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!
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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
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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.
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