas 2024.  The gullibility of the media was displayed in all its glory.  At that time there was no published article to underpin the claims made in the media, apart from an "advance copy" of the "final version" of an unpublished article.  To make matters worse,  that article cited at least one phantom supporting reference that cannot be found anywhere.

This is intriguing, and somehow rather sad.  A while ago I flagged up the imminent appearance of an article by Bevins and nine colleagues that was clearly designed to discredit me and my work on the Newall Boulder:

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2024/12/here-come-heavies.html

This is the citation:
Bevins, R.E., Pearce, N.J.G., Ixer, R.A., Scourse, J., Daw, T., Parker Pearson, M., Pitts, M., Field, D., Pirrie, D. and Power, M.R. In press. Further discourse on the enigmatic ‘Newall boulder’ excavated at Stonehenge in 1926: correcting the record. Journal of Quaternary Science.

The reference was cited in the “final version" of the long distance stone transport article (by MPP et al) posted to the media in December……… here is a screenshot:

But in the reference list of the actual published version (January 2025) there is no sign of it, nor is it referred to in the text. Don't believe me? You can check this out via the link below:

https://journals.uclpress.co.uk/ai/article/id/3293/

In general, one should not refer to an article as being “in press” unless it has been accepted and is due for imminent publication. 

 So what is going on here?

 Richard Bevins is the lead author, so the article must be his initiative.  But was this just a phantom article, never written, but thrown speculatively into the press pack, to make it look stronger and more authoritative than it actually was?? 

Or was it written, submitted to the Journal of Quaternary Science and rejected by the Editor?  I strongly suspect that this was the case.

I have tried to track this "further discourse" down. The Feb 2025 issue of the journal has just been issued, and there is no trace of anything by Bevins et al.  I am checking via the JQS editorial department to see whether any article with this title was ever submitted for consideration;  but I suspect that I won't get very far since there is a convention of confidentiality in such matters.

The word "outrageous" comes to mind......

West Kennet granidiorite article published

Corestone cobble and associated grus -- a photo from the article

This article by Ixer et al has now been published -- we have referred to it before.   But then I was not able to provide a link.  Here it is again:

Rob Ixer, Richard Bevins, Nick Pearce, Duncan Pirrie, Josh Pollard, Alex Finlay, Matthew Power and Ian Patience. 2025 "Exotic granodiorite lithics from Structure 5 at West Kennet, Avebury World Heritage Site, Wiltshire, UK."  Wiltshire Archaeological & Natural History Magazine, vol. 118 (2025), pp. 1–18

https://www.academia.edu/125773662/West_Kennet_Granodiorites

Quote: West Kennet provides yet another possible example of Late Neolithic long distance prehistoric transport, a distance of between 450km if taken from outcrop and 150km if collected from secondary glacial drift sources, although North Sea coastal glacial tills as a source for the stones appears unlikely and from East Anglia very unlikely.......

Thius is a detailed geological study, and I agree with the authors that the assemblage of rotten bits and pieces found around West Kennet is something of an enigma.  But I do not for a moment accept the assumption that glacial transport of the debris was effectively impossible.

Quotes:  

Initially, the heavily weathered and degraded appearance of the corestones and associated sandy grus led to the assumption that they were more likely collected as glacial erratics rather than from an in situ location (Ixer et al. 2022), but further investigation suggests this may not be so.

.........the very strong similarities between the samples is easier to explain if they were collected and manuported from a single highly weathered outcrop within the complex rather than collected from glacial tills, where a greater lithic variability might be expected.  Collecting from glacial till (Ixer et al. 2022) now seems an unsafe assumption and hence an in situ collection within the Cheviot Hills is now favoured.

I don't think the case is made, and Ixer et al (2022) is not a strong enough citation. Even if granites and related rocks do not travel well in gacier ice (especially of they are already heavily weathered) glacial transport of granidiorite erratics from Cheviot to the chalk lands of Wiltshire was certainly not impossible -- and the idea that the erratics were transported and dumped during one of the early glaciations is by no means disposed of.........

As usual, this article is underpinned by the ruling hypothesis that all of the "foreign" stones on the chalklands were obtained from identifiable quarry sites and then "manuported" into their present positions.
.

More on the Loveston Erratic (the Loving Stone) and others

 

The big Loveston Erratic at grid ref SR 94838 96853

I discovered more info on Adrian James's interesting blog, and especially ion this post:

https://pdboyinsuffolk.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-loveston-erratic-revisited.html

This erratic in the yard of Loveston Farm (near Merrion Army Camp) has had a rough time of it, and it looks as if, at various times, people have tried to sample it, move it, and maybe even destroy it. The farmer, Mr Morris, knows a lot about it.   But there it is, still, with some of its surface features intact abd worthy of examination........

According to Adrian, to whom many thanks:  

The Loving Stone has several stories attached to it, the main gist of them all being that it was customary for local lads and lasses to "pledge their troth" to one another at the stone, just like at the church alter........Hmmmnnnn.... Also, there is the suggestion that if it is ever moved, the farm will fall on hard times. It is not a "local" stone, but seems to be an igneous erratic from further north in the county.

Adrian thinks there is documentary evidence that the stone was originally located in St Twynnels Churchyard.

https://pdboyinsuffolk.blogspot.com/2013/03/did-loveston-erratic-block-roadway.html

There is another erratic near the Loveston Ruin:

Further afield........

On St Govan's Head (SR9739 9297) is another erratic, which was probably disturbed when the tank gunnery range was laid out on the headland. It seems to lie in/by an old pop-up target pit.:

 

The next example is resting against the south gable of Church House near St Twynnells church, near the postulated site of William Poyer's Longstone (SR94989757):

Between Mewsford and Bullslaughter Bay (SR94099405). This stone seems similar to some of those at Flimston Chapel, and indeed, the stone of St Govan's Head, mentioned above.  Here is a pic:

Note:  There are two places called Loveston in South Pembrokeshire.  The one featured in this post is not far from the South Pembrokeshire coast.  The other one is near Cresswell Quay in the central part of the county.

The BBC has lost its moral compass

Tonight and tomorrow the BBC will be broadcasting -- for the eleventh and twelfth times -- that appalling pseudo-science documentary featuring a gullible and "astonished" Alice Roberts and the ubiquitous MPP, entitled "Stonehenge: the Lost Circle Revealed." Since it was first broadcast in February 2021 it has also been continuously available on BBC iPlayer.  

This is, of course, nothing more than a hoax, dressing up an elaborate fantasy as "cutting edge science".  The narrative has been subjected to pretty brutal treatment by many viewers and commentators, including Mike Pitts and the late Tim Darvill, and we know that MPP does not himself believe the story any longer -- but the programme is still out there, heavily promoted by a Corporation that apparently prides itself for its respect for the truth.  BBC Verify is flagged up as something that deals with all cases of misinformation and disinformation, and ensures that high standards are maintained at all times.  And the BBC tell us constantly about its respect for the truth.  Just read the literature about its complaints procedure.............  hollow words, which we can not for a minute take seriously.

The BBC deals with its own complaints.  When I complained about this programme the response I got was arrogant and dismissive -- claiming that the BBC was not in possession of any information which might lead it to conclude that the programme should not be shown again.  That line of defence would not get you very far in a court of law!  The BBC would probably say that although certain information had been brought to its attention by me and other complainants, they were currently "not in possession of it", and were therefore in the clear to carry on broadcasting something accused of being wholly unreliable.

I complained in 2022 to OFCOM about the BBC response,  and got an acknowledgement of my complaint (in December 2022) and have heard nothing from them since then.

Goodbye, truth.  To hell with science and education -- all that matters nowadays is entertainment..........

Glacierization intensity and duration

 Does the word "glacierization" have any meaning or relevance?  Isn't it the same as "glaciation"?  This is the thinking of the glaciology establishment:

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-glaciology/article/glacierization/354F9D3447C4AE8159D984B235114DE6

Fair enough.  I agree that the word "glacierization" can be used to cover a full glacial cycle, from the initial onset of permafrost conditions, to the transformation to a snow-covered landscape and thence to landscape cover by active (moving and eroding) ice and thence through to ice wastage and the return of interglacial conditions. Glacierization might last for 80,000 years, but within that period there may be just 10,000 years of glaciation.

We need to think about this more than we have done traditionally, especially since we are now encountering the results of cosmogenic dating on rock surfaces in ice-covered and ice-free areas as researchers try to reconstruct episodes of past climate change.

Way back in the days when I was a D Phil research student, I created this model while I was trying to understand the sequence of Quaternary sediments exposed in the Pembrokeshire coastal exposures.

In a somewhat crude fashion, the columns represent the "glacierization time" at each of the four chosen locations.  This may have been 25,000 years in Southern Scotland but only 10,000 years near the southern glacial limit.  Within those time periods, full glacial conditions will have occupied a smaller and smaller percentage of glacierization time with distance from the ice sheet centre.  In reality, of course, you get climatic oscillations, topographic effects, sea level interactions and glaciological feedback mechanisms, so it all gets very complicated -- but the general principle still stands.

When the computer modelling folks arrived on the scene and started with really sophisticated modelling, we saw the arrival of rather splendid animated seqiuences in which we could watch small glaciers, ice caps and ice sheets expanding and contracting.  The BRITICE models are the latest of these, but the way was paved by Geoffrey Boulton, Alun Hubbard, Henry Patton and many others.  This was one of the images from this period of research that grabbed my attention:

It may look like a model of ice thickness over the southern part of the area affected by the Irish Sea Ice Stream -- but no, it shows the computed duration of glaciation.  This is zero at the outer ice edge, maybe just a few decades at Land's End, c 800m years near Lundy, c 1000 years at the north coast of Pembrokeshire, and c 1300 years in the southern Irish Sea proper.  The light coloured blotches on the map show areas of thin ice where glaciation time was reduced;  at times these upstanding areas will have been nunataks.

This is all of course rather wildly inaccurate -- but you have to admire the objectives and the skills of the members of the modelling team.

The ANCIENT BRITISH ISLES ICE SHEET TIME-LAPSE ANIMATION produced by the BRITICE-Chrono team is based on much more sophisticated modelling and a much greater "ground truthing" data base.  You can find it here:

https://iafi.org/ancient-british-isles-ice-sheet-time-lapse-animation/

It spans the period 31,000 yrs BP to 15,000 yrs BP, and shows parts of western Scotland being glaciated for almost the whole of that period, while West Wales experienced active ice cover for just 2,000 years and the Isles of Scilly for just a few centuries.

See also:

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2023/01/glacierized-landscapes-and-advance-of.html

This work is of great importance to the reliability of cosmogenic dating results -- measuring the "exposure time" of rock surfaces on (for example) tors or glacial erratics.  Cosmogenic dating methods are often used to measure the length of time that has elapsed since the "last disappearance of glacier ice"  -- but "nuclide inheritance" can seriously distort the results obtained, and in multiple cosmogenic dates obtained for a certain area it is sometimes difficult to isolate the "outliers".

It is also too easy to assume that in the presence of glacier ice, abrasion and surface lowering always occurs.  This is not so.  If an ice cover is thin, and glacier bed temperatures are very low, protection of bedrock or erratic surfaces may occur instead of erosion or abrasion.  Trimlines on upland slopes may not mark glacier edge positions, but the transition between warm-based (eroding) ice and cold-based (protecting) ice.  Long-term cover by snowfields can also distort results, as can periods of vegetation overgrowth.  

Lots to think about........
   

BritIce Modelling Project E109b2bc Maximum

This modelling is over 6 years old now, and the dating has changed since then this animation was created.  But the overall pattern of waxing and waning ice cover is now pretty well established.

This is the "maximum" model with some elements that are not backed up by "ground truthing".  But note that it supports what many others have said over the years -- that glacial incursions well into Cornwall, Devon and Somerset were not just possible but quite likely to have actually happened.

The Altar Stone -- if it looks like a glacial erratic, that's probably what it is........

Source:  Historic England Archive

Tim Daw's annotated diagram of the surface scratches, published on Twitter (now called X)

Ths scratches on the flank of the Altar Stone (courtesy Historic England)

The Altar Stone at Stonehenge is a recumbent block of pale green micaceous sandstone. The largest of the bluestones in Stonehenge, it measures 4.9 meters long by 1 meter wide by 0.5 meters thick.  But it is not a clean or shaped rectangular block...... both ends are bevelled or broken.

According to Simon Banton, the Altar Stone lies "beneath the collapsed upright of the Great Trilithon (Stone 55b) and its lintel (Stone 156), sunk into the grass. The stone itself was broken by the fall of the Great Trilithon's upright and is in two pieces."

There is an interesting post on Tim Daw's blog -- thanks to him and Simon Banton -- regarding an assortment of new images of the Altar Stone -- unearthed in the Historic England archive. They all date from the 1958 Atkinson excavation, including a number of photos of blocks that were recorded as "unidentified stones".........

Here is the link:

https://www.sarsen.org/2025/02/the-archive-excavation-of-altar-stone.html

Tim refers to the "fine working of the stone" and scratches which have "obvious similarity to other neolithic stone markings."  The so-called "engraved lines" shown on the side of the Altar Stone in photo P50107 are very sharp, and I think they were most likely made with metal tools.  They look to be remarkably fresh -- and it will be interesting to read more about the stratigraphic context in due course.

Could the marks be glacial striations?  It's possible, but they appear to be too straight and regular.  I would dearly like to look at the whole of the smoothed SW flank of the slab which appears to be very different from the other surfaces.  There appear to be other scratches as well -- less distinct but in my view even more interesting.......

Overall, my impression from looking at the photos is that the Altar Stone is a broken elongated slab which is heavily weathered and abraded.  The edges are for the most part rounded off, and I think I see at least two scoop-shaped glacial facets.  There are abundant fracture scars, some quite fresh and others rather old and degraded.  

The big break at the SE end of the slab looks to be quite fresh, and was probably the result of the accident which brought Sarsen Stone 55B crashing down on top of it.  In one photo we can see some loose fragments associated with the breakage.  It's possible that other debris might have been removed during excavations.

Another thing which is quite intriguing in Tim's post is the nature of the sediment on which the altar Stone rests. It looks from the photos as if it is very coarse, unbedded or unstratified, with abundant angular and subangular fragments which might or might not be chalk or bluestone.  Not enough attention has been given to sediments like this -- and in the literature it is often dismissed as "chalk rubble" or simply "fill".  That's not good enough, and some of it looks suspiciously like till!

All in all, these latest images convince me that this is not a quarried slab but a glacial erratic with a complex history............

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

From Landscape and Monumentality:

Debate continues as to whether the Altar Stone ever stood vertical or was always lying prostrate across the Stonehenge axis. It does not lie symmetrical to the axis, or at right angles to it. During his work at Stonehenge Richard Atkinson investigated around the Altar Stone and found one end badly shaped from souvenir hunters chipping pieces off, but the other end was a bevelled shape, similar to the bottom end of some of the sarsens that had been placed in the ground. It seems likely that at sometime the Altar Stone was standing erect. Whatever its original position the Altar Stone has clearly been disturbed by the collapse of the Great Trilithon, Stones 55 and 56, and 156. Today the Altar Stone lies in two halves, partly under Stone 55 and partly under the lintel 156, undoubtedly as a result of the impact of the collapse, partly buried; as such today you will not see it unless you obtain access to the inner circle.

Cwm Mawr "axe factory" and the sources of picrite

 

The "axe factory" site -- a small rocky knoll in a verdant landscape

On hunting down some sources on picrite (the famous boulder featured on this blog), I have been intrigued by the literature relating to the Cwm Mawr "axe factory" near Churchstoke, Montgomeryshire.  In articles all over the place it is spoken of with great certainty, in spite of the official record which records that there is nothing much there to write home about:

The Coflein record:

Hill of distinctive picrite rock, identified in the Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society in 1951 as the probable source of stone for the Group XII Bronze Age battle axes and axe hammers, by Shotton, Chitty and Seaby. Their work identified several former quarry sites and outcrops of the rock on the hill. Excavations by the Clwyd Powys Archaeological Trust, in conjunction with the National Museum Wales, were funded by Cadw in 2007 & 2008. Initial results were inconclusive, finding only evidence for historic use of the quarry.

T. Driver, RCAHMW, 9th October 2008.

https://coflein.gov.uk/en/site/408335/

There are entries on the Magalithic Portal and the Modern Antiquarian which demonstrate the wide acceptance of the idea that this was the place at which Bronze Age quarrymen dug out lumps of picrite which were then fashioned into hand axes or battle-axes that were traded across a vast swathe of the countryside.  This is typical: "This quarry is proving to be the source of many stone implements, including axe hammers of Bronze Age date........."

and this:

Archaeologists working for the Clwyd-Powys Archaeological Trust (CPAT) say that Group XII Bronze Age battleaxes and axe hammers fashioned from picrite, a distinctive form of basalt, were probably made at a quarry site at Cwm Mawr just to the north-west of the village of Hyssington in eastern Montgomeryshire. The axes are found as far apart as Cornwall and the north of England, but are most common in Wales, the Marches and the West Midlands.

Hmmm.  I think we are in the presence of some unsafe assumptions here, not to mention confirmation bias.....

The problem is that there is no Bronze Age quarry at Cwm Mawr, and there is not much critical analysis either. There are many outcrops of picrite in the British Isles, and I have not seen any published evidence that indicates that all of the axes made of this material have all come from a single source. In spite of this Group XII axes are often referred to as "Group XII (Cwm Mawr)" axes on the basis of rather cursory geological examination.

See this excellent RIGS note relating to picrite erratics in Anglesey:

https://www.geomon.co.uk/llanerchymedd-rigs-site/

A friend has also drawn my attention to this article, published last year:

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquaries-journal/article/from-the-heat-of-the-fire-a-biography-of-an-early-bronze-age-battleaxe-from-church-lawton-cheshire/40718969F43658F3670DE0E6C10861ED

The artefact described was found at Church Lawton, about 80 km NE of Cwm Mawr.  In the article the axe head is NOT definitively provenanced to Cwm Mawr, in spite of the reproduction of two very colourful thin sections.  It is simply assumed to have come from "the Cwm Mawr Farm quarry".  Then the authors say this:  

Although Group XII extraction sites dating to the Early Bronze Age have not been positively identified, it is thought that blocks of picrite (cobbles) in stream beds near to the hill were most probably used for the production of axe-hammers and battle-axes. Such cobbles would have been closest in size and shape to the intended products, thereby helping to reduce effort during manufacture. They would also have had the advantage of being ‘flaw tested’ through the action of rocks hitting one another caused by the movement of water.

The movement of water?  What about the movement of ice? The authors have apparently not noticed that there are picrite erratics scattered across the landscape (as in Anglesey), or that there was such a thing as the Ice Age.  But wait -- they do acknowledge the presence of nine "glacial boulders" surrounding the investigated barrow mound.  So they recognize non-picrite glacial erratic boulders, but not picrite ones.  Clearly it is very unlikely that ice can have carried Cwm Mawr picrite boulders far to the north-east, because all the evidence shows a broad north to south ice flow direction.  But the map of picrite artefact distribution in southern Britain has one fundamental flaw -- and that is the assumption that all the picrite artefact finds are made of picrite from Cwm Mawr. 

I am prepared to accept that picrite axes (and axes of many other rock types) were fashioned in many different places, and were widely traded, but it is quite extraordinary that archaeologists (and geologists) can spend so much time talking about imaginary quarries and "raw material selection" without once referring to glacial erratics.  Once again, too much storytelling, too much blind adherence to the establishment line, and not enough critical thinking.

Glacial Growth and Retreat on the Isles of Scilly -- a somewhat simplified tale........

Glacial Growth and Retreat on the Isles of Scilly

I have been looking again at this rather interesting animation showing how the last glacial invasion of the nothern Isles of Scilly supposedly happened. The intentions of the CADARN learning portal were obviously very worthy, but I'm surprised it was not checked for reliability before being put on on YouTube.

I'm intrigued by the idea that it can keep on snowing for centuries or millennia without any of the snow accumulating on the frozen ground surface.  It's all very dramatic, the way that the distant approaching glacier front gets closer and closer, and inexorably overwhelms the land, bulldozing a mighty frontal moraine along as it approaches.  Wild fantasy, for the most part.    In glacial troughs this may indeed be what happens, although this is not the way in which most terminal moraines are formed.  

The Bulldozer Fantasy

Here, on the front edge of the Irish Sea Ice Stream, with no constraining topography, the actual course of events will have been wildly different.  The onset of glaciation would have been marked not by a bulldozing ice front pushing across the landscape but by a gradual transformation of seasonal snow-cover to a perennial snow-cover, with snowpatches and snowfields gradually coalescing and thickening.  

So almost always in situ snow is converted to firn and then to glacier ice, thickening rather than advancing until at last the ice starts to move, pressurised by the thickening and growing glacier from the north.  Then material starts to move, with the formation of till, the transport of erratics and the creation of moraine banks at the ice edge.

This is the story that is told by the sequence of deposits on the northern edge of the Scilly Archipelago  -- and this is what happened at least twice during the passage of the Quaternary Ice Age.

Here is a reminder of a relevant post:

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2023/01/glacierized-landscapes-and-advance-of.html

Oxford Gletscher Wiki entry

 

"Deranged" surface morainic patterns demonstrating the scale and effect of the last 

Oxford Glacier surge, originating in the eastern branch of the glacier

Submerged forest, Amroth

 

 

After the winter gales, the submerged forest in Amroth is exposed just now.  Thanks to Sian May for publishing this great photo on the Pembs Geology Facebook page........

The Noel Hill residual raised beach

 

This photo was taken on 29th January 1966, not far from the summit of Noel Hill on the Barton Peninsula, King George Island, South Shetlands.  This is not the highest beach found on that day, at 275m asl, but it illustrates the complexity of working in this sort of environment.  

I'm standing on the edge of a raised beach deposit, made up for the most part of small rounded beach cobbles.  This is where one has to record the altitude, since it is a clear junction between a blocky till bank to the left and an undulating beach surface to the right.  So is this a washing limit?  Well, yes and no. If we look at the till bank we can see that it has been cleaned up by the waves, and that the finer matrix material has been washed out and carried away, for at least a couple of metres above the ground surface where I am standing.  So the real washing limit -- and hence the maximum elevation of relative sea level (rsl) -- is higher, but we don't know exactly where it was. 

So my feet mark the position of a stillstand, where the relative positions of land and sea were stable for a number of decades or centuries.  This is both an erosional and a depositional feature --  there has been washing of the till face or edge, abd some undercutting of the till deposit, and there must be more boulders associated with the till buried beneath and within the raised beach terrace.

The reason for the stillstand is difficult to discern. There may have been an equivalence in rates of isostatic uplift and eustatic sea level rise, or an equivalence of rates of isostatic depression and sea-level fall! Tectonic factors may also have played a part, as David Sugden and I speculated in our big article in 1971:
John, B.S. and Sugden, D.E. 1971. Raised marine features and phases of glaciation in the South Shetland Islands. British Antarctic Survey Bulletin, 24: 45-111.

David and I were certain that these high "residual beaches" on the Barton Peninsula and elsewhere were covered by a short-lived glacier advance.  Some beaches will have been destroyed, while others survived.  So the ice advance was not a very powerful one.  But it was strong enough to erode and incorporate many raised beach deposits into a patchy till cover.

Cosmogenic dating of large cobbles incorporated in one of the lower Noel Hill residual beaches by Emma Watcham gave dates of around 7,000 yrs BP.  She could not match these dates against other evidence relating to the glacial chronology for King George Island, and so concluded that the residual raised beaches are not beaches at all, but remnants of destroyed kame terraces.  I disagree.  For the kame terrace interpretation, we need much more evidence.  From the hundreds of sites we examined in the South Shetland Islands, we found no evidence for substantial meltwater deposition anywhere. The "residual beaches" are slight mounds ofr ridges associated with a washing limit -- locfated on the flanks of what might origibnally have been a numatak (Noel Hill).  The "kalottberg" scenatio somes to mind!

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2024/11/the-myth-of-ice-rafted-coastal-erratics.html

 The beaches range in altitude between 275m and c 150m asl -- some are to the east of the hill summit, and others to the south-west.  There are no signs of terraces that might have been formed between a hillside and a downwasting ice margin, non signs of ice contact slopes, and no signs of catastrophic ice wastage with huge volumes of meltwater refashioning the depositional landscape.  All the signs -- as far as we could see -- pointed to a very modest amount of meltwater activity and to very subtle changes in the relationships of ice and land surfaces at a time of very high -- but falling --relative sea-level.

See also:

WATCHAM, EMMA,PEARL (2010) Late Quaternary relative sea level change in the South Shetland Islands, Antarctica, Durham theses, Durham University. 

Available at Durham E-Theses Online: 

http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/485/

A little piece of history

Moving house is a traumatic experience, but in the process of chucking out old files and piles of paperwork, one discovers the occasional treasure.  

I found this -- the raw material for a morse code message which Dave Sugden and I sent to our geology research director Dr Raymond Adie in January 1996.  At the time we were working in the South Shetlands, in Antarctica, and had just discovered the highest raised beach ever found in Antarcrtica -- at 900 ft or 275m above sea level.  This was near Noel Hill on the Barton Peninsula, King George Island.  

This was how the discovery was announced to the world.  Equally exciting was the discovery of a fossil forest of petrified trees, confirming previous research showing that the rocks of west Antarctica held evidence of at least one episode of warm or subtropical climatic conditions during geological history.

I suppose that discoveries such as these lay behind the decision of the Antarctic Place Names Committee to add "Sugden Ridge" and "John Glacier" to the Antarctic map.  We still have no idea who made the recommendations or citations.

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

PS. Antarctic names are allocated in recognition of "significant and exceptional contributions to scientific understanding and/or life in the Antarctic".

Residual raised beach at c 150m asl on Barton Peninsula, King George Island.  The highest beach discovered was at 275m asl.

Another high level beach remnant on a washed surface

The Stonehenge "bluestone experts" and their multi-authored disasters

Soft rock quarrying wedges -- multi-authored fantasy, not established fact

The monolith extraction point -- multi-authored fantasy, not established fact

The revetment or loading quay at Rhosyfelin -- multi-authored fantasy, not established fact

The lost giant circle at Waun Mawn -- multi-authored fantasy, not established fact

The supposedly pentagonal socket that held Stonehenge bluestone number 62 -- multi-authored fantasy, not established fact

A stone barrier blocking off the Carn Goedog quarry exit -- multi-authored fantasy, 

not established fact

I was looking at some social media posts from around six months ago and came across one of Rob Ixer's tiresome tirades in which he attacked me for not participating in the writing of multi-authored research papers.  He implied that I am some sort of nutter, way out on a limb and unsupported by my peers -- and that my credibility would be much increased if I were to publish as part of a cross-disciplinary research team.  The further implication was that multi-dsiciplinary papers are somehow more reliable and deserving of respect than articles with single authors -- presumably because of the internal scrutiny that should exist within a group, and because of corporate responsibility for the contents of controversial or ground-breaking publications.  If only........  If only.......

Ixer and Bevins are, of course, key members of MPP's gang of around 20 researchers, who have produced scores of multi-authored "bluestone" papers over the past 15 years.  And how reliable and responsible are those papers?  Well, I think it would be fair to say that they are in general of very poor quality, packed with assumptions and speculations portrayed as facts, and showing little evidence of internal scrutiny. Some of them, as I have suggested on this blog, should never have been published, and have harmed the reputations of the journals that allowed them to appear in print or on the web.  In the cold light of day, they have also harmed the reputations of many, if not all, of the authors involved.

Let's just remind ourselves of just some of the multitude of disasters that can be laid at the door of  the MPP gang's headquarters:

1.  The so-called "Pompeii of Neolithic orthostat quarries" at Craig Rhosyfelin has been shown not to have been a quarry at all, unless it was a place where small cutting tools and rhyolite flakes were collected by hunting and gathering parties over many millennia.

2.  The "burnt hazel nuts" found in a hearth at Rhosyfelin, claimed to set a date for quarrying activities,  have no stratigraphic or other link with stone extraction acrtivities, and the radiocarbon dates flagged up as of huge importance have no more significance than the multiple other dates obtained from the site.

3.  The "monolith extraction point" at Rhosyfelin, explained for the media by MPP as being of great significance, cannot possibly have been used for the removal of a viable monolith, and the field evidence demonstrates that several small and irregular blocks of rhyolite have fallen away at different times in the history of the rock face.

4.  No Rhosyfelin monoliths have ever been found in Neolithic or Bronze Age stone settings in Pembrokeshire, and not a single Stonehenge monolith can be provenanced to this site.  There is no evidence that the Rhosyfelin foliated rhyolite was ever considered "special" by anybody other than the MPP team.

5.  The claim that there was "monolith quarrying on an industrial scale" at Carn Goedog has quietly been dropped, and it now appears that only half a dozen or so of the spotted dolerites MIGHT have come from somewhere on the Carn Goedog dolerite sill (if it is really just one sill).  Most of these are not elegant pillars but weathered and abraded dolerite boulders.

6.  There is no sign that spotted dolerite from Carn Goedog or anywhere else was valued either in Pembrokeshire or at Stonehenge.  To pretend that the stone was special in some way is highly disingenuous.

7.  The radiocarbon dates from Carn Goedog do not fix a quarrying episode at the site.  They simply demonstrate (as at Rhosyfelin) a long history of intermittent use by hunting and gathering parties over many millennia.

8.  The "engineering features" listed by the MPP team at their two "quarrying sites" are shown to be figments of a fertile imagination, and do not withstand scrutiny.

9.  At Waun Mawn, the disasters are even greater.  The "lost giant circle" announced with the aid of a massive and tightly orchestrated media and TV campaign, has quietly disappeared, and the MPP team has had to accept that (as pointed out by me and many others) there never was a stone circle.  The ludicrous fallback position is that Neolithic tribesmen INTENDED to build it but never quite got round to actually doing it.........

10.  The claim that Stonehenge bluestones were "parked up" in a lost circle at Waun Mawn before being uprooted and carted off to Stonehenge has now been quietly abandoned.

11.  The claim that monoliths from Rhosyfelin and Carn Goedog were used at Waun Mawn was shown by me to have no foundation in fact, and the MPP team has now been forced to accept that I was right.

12.  In spite of the "astonishment" of Alice Roberts and others in the media about the initial placing of Stonehenge monolith No 62 in a perfectly shaped socket at Waun Mawn, MPP and his team have been forced to admit that it was all fantasy.

13.  There has been no acceptance from rock mechanics specialists or other geologists that soft rock "wedges" were used at Rhosyfelin and Carn Goedog to assist in the removal of pillars and slabs from the rock face.  The idea simply makes no sense whatsoever.

14.  The idea that there was a revetment or quayside at Rhosyfelin, used for the loading of monoliths onto sledges or rafts, has not been supported by anybody who is familiar with the site.

15.  The wide range of radiocarbon daates obtained from Waun Mawn (extending from the Mesolithic to the Iron Age) effectively falsifies the idea that this was a special site with intense activity before and during the construction of Stonehenge.

16.  The current theory that large stones were placed across the "quarry exits" at both Carn Goedog and Rhosyfelin (to prevent future quarrying) is patently nonsensical since there are no "exits" that could not be bypassed quite simply at either site.

17.  After arguing for many years that there are very few rock types in the Stonehenge bluestone / debitage assemblage,  the MPP team has had to accept my point that the bluestone material has come from multiple provenances, predominantly in the west.  The team has had to turn its own argument on its head, and now claims that the bluestones came from many different places, in all quarters of the British Isles.

18.  The provenancing of Stonehenge bluestone fragmants (from excavations and museum collections) is deemed by the MPP team to have provided "exact matches" with at least two localities in upland Preseli.  The matching is NOT exact, and doubt still remains as to where the Stonehenge bluestones might have come from.  The assumption that the bluestones have all been "brought from" upstanding tors or crags is not supportede by hard evidence.

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

I could continue, but I can't be bothered.  If you get this much confusion in a group of authors, such a lack of internal discussion and scrutiny, and such a total lack of consistency in both evidence presentation and interpretation, then the credibility of science itself is brought into question.  

Let's just invite all 20 authors in the MPP group to write their own papers in future, which can be submitted to appropriate journals with skilled editors and robust peer review processes.   With a bit of luck, we might then get some relief from this endless stream of dodgy science, wild speculation and media hype.

The myth of the Newgrange "white quartz facade"

 

I was intrigued to see, in the latest "distant stone sources" paper from MPP and his merry gang, that the source of the quartz used in the facade of Newgrange was claimed to be around 80 km away, to the south.  See Fig 1 in the article, and text page 114.  As far as I know, there is not a shred of evidence to support this contention. Cooney (2000) and Stout (2002) are cited as references, but I am not aware of any geological research that might confirm that the quartz cobbles and blocks were taken from the Wicklow Mountains (near Glendalough).  That piece of the myth is repeated over and again in social media.

It's true that there is abundant white quartz associated with old mine workings at Glendalough,  but this does not mean that there was a Neolithic quarry there, or that this was a source for the quartz used at Newgrange!  It is disingenuous of MPP et al to pretend that this is a "known provenance" -- quartz veins (some thick, some thin) are ubiquitous across the landscape, and it is notoriously difficult to provenance any given lump of quartz unless it has some truly unique characteristics.   There is simply no reason to doubt that if (and this is a big "if") quartz blocks really were collected up and used at Newgrange for ornamental or "architectural" purposes, they were simply picked up across the landscape in the vicinity of the monument. Indeed, there are old records of abundant "water-worn" quartz cobbles and small boulders found at the site during excavation, and this ties in with the belief that much of the raw material for the old monument (as distinct fromn the reconstructed one) came from the nearby river terraces of the River Boyne. It's difficult to conclude anything from quartz stone shapes, but many of them are sub-rounded or sub-angular, and this would be consistent with sources in glacial and fluvioglacial deposits in the neighbourhood.

But a study of "facade stone shapes" would probably be very unreliable, because it is clear that many tonnes of quartz blocks and cobbles were sifted out from piles of excavation debris by O'Kelly and his "reconstruction team" between 1962 and 1975. The non-quartz material was dumped back to act as the fill as the mound was rebuilt. (This para has been corrected.  Thanks to Tim Daw for pointing out that no material was imported to the site by O'Kelly and his rather imaginative team.  He also provided a couple of additional references, listed below.)

Anyway, all things considered, this is yet another example of mythology being presented as fact............  

Parker Pearson, M., Bevins, R., Bradley, R., Ixer, R., Pearce, N. and Richards, C. ‘Stonehenge and its Altar Stone: the significance of distant stone sources’. Archaeology International, 2024, 27 (1), pp. 113–37 

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

This is interesting:

https://aliisaac.substack.com/p/controversy-at-newgrange

Yet more:

Notes on Some Non-Local Cobbles at the Entrances to the Passage-Graves at Newgrange and Knowth, County Meath.   Frank Mitchell in : The Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, Vol. 122 (1992), pp. 128-145 (18 pages) 

https://www.jstor.org/stable/25509025

Meighan, Hartwell, Kennan and Simpson, Sourcing the rocks on Newgrange's facade: granites from the north and quartz from the south. IQUA, April 2002, NS 28, pp 4-5.
http://iqua.ie/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Newsletter-NS-No-28_grey.pdf

These articles are both rather complacent, and neither tests the hypothesis that the quartz pebbles and cobbles are locally derived from local quartz outcrops and glacial and fluvioglavcial deposits within the Boyne Valley.  There is an inbuilt assumption that because the Neolithic structures under scrutiny were "important" or "spectacular", the stones used in their construction must have been BROUGHT from somewhere else............

On rhyolite tools

Six artefacts from Paviland Cave, Gower

This is an interesting new paper dealing with the tools found in Palaeolithic settings in the caves of SW Wales.  Now I have been highly critical of some of the work of these authors in the past,  but here -- on the evidence of a first reading -- I find that I am prepared to accept their evidence and  am broadly in support of their conclusions.  There has always been a shortage of flint in SW Wales, and so it is perfectly reasonable that in the Palaeolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic the local tribes will have used rhyolite instead.  This is a rock that is fairly widely distributed and easily accessible.  It doesn't generally fracture conchoidally as flint does, but it does give very sharp edges, so it's better than other non-rhyolitic alternatives.

After all, when Dyfed, John and I looked at Rhosyfelin, this was our conclusion:  that the site had been used over 7,000 years or more as a possible source for sharp-edged cutting tools, scrapers and "flakes" that could be used for a while, rejected and then replaced.  This would explain the evidence of  intermittent occupation, the hearth and hence camping and cooking. We did not suggest that Carn Goedog was a similar tool-making site -- but that outcrop is of course made of various types of spotted dolerite.

There don't appear to be any foliated rhyolites from Rhosyfelin in the 23 artefacts studied in this article -- but it would not surprise me if some were to turn up here or there.........

I'm still utterly convinced that Rhosyfelin was never used for the quarrying of rhyolite monoliths designed for local use or for export to Stonehenge -- but it looks as if we might have some sort of a consensus here, when it comes to little artefacts!

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

Richard Bevins, Elizabeth A. Walker, Nick Pearce, Duncan Pirrie, Rob Ixer, Ian Saunders and Matthew Power, 2025

Lithological and geochemical characterization of ‘adinole’ artefacts from cave deposits in southwest Wales: a material of choice during the late Middle to Upper Palaeolithic, 

Quaternary Environments and Humans, (2025) 

doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.qeh.2025.100058

Provisional version: Disclaimer. 

 "This is a PDF file of an article that has undergone enhancements after acceptance, such as the addition of a cover page and metadata, and formatting for readability, but it is not yet the definitive version of record. This version will undergo additional copyediting, typesetting and review before it is published in its final form, but we are providing this version to give early visibility of the article. Please note that, during the production process, errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain."


Abstract
Twenty-three artefacts previously identified as being manufactured from adinole, a fine-grained metasomatic rock, from late Middle to Upper Palaeolithic cave sites in southwest Wales have been re-examined in terms of their petrology and geochemistry. Standard petrography has been combined with automated SEM-EDS analysis for a single artefact to determine the mineralogy and textures of that artefact, while portable XRF and μXRF have been combined to establish the geochemical characteristics of all twenty-three artefacts analysed. These investigations have shown that the artefacts were manufactured from rhyolite rather than adinole, a misidentification that has been in the literature for over 100 years. Some artefacts appear to cluster on geochemical plots, such as a group of eight artefacts from Hoyle’s Mouth Cave which share petrological characteristics and appear to have come from a common source. In other cases, however, certain artefacts with similar chemistries have dissimilar petrological characteristics and are not from a common source. This highlights the need to consider both petrological and geochemical characteristics when classifying rhyolitic artefacts. The artefacts studied show that this spotted variety of rhyolite was a preferred source of raw material throughout the late Middle and Upper Palaeolithic, despite having no obvious physical or practical advantages. Identifying rhyolite rather than adinole as the raw material used in the manufacture of the studied artefacts negates the need to consider long distance transport of either raw materials or finished artefacts. It strongly suggests that people in southwest Wales, where raw materials were scarce, were using materials that were local to them. Further, there is evidence that people were effectively planning for future use or reuse of artefacts, involving curation of tools. The next phase of work will use the lithological characteristics identified here to explore potential sources for the raw material used in the manufacture of these artefacts.

What is the treatment for erratic phobia?

They appear to be denying both the existence and the use of glacial erratics for monument building in glaciated terrain.

It's quite extraordinary that in the article by MPP et al on distant stone sources, they got away with this sort of nonsense in the text, without being pulled up by the journal editor or the "experts" selected for peer review duties.n  Whatever has happened to academic archaeology and the journals that represent it to the outside world?

Quote:

from pp 114-115

The great passage tombs of Newgrange and Knowth in Brú na Bóinne were constructed with stones brought from at least six source areas as far away as 40 km to the north and south along Ireland’s east coast (Cooney 2000, 136, Figure 5.2; Stout 2002, 30–1). The largest of these weigh around half a tonne – the greywacke blocks brought from up to 5 km away (see Figure 1).

The great passage tomb of La Hougue Bie, Jersey, incorporates different rocks from across the island (Bukach 2003). Apart from passage tombs, stone circles and other monuments at this time were also composed of different types of rock, although the distances travelled were substantially less. The two Orcadian stone circles, the Ring of Brodgar and Stones of Stenness incorporate monoliths derived from up to seven sources, covering distances of more than 13 km (Downes et al. 2013; Richards 2013a). Also, different stone circles among the complex on Machrie Moor, Arran, are constituted of different types of rock: red sandstone and white granite, both derived from different places on the island (Richards and Wright 2013, 50–9).

Parker Pearson, M., Bevins, R., Bradley, R., Ixer, R., Pearce, N. and Richards, C. ‘Stonehenge and its Altar Stone: the significance of distant stone sources’. Archaeology International, 2024, 27 (1), pp. 113–37 

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

No mention at all of the possibility -- indeed the probability -- of glacial transport of the stones used in monument building at Newgrange, Knowth, the Orkneys and Arran.   I have dealt with this matter before:

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2021/12/the-newgrange-glacial-erratics.html

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2024/08/why-are-archaeologists-scared-to-death.html

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2014/01/ring-of-brodgar-and-its-quarry.html

See also:

http://publications.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/.../77p133.pdf
Williams-Thorpe, O. and Thorpe, R.S. 1991 Geochemistry, sources and transport of the Stonehenge Bluestones. Proc Br Acad. 77, pp 133-161

The Geological Sources and Transport of the Bluestones of Stonehenge, Wiltshire, UK
Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society , Volume 57 , Issue 2 , 1991, pp. 103 - 157
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0079497X00004527

"Geochemical provenancing of igneous glacial erratics from Southern Britain, and implications for prehistoric stone implement distributions" by Olwen Williams-Thorpe, Don Aldiss, Ian J. Rigby, Richard S. Thorpe, 22 FEB 1999, Geoarchaeology, Volume 14, Issue 3, pages 209–246, March 1999

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/%28SICI%291520-6548%28199903%2914:3%3C209::AID-GEA1%3E3.0.CO;2-7/abstract

Briggs, C.S. 2009. ‘Erratics and re-cycled stone: scholarly irrelevancies or fundamental utilities?’ IPG Conference Website contribution.

https://www.historicenvironment.scot/archives-and-research/publications/publication/?publicationId=015d347c-65bd-4955-a456-a6cc009cd744

I don't know what the situation may be on Jersey, because the article by Bukach (2003) is behind a paywall -- but it appears that the bulk of stones used in passage grave construction were "local" and that some were "non-local".  I don't know how those terms were defined, and how far certain stones might have been moved.

https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-0092.00002

The thing that concerns me the most is that three of the authors of this latest article (Bevins, Pearce and Ixer) are geologists, and that they appear to be fully signed up to a ruling hypothesis that completely denies any role for natural processes in the movement of stones in areas known to have been heavily glaciated on several occasions.  How weird is that?

It gets even more bizarre when you realise that both Ixer and Bevins have been involved in glacial erratic studies -- Ixer in regard to the erratics found and publicised in the Birmingham area in the last few years, and Bevins in the study of the Storrie Collection of erratics found in Pencoed, near Bridgend.  Perhaps both of them suffer from some strange ailment which manifests itself in the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing?