A black limestone cobble from West Kennet

The cobble,  found in 2009 and held in Terence's collection of samples since then.

Front of stone, also showing flattish side facet and brachiopod (?) impression towards the tip.

Back of stone

Back of stone -- note intersecting hairline fractures with calcite (?) fills.  In places these "veins" stand proud of the cobble surface.

Largest fossil trace -- side of stone

Prominent circular fossil trace on side of stone

Find location, downslope and to the north of the West Kennet long barrow.  

Many thanks to Terence Meaden and Tony Hinchliffe for sending through an erratic cobble found near the West Kennet burial mound.  It was found by Terence on September 19th, 2009, during a field walking exercise in a ploughed field, not far from a footpath called Gunsight Lane — grid ref SU 106 682.  It's a muddy natural track which is not widely used — apparently it was never metalled or asphalted.

The find is a cobble or stone, dark grey or black in colour, 700 g in weight, easy to fit in the palm of a hand.  Max length 11 cm, max width 8 cm.  Rough wedge or bullet shape.  First impression is that it is very heavy for its size.  Heavily abraded with sub-angular edges.  It reminds me of the Newall Boulder, but it is much smaller. There are four major facets and several smaller ones. Pointed bottom end, and rather rough flattish top surface. Difficult to discern any “generations" of breakage. In several places there are fossil traces, some diverging ridges, two areas of small parallel ridges, and one prominent semi-circular ridge -- so this is essentially a sedimentary rock. 

The fossil imprint: I thought first of all that it was a brachiopod, but then saw that the ridges are not very regular and divergent, and that some appear to be wavy.  And at the base there are signs of several circles that look like tube cross-sections. Maybe this is a “ghost crinoid fossil” replaced by dolomite crystals?  Crinoids are common in the Black Rock Limestone Group. Dolomites vary in colour and are most often lighter in colour — but can be dark grey or black. They are heavier and more dense than the parent limestone. Another characteristic of dolomites is the intense pattern of intersecting hairline fractures filled with calcite (?). This stone is full of them.

Another possibility is that the main fossil imprint is a Cordaites ribbed structure, widely found in the Pennant Sandstones of eastern Wales and western England.  But if this is Carboniferous Limestone then that would be ruled out.

The cobble has a slightly shiny surface patina, but there is no obvious weathering crust.   Multiple small fracture scars. Abundant whitish scratches are modern — presumably plough damage. The surface can be scratched with a penknife blade.  

Strong fizzing reaction when sprayed with limescale remover -- this confirms that this is limestone.  So does it belong to the Black Rock Limestone Group (Lower Carboniferous), possibly partly dolomitised, possibly from the Mendips?

Traces of glaciation? No obvious striations, but this cobble is clearly not derived from a scree slope or frost-shattered slope breccia. At the other end of the shape scale, it is clearly not from a beach or river aggradation either. It might have suffered transport in a glacio-fluvial environment, but its overall bullet shape and abundant fracture scars point towards transport by ice.  I don't think this erratic has anything to do with the oolitic limestone slabs used in the West Kennet burial chamber; it has no signs of recent or prehistoric "breakage" and is a discrete clast heavily abraded on all edges.

Carboniferous Limestone erratics are very rare around the Bristol Channel, and I do not know of any others on the chalklands of Salisbury Plain or the Downs. If this really is a Mendip erratic, that is rather interesting……..

-----------

Could this find be associated with the sections of dry stone walling at West Kennet?  It is assumed that in the long barrow there were sections of dry walling with small, thin slabs of limestone imported from outside the area.   Much of the stone used as dry walling in the WKLB was identified as originating from Calne, 7 miles to the west, but some might have come from an area between Frome and Bradford on Avon, some 20 miles to the south - west.   It is claimed that well over a ton of this 'foreign' stone was imported for the building of the barrow.  Almost all of the original dry walling had rotted by the 1950s, so it was replaced by new stone from Calne, probably brought in under instructions from Stuart Piggott.

Tabular oolitic limestone was also used in dry stone walling at Adam's Grave.  Pieces of oolite (from the Frome area?) are also known from the unchambered mounds of Shepperd's Shore, Easton Down, Horslip and Kitchen Down, and from Windmill Hill ( Piggott 1962). 

My initial impression is that this "Meaden cobble" is not oolitic limestone, but that it might have come from the Frome area.  This is what AI tells me abour dark coloured limestones in north Somerset:

Dark-colored limestones in North Somerset are primarily found within two geological formations: the Carboniferous Black Rock Limestone and the Jurassic Blue Lias.

Black Rock Limestone (Carboniferous)
This is the most prominent "dark" limestone in the region, typically described as dark grey to black due to its composition and fossil content.
• Mendip Hills: The formation is extensive across the Mendip plateau, forming major features in the western Mendips.
• Burrington Combe: Very well exposed in the upper parts of this gorge.
• Cheddar Area: Significant exposures occur around Cheddar, including the Cheddar Limestone Member, which is a 38-meter thick dark limestone.
• Coastal Outcrops: Dark Carboniferous limestones are visible at Middle Hope (north of Weston-super-Mare) and Brean Down.
• Quarries: It is actively or historically quarried at locations like Holwell and Cannington Park near Bridgwater. 

Blue Lias (Lower Jurassic)
The "Blue" Lias is named for its distinctive blue-grey to dark grey appearance, which comes from its high sulphide-bearing clay content.
• Coastal Cliffs: The most famous exposures are along the North Somerset coast, particularly between Kilve, Lilstock, and Blue Anchor. These cliffs show rhythmic layers of dark shales and limestones.

Info dug up on the web:

Black Rock Limestone Subgroup

The Black Rock Limestone is the most fossiliferous part of the Carboniferous Limestone in the Mendips. The remains of crinoids, brachiopods and corals are especially abundant, and three broad faunal subdivisions can be recognised. In the lowest subdivision brachiopods are dominant, such as Cleiothyridina, Dictyoclostus, Pugilis, Rhipidomella, Rugosochonetes and Syringothyris.

This interval is similar to the fauna of the Avon Group, but can be distinguished by the presence of the coral Zaphrentites delanouei and the brachiopod Rugosochonetes vaughani. The middle part of the Black Rock Limestone is characterised by a rich coral fauna, particularly Caninophyllum, Caninia, Cyathaxonia, Cyathoclisia, Fasciculophyllum and Sychnoelasma.

In the upper part of the Black Rock Limestone the coral Siphonophyllia cylindrica is diagnostic and brachiopods, such as Pustula cf. pustuliformis, become an increasingly important part of the fauna. 

Some fragments were knocked off the cobble on its blunt end on 20th Jan 2026 for further analysis:

Note the very dark colour and calcite (?) veins

Close-up of the fresh cobble surface following removal of a flake.  Click to enlarge

Sample taken from the cobble on 20 Jan 2026.  Click to enlarge

For comparison, here is an image of calcite veins and "micro veins" in Carboniferous Limestone, Three Cliffs Bay, Gower:

Thanks to Jessica.

I will hazard a guess and suggest that the fossil imprint on the Meaden Cobble may be Rugosochonetes vaughani:

If this is correct, then it points to the Black Rock Limestone..............

Apologies for the "stream of counsciousness" nature of this post!  The "Meaden Cobble" is really something of a puzzle.  Anyway, more to come. I thank several geologist contacts for their advice, and Isobel Geddes in particular.

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

This is not the first erratic occurrence to be reported from West Kennet.  Here is one post:

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2024/11/more-on-west-kennet-granidiorite-mystery.html

If you want to search further on this blog, just put "West Kennet erratic" into the search box.

It is really rather bizarre that all of the authors who promote the human transport theory insist on repeating the lie that "there are no erratics on Salisbury Plain or on the chalk downs".............

  

Cholderton Blue Pennant Sandstone erratic

An interesting find from Cholderton estate, c 10 km east of Stonehenge.  Ixer has analysed the boulder, and says it is a Blue Pennant Sandstone.  That means it has probably come from the west.  How it got here is somewhat puzzling.......

This video is breathless, chaotic and excitable, but contained within it there is some useful info........

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

I call it an erratic, because that is what it clearly is -- an unexpected boulder found in a place far removed from its place or origin.  I don't say it is a glacial erratic, in the absence of any supporting evidence, but you never know........

Ixer's notes on the boulder will no doubt appear somewhere or other.

New study on Salisbury Plain zircon-apatite fingerprinting

The chalklands of Salisbury Plain, showing the 4 studied sites.

There is an interesting new article by Clarke and Kirkland which has a bearing on the bluestone glacial / human transport debate.  I greatly welcome this -- all new research should be welcomed, especially when it involves a new and innovative technique.

Here are the details:

Detrital zircon–apatite fingerprinting challenges glacial transport of Stonehenge’s megaliths. 
Anthony J. I. Clarke & Christopher L. Kirkland
Nature Communications Earth & Environment | ( 2026) 7:54

https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-025-03105-3

Abstract

How Stonehenge’s building blocks arrived on Salisbury Plain remains debated, with glacial and human transport mechanisms proposed. Here we test the possibility of Pleistocene glacial sediment input using grain-scale U–Pb fingerprinting of detrital zircon and apatite from modern stream sediments surrounding Stonehenge. Zircon ages span 3396–285 Ma, with age peaks at ~1090, 1690, and 1740 Ma, matching the Laurentian basement of northern Britain. Salisbury Plain detrital zircon ages match those of southern British rocks sourced from the London Basin, implying local sediment recycling rather than glaciogenic transport. Apatite ages of ~60Ma reflect post-depositional U–Pb resetting, consistent with the distal effects of the Alpine orogeny. Collectively, our data show Salisbury Plain remained unglaciated during the Pleistocene, making direct glacial transport of Stonehenge’s megaliths unlikely.

I haven't had a chance yet to suudy the article carefully, but I am immediately struck by certain limitations. For example, the lead researcher, Anthony Clarke, seems to have investigated only four sites -- in river sediments near Salisbury, Amesbury, Andover and Warminster. In the studies, "detrital" grains (eroded particles in river sand) were compared against bedrock "fingerprints" from the presumed source sites in Wales and Scotland. We do not know what variables or uncertainties might have been introduced in this process. There also appear to have been no western controls;  without sampling glacial sediments further to the west (where ice is known to have reached), comparing local Salisbury sand directly to distant bedrock may overlook the "missing link" of intermediate glacial deposits.

There is also a substantial risk in using high-precision mineral dating on a small number of physical sites.  This can lead to "interpretative inflation," where localized findings are over-emphasised, and used to dismiss a number of broad geological or glaciological possibilities.

I do not see anything reassuring in the study on sampling and sample processing bias that might have been introduced into the study.  It's widely acknowledged that the zircon and apatite cargo on any given landscape will involve variable rates and patterns of sedimentation; what guarantee do we have that certain horizons rich in zircons or apatites, subject to hydraulic or temporal sorting, have not been completely missed when Anthony Clarke took his 1 kg samples from his four wet sites?  Lab processes are described in the article, but again results can be skewed by manual or device-based means.

Quote:  Salisbury Plain lacks undisputed tills, erratics, or other diagnostic indicators of glacial

activity..........    That is a matter of opinion.  Erratics are present on Salisbury Plain -- that is not a matter of dispute.  And the faceted, abraded and heavily weathered bluestone boulders that are abundant in the "bluestone collection" are very strong indicators of glacial activity -- conveniently ignored by the proponents of the human transport theory.  And the alternative?  Where is the evidence of human transport of the bluestones?  There is none.  And that is not a matter of dispute.   Extraordinary theories need to be supported by extraordinary evidence..........so it is still the case that the most parsimonious explanation of the presence of bluestone boulders, slabs and pillars on Salisbury Plain is glacial transport.

Another conclusion which needs to be questioned:  "..........our data show Salisbury Plain remained unglaciated during the Pleistocene, making direct glacial transport of Stonehenge’s megaliths unlikely."  

The data may show that parts of the Plain were unglaciated, and that glacial transport of erratics all the way to Stonehenge might not have occurred.  That does not mean that glacial transport of the bluestones cannot have occurred over part, if not most, of the diatance between the source area and the site of the Stonehenge monument.

And there are other unanswered questions too.  Why are there so many rock types (including soft sedimentaries and igneous rocks) represented in the Stonehenge bluestone assemblage and in the on-site sediments?  If the bluestones were chosen and quarried, as argued by Parker Pearson, Bevins, Ixer and others, why do they carry the key diagnostic features of glacially transported erratics?  And if their transport had nothing to do with glacial processes, why have they all travelled from west to east, which happens to be the direction of predominant ice flow?  And what about the cobbles and pebbles in the Stonehenge area that have nothing to do with the monumental monoliths?  How did they get here?

Anyway, I will revisit all of this when I have had a chance to go through the article in much more detail.

This is quite embarrassing............

The big boulder just below and to right of centre is the one deemed by TD to be virtually identical in shape to the Newall Boulder............

The same boulder is seen just to left of centre, on the edge of the flooded area.  It is clearly not at all the same shape the Newall Boulder, as claimed by TD.

Embarrassing?   ....... not for me, but for the members of the Bevins /Ixer gang who work with him.   Our old friend Tim Daw, whose trolling behaviour is in itself a source of concern, has demonstrated yet again his complete lack of understanding of the fundamentals of glacial geomorphology.

https://www.sarsen.org/2026/01/the-brian-john-boulder-again.html

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/394390618_Comparative_Analysis_of_the_Brian_John_Boulder_at_Craig_Rhos-y-felin_and_the_Newall_Boulder_from_Stonehenge_Implications_for_the_Origins_and_Transport_of_the_Bluestones?channel=doi&linkId=6894edbbd3c4ac316e2edf77&showFulltext=true

For some time he has had a weird obsession with a boulder at Rhosyfelin which he calls the "Brian John Boulder."  I'm very honoured.  There is nothing inherently fascinating about it, except that it is superficially similar in shape to the Newall Boulder (when seen from one perspective) which has been at the centre of a vigorous debate. It's also somewhat similar in shape to lots of other boulders at Rhosyfelin and elsewhere.  Just look at the photos of the archaeological dig by me and by MPP and his colleagues.  If TD was so intent on making a big issue of the shapes of certain stones, he should have done some fieldwork and checked his assumptions first..........

I have never claimed that the Newall Boulder has a unique shape, or that the bullet shape is unique to glacially transported clasts.  Wedge or bullet shapes are common in nature, since the basic shape of blocks is determined initially by intersecting fracture patterns or joint planes.  Blocks that are narrower at one end than the other are thus very common;  more common than truly rectangular blocks, since truly rectilinear joint patterns don't occur all that often.  But as all the textbooks will tell  you, the bullet shape is accentuated or exaggerated during glacial transport because of enhanced abrasion or smoothing at the up-glacier end (where the block is under compression) and enhanced breakage at the down-glacier end (where the block is under tension). Pressure enhancement followed by pressure release and plucking or quarrying.  In my articles on the Newall Boulder I have given all the necessary sources in case you want to check this out.

The opinions on the small boulder which were expressed by 11 senior geomorphologists were based not on the bullet shape alone, but on a combination of disgnostic features.  

The TD obsession is very difficult to explain.  As far as I can see, he is obsessed with the idea that because a boulder at Rhosyfelin has a shape that is -- he assumes -- very similar to that of the Newall Boulder, and has not been transported very far, we cannot assume that the Newall Boulder was glacially entrained, transported and deposited.  The problem is that the boulder that he chooses to call the Brian John Boulder is not a glacially transported clast at all, but a locally derived block in a glaciofluvial setting. In a high energy ice wastage environment (such as that which existed at Rhosyfelin at the end of the last glacial episode) large clasts which have not been entrained and removed by true glacial processes tend to be smoothed rather rapidly by large volumes of meltwater flow.  The meltwater is turbulent and contains the silt, sand and gravel particles that are the abrasive tools.  If TD had bothered to read the articles by Dyfed Elis-Gruffydd, John Downes and myself, he would have seen that his favourite boulder sits in the middle of a somewhat discontinuous and chaotic glaciofluvial (or fluvioglacial) horizon that is stratigraphically above the local till and below the thick colluvial horizon.

The boulder which is blessed with my name has clearly had most of its sharp edges smoothed and rounded by meltwater flow. In fact the whole boulder has been affected by meltwater abrasion. Like the other boulders in this horizon, striations (if there were any to start with) have also been removed. There are no man-made features on its surface, and it holds no evidence of human quarrying activity.  It has nothing whatsoever to do with the glacial transport hypothesis, and it tells us nothing whatsoever about the origins and transport of the Newall Boulder.

Bullet-shaped clasts shaped primarily by transport on the wet bed of a glacier in the Darwin Mountains, Antarctica.  Glacier flow was from left to right.  Here the striations have survived because the boulders have not been modified by meltwater action. 

(Storey et al, 2010:  

DOI: 

10.1017/S0954102010000799)

 

Relevant text (2015):

The water-lain sediments in layer 2b are poorly-sorted,gravel-rich, and packed with rounded and sub-rounded cobbles and boulders, some of which are more than 1.5m in diameter.  Some locally-derived and sharp-edged rhyolite fragments are contained, but the erratic suite appears to be similar to that of the Devensian till. The sediments have been laid down by high-velocity, turbulent and sediment-rich streams, and the conclusion is inescapable that they are of fluvioglacial origin. There is no clear stratigraphic junction between the glacial and fluvioglacial sediments, and it is proposed that they are intimately related, having been laid down more or less contemporaneously, in an ice-wastage environment incorporating masses of dead ice. Here conditions would have been perfect for the formationof flow or melt-out tills in close proximity to clay-rich lodgement till -- and this would explain the sedimentological differences in the till exposed on different parts of the site.

OBSERVATIONS ON THE SUPPOSED “NEOLITHIC BLUESTONE QUARRY” AT CRAIG RHOSYFELIN, PEMBROKESHIRE. 

Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/286775899_OBSERVATIONS_ON_THE_SUPPOSED_NEOLITHIC_BLUESTONE_QUARRY_AT_CRAIG_RHOSYFELIN_PEMBROKESHIRE[accessed Jan 15 2026].

The Cerrig Lladron Myth

I was reminded the other day of another of the myths -- and there have been many -- pushed out by Bevins, Ixer et al over the last few years as part of the Waun Mawn Saga.  It's in this article, and of course it was also pushed in the accompanying press release.  

Bevins, R.E., Pearce, N.J.G., Parker Pearson, M., Ixer, R.A., 2022. Identification of the source of dolerites used at the Waun Mawn stone circle in the Mynydd Preseli, west Wales and implications for the proposed link with Stonehenge. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 45 (2022) 103556.

• DOI: 
• 10.1016/j.jasrep.2022.103556

The promoted story is that this is a classic piece of "good science" in which learned experts correct their own mistakes.  Having claimed earlier on that Waun Mawn had something to do with Stonehenge and with the rock types represented in the "bluestone assemblage",  they say that they have now done some more brilliant research and have discovered that the four lumps of rock that can be seen at Waun Mawn actually came from Cerrig Lladron, not far away from the mythical stone setting.  That's the spin........

It's a load of tosh. They have not discovered anything of the sort, as I have pointed out in previous posts.

 
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/345177590_Waun_Mawn_and_the_search_for_Proto-_Stonehenge

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/search?q=+Cerrig+Lladron

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2024/04/the-unhealthy-obsession-with-bluestone.html

I told them as soon as they started work at Waun Mawn that the one standing stone and three recumbent stones at the site of the putative "giant stone circle" were strictly local, having been picked up on the site or very close to it.  They would have seen that for themselves, if they had bothered to do any fieldwork.  But they chose -- as usual -- to ignore anything that came from outside their own little bubble.  Secondly, they have NOT discovered that the stones came from Cerrig Lladron. There are petrographic and geochemical similarities, but it appears that they have not bothered to sample any of the dolerite outcrops at Waun Mawn itself, and have targetted the nearest tor, since in their belief system all orthostats have to be collected and brought from prominent landscape features like the Preseli tors. 

The spinning and the mythologising goes on to this day, since none of these guys can ever admit to any shortcomings in their own research.

Furufjördur, NW Iceland -- raised beach ridges

 

This is a superb satellite image of the raised beach ridges in Furufjordur.  We were there in 1974.  The ridges run up to abut 6m asl, which means they are probably associated with the "Nucella" stage of isostatic recovery.  Above this level, in the SW corner of the image, there are traces of higher marine terraces.

High resolution image from the satellite coverage of the shoreline in Furufjördur.  This explains the name, which means "fjord of the fir trees".  The fir trees never were growing here, but up to about 6m asl the ground surface is littered with logs, tree trunks and other debris carried into this location (on the E coast of the Vestfirdir peninsula) by sea currents from the Arctic Basin, across the roof of Russia.  You can see the logs very clearly.   This oceanic drift is now very much in the geopolitical sphere, labelled as "the Northern Sea Route" (NSR) ........

New focus on the Bristol Channel

My recent assessment of the situation as it might have been at a time of "maximum glaciation".

It's clear from my correspondence file, that Ixer, Bevins & Co are moving their focus of attention away from Pembrokeshire, having caused quite enough trouble to be going on with.  The new focus is on the Bristol Channel coasts, and the hundreds of glacial erratics that are scattered along its shorelines and hinterlands.  That includes all the areas I have referred to in my recent publications -- Gower, the Vale of Glamorgan, the Bristol Channel islands, Devon, Cornwall and Somerset, and probably even the Isles of Scilly.

There is a big literature, and thanks are due to Ann Inglis, Paul Berry, Paul and Rosemary Madgett, Peter Keene, Chris Cornford, Clarence Kidson, Nick Stephens and many others for assembling information over the years. Of course, in the long list of erratics there will be some mis-identifications, and if Ixer, Bevins et al can sort those out, that would be great.

The Ramson Cliff erratic, provisionally referred to as made of epidiorite.  

(Thanks to Paul Madgett for the photo)

Over the years I have listed most of the erratic finds, and while I doubt that there is any new fieldwork going on, I applaud any new research that will give us a more accurate indication of where the erratics have come from and how they have travelled.  Kellaway and various others have, over the years, speculated about possible ice streams travelling in parallel -- for example a stream dominated by "Scottish ice" and a stream with a dominant Welsh erratic component.  To me, the picture looks more messy than Kellaway suggested, since most of the coastal erratics (and those further inland) will have been deposited and re-mobilised several times during the Ice Age.  But let's see what comes up from a more detailed examination of the erratics themselves and a more detailed summary of the main source areas.

The Altar Stone debate comes into the frame too, in view of the strong feeling in some quarters that it might have come from western Scotland and might have been transported southwards by the Irish Sea Ice stream.

Of course, one of the main purposes of the research will be to "prove" that the erratics are concentrated within a very narrow vertical range and that they are therefore ice-rafted -- I have already crossed swords with the Bevins gang on this, and I genuinely can't understand why this should be such an obsession, given that glacial till exists at an altitude of over 60m near Fremington, and given that the GCR volume for the South-West gives an upper altitude of c 200m for glacial materials on the Devon coast.......

Anyway, best of luck to them, and I look forward to see what they come up with when and if they get their results published.  As ever, I will be on hand to apply due scrutiny.........

For further background information, just type "Bristol Channel erratics" into the blog search box.

Some posts:

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.co.uk/2017/07/the-bristol-channel-glaciations.html

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2017/10/on-redistribution-of-bluestone-erratics.html

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2022/02/glaciation-of-cotswolds-and-mendips.html

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2018/10/strange-boulders-on-coast-of-brittany.html

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2024/08/possible-altar-stone-sources.html

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2024/08/in-praise-of-ailsa-craig.html

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2024/09/the-myth-of-shoreline-erratics.html

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2015/01/the-erratics-at-baggy-point-croyde-and_18.html

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

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2024/12/daws-delusional-denials-latest-episode.html

Geomorphology and the bluestone transport debate

"Very pretty?  Indeed it is, and if I'm not mistaken, we are looking at an old channel system refreshed in a short-lived Late Devensian ice wastage episode and followed by a Younger Dryas episode of permafrost-induced slope transformation........."

I was encouraged to write this post by a couple of comments from one of my correspondents who is a very senior geologist. 

POINT ONE  

First, he complained about the lack of geomorphological expertise in the team which has been developing the "Stonehenge bluestone human transport narrative" over the last decade or so. He seems to be genuinely puzzled by the refusal of that team to acknowledge the operation of natural earth surface processes in the fashioning of the sarsen and bluestone "monoliths" as we see them today. Geology is an earth surface science, and yet Ixer, Bevins, Pearce and others seem to be intent on ignoring the natural processes that have affected rock outcrops and surface boulders during the course of the Ice Age and have gone out of their way to hunt for man-made traces such as those labelled so bizarrely in the two fantastical bluestone "quarries" that are supposed to exist at Craig Rhosyfelin and Carn Goedog. So where Dyfed Elis-Gruffydd, John Downes and I found abundant features associated with glacial, periglacial and fluvioglacial processes operating within the past 20,000 years or so, Bevins and Ixer claim to have found stone rails, quarrying scratches, working surfaces, revetments, haulage trackways and even stone rails........

We have visited these sites alongside many other geologists and geomorphologists, and not one of them has taken the view that they are sites where Neolothic quarrying has taken place.

The same strangely blinkered approach is apparent in the literature about the Newall Boulder.  Ixer and Bevins insist on calling it a "joint controlled block" -- implying that its shape was determined by physical geological stresses and nothing else.  When I showed close-up images of the boulder surfaces and edges to 11 glacial geomorphologists, these were their opinions:

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2022/07/a-glacial-clast-from-stonehenge-newalls.html

( I told them nothing about the boulder and simply asked them for their opinions on how it might have been shaped and what its mode of transport might have been.)

1. If I had been doing a Reichelt shape classification I would have classed this as sub angular and typical of igneous clasts that have been dragged along the glacier bed.

2. I would say it has been glacially transported. That could account for the relatively smooth (abraded) surface and the other sub-angular surface and edges. There could even be some grooves on the abraded surface (upper image).

3. I would not be surprised if it is glacially transported. It looks to be the result of physical processes rather than chemkcal weathering. The light parts look hard and fresh and one side is flat. Corners and edges are neither sharp nor rounded. I could have picked it from a till in Bergen.

4. I am a bit less convinced. Looking at the right side of the first image the facets might be where cooling joints meet. That end is almost hexagonal. It is quite bullet-shaped though.

5. I would agree with my esteemed colleagues and say that there is certainly evidence for a possible faceted surface but difficult to say much more based on the photos.

6. In addition to the facets and chip marks that jumped out at first glance, the lower image to me has a slight bullet shape to it. Nothing definite from photos alone, and perhaps especially not from these two angles, but my very careful guess would agree with a subglacial transport path. Striae rarely preserve well (and on many lithologies don’t even form). Having said that, the clasts seem pretty weathered and battered.

7. Although quite hard to get a complete picture from just these two images, I’d say they seem to show a subrounded cobble/small boulder that is faceted, and has a shape that some people might say approaches a bullet-shape. I can also see some – what look like - chipmarks on some of its edges, the arrangement of which could indicate a responsible force from a single direction. From behind my wall of disclaimers and from within my cloud of speculation, I would probably guess that this boulder was subglacially transported. Striations on the faces would perhaps clinch it for me, but I could not see those in the images.

8. It's not possible to be definitive on the basis of these pictures alone. However, the presence of planar facets is consistent with subglacial transport. It would help if there were additional characters that might corroborate this, such as a stops-lee or double stoss-lee form. I guess there are no striations, or you would have mentioned them. Also rhyolite doesn't tend to striate.

9. My guess would be glacial. Not overly far travelled I’d say, but there does appear to be edge rounding and also chipping, with potential flat-iron faces. Looks like a lot of igneous clasts in tills in the north of Ireland.

10. I agree that this could be interpreted as subglacially transported boulder. Some rounding of the corners, but the facetted surface is not the best I have seen…if it has striations I would of course be 100% convinced.

11. Looks like a fluvioglacial clast. Definitely been in a fluvial system but only for short time as the degree of rounding is limited. The pic maybe misleading but I can see parallel lines -? Striations.

12. It looks partially faceted, edge rounded and abraded. The surfaces even appear to have some crude chattermarks/flip-outs. I cannot see any definitive striations but the lower image has an interesting set of linear marks that warrant a better image, though they may well be structural. I would say definitely glacially transported.

Experts consulted, in no particular order: Prof Neil Glasser, Prof Peter Worsley, Prof David Sugden, Prof Doug Benn, Prof Dave Evans, Prof Dave Roberts, Prof Jim Rose, Prof John Hiemstra, Prof Danny McCarroll, Prof Sven Lukas, Prof Jan Mangerud, Prof Steve McCarron. Some have indicated a willingness to be involved in future research on the boulder.

Here's another weird thing. In their 2025 tirade on the Newall Boulder, Bevins et al claim that the seven "diagnostic features"which I itemised in my 2024 article  "could be simply generated by surface weathering exploiting internal discontinuities".  That comment is frankly laughable, and even a GCSE geology student would not have got away with it in his end of term exams.  I'm amazed that the journal editor and the reviewers did not jump on it from a great height.........

So what's going on here?  It's pretty apparent to me that geomorphology -- and common sense -- are being muscled aside in pursuit of an agenda designed to minimise the importance of natural processes and to glorify the role of human beings in heroic rock transportation enterprises.  I can understand archaeologists trying to do this -- but senior geologists?????  Why???

The same extraordinary situation has arisen with regard to the erratic boulders of the Devon and Cornwall coasts, which Ixer, Bevins and their colleagues refer to as ice-rafted boulders or as monumental stones moved by humans --  in spite of the abundant evidence on the adjacent coast of ice 
from the Irish Sea Ice Stream pressing some distance inland and leaving behind plenty of sedimentary evidence.

Bennett, J. A., Cullingford, R. A., Gibbard, P. L., Hughes, P. D., & Murton, J. B. (2024). The Quaternary Geology of Devon. Proceedings of the Ussher Society, 15, 84-130.
https://ussher.org.uk/wp- content/uploads/benettetal1584130v2.pdf

So, in the face of all of this, why is it that  geomorphologists (apart from James Scourse, Chris Green and myself) have steered well clear of the Stonehenge bluestone debate?  Well, partly it has something to do with academic etiquette -- university geomorphologists seem to have decided that this is naturally not their territory, and that archaeologists should be left in control of the agenda.  Several of them have said to me "Oh, I can't say anything really useful because I am not sufficiently immersed in the debate and am therefore ill-informed."  Others might have decided that the issue is too hot to handle!!

That's a pity, because geomorphologists do have special skills and have something unique to contribute to the debate.  Their opinions on the shapes and surface characteristics of the bluestones and the sarsens would be invaluable, in print and on the record.  We also need more opinions on the traces of glaciation that exist in the South West Peninsula and on the possible routes and dates for bluestone transport.  There are also opportunities for  the employment of established techniques for the dating of exposed rock surfaces.  

POINT TWO

One final point from my geological correspondent. He expresses his disappointment that the term "debitage"  has been used by many people (including me) for the stony detritus found in the soil in and around the Stonehenge stone monument.  He says that the term encourages circular reasoning, because not all of it has come from the human destruction or shaping of bluestone and sarsen monoliths.  So the word itself encourages the belief that the "debitage" is a man-made layer that has some stratigraphic and chronological significance.  I take his point.  This is typical of the rather slack or slapdash thinking that characterises the whole of the Stonehenge bluestone dabate.  I shall try to avoid the use of the term in future.

In similar vein, I have drawn attention to the circular reasoning involved in the interpretation of the bluestone fragments found in Stonehenge excavations.  Almost always, in Cleal et al (1995) and other publications, it is assumed that the presence of blustone fragments in a sediment layer MUST date that layer as having been formed after the first use of the bluestones on the site.  That is a very dangerous assumption, which must in the past have resulted in many inadequate or incorrect dating exercises.

Bevins and the Bluestone Bully Boys: much bias and bluster, and not much science

"What on earth were they thinking?" I have been asked that question by a number of my geology contacts.  Well, I can't see into their minds, but it's fair to assume that they wanted -- metaphorically, one hopes -- to kill me off and to demonstrate that the bluestone transport debate is now dead. After ignoring me and my work for more than a decade, and arrogantly refusing to enter into any sort of debate, they decided that they couldn't any longer turn a blind eye to a string of my peer-reviewed articles that they found very uncomfortable indeed.  So, from their strange perspective, enough was enough. Richard Bevins took the lead, assembled his team of prominent and widely-published experts, and cobbled together that extraordinary tirade designed specifically to discredit almost everything I have written about the bluestones and the glacial transport theory.

This is the article:

Richard E. Bevins, Nick J.G. Pearce, Rob A. Ixer, James Scourse, Tim Daw, Mike Parker Pearson, Mike Pitts, David Field, Duncan Pirrie, Ian Saunders, Matthew Power. 2025. The enigmatic ‘Newall boulder’ excavated at Stonehenge in 1924: New data and correcting the record, Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, Volume 66, 105303.

The article by the Bevins Bully Boys was rejected by the Journal of Quaternary Science (an earth science publication) and was then accepted by the Journal of Archaeological Science, a journal about which I have expressed concerns on many occasions in the past. It appears to me that they will publish almost anything vaguely archaeological as long as the authors include some complicated graphs or tables and can afford to pay the APC (article publishing charge) of $4608 USD...........

Anyway, I am not going to be pushed around by anybody.  I will continue to do what I think we should all be doing -- scrutinising the "specialist literature" in my own field of interest as honestly as I can, to the best of my ability.  So I have summarised my main points of concern about the Bevins et al tirade, leaving out many smaller points of disagreement in the cause of brevity.  Here are the details:

Brian S John, 2026.  The Newall boulder at Stonehenge: correcting the "corrections".  Researchgate pre-publication document, 13 pp.

• DOI: 
• 10.13140/RG.2.2.10844.86401

The Newall boulder at Stonehenge: correcting the "corrections". Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/399619799_The_Newall_boulder_at_Stonehenge_correcting_the_corrections[accessed Jan 10 2026].

ABSTRACT

This short article contains a critique of a paper published in 2025 by Prof Richard Bevins and ten others in which they claim to have “corrected” the record concerning the Newall Boulder found at Stonehenge and concerning the transport of bluestones from West Wales to Salisbury Plain. The paper was accompanied by a high-pressure publicity campaign in which it was claimed that the glacial transport thesis is now dead. The paper, in turns petty, condescending and misleading, was also a thinly disguised ad hominem attack on the present author, involving no less than 52 citations of his work. The paper by Bevins et al adds little in the way of new evidence, and numerous speculations and assertions are presented as facts. The contents of the paper are therefore refuted, and it is suggested that instead of claiming that the glacial transport debate is dead, and that their “human transport narrative” is proved, Bevins et al should accept that their ideas are scientifically disputed and that new research is needed to establish the length of time that has elapsed since the bluestones were originally deposited on Salisbury Plain.

The document in its present form may well be modified in response to feedback, while I consider future publication options.  

East Greenland 1962 -- innocent research meets political intrigue

This might seem a strange post for this particular blog site, but I thought it worth pointing out that when research is going on, politics is never very far away......... not to mention active warfare!!

When my Greenland novel called "Icefall Zero" was published in 2014, I thought that some of the events portrayed might be considered ludicrous. But I had a gut feeling that something dodgy was going on, and that the USA had very serious territorial aspirations during the 1960s.

This is what I said on my web-site:

The novel is labelled as a thriller (it has to be labelled as something, according to the rules of the game). But I hope readers will see in it my deeper purpose! This is really an author's protest against environmental degradation, triggered by the events of the Cold War. A quiet wilderness deserving of reverence is violated and even desecrated by the great powers in the name of "national security" -- while the indigenous people, who have an almost mystical communion with the land, are not even consulted. The focus is East Greenland -- but it could just as well have been any wilderness in a position of strategic or economic importance.......

Wagner's Ring Cycle is an allegory about the self-destructive evil that flows from the lust for power and wealth. For the obsession with power, look no further than NATO and the Warsaw Pact alliance in the Cold War of the early 1960's. For the dream of limitless wealth, look no further than the international mining corporations who never turn away from a mineral resource which is capable of exploitation and capable of ensuring a long-term revenue stream. And when the "desirable" territory is a small country with a weak government, everything falls nicely into place. So the wilderness is desecrated -- unless somebody is brave enough -- or crazy enough -- to stand in the way.

In the novel, the villain of the piece is called Wagner, not Trump, who operates with the full weight of the US government behind him, and he controls his fiefdom from a mountain retreat called Himmelbjerg -- in Norse mythology the tallest mountain in the world of the Gods.

This is Malmbjerget, in the Werner Mountains of East Greenland.  There is a molybdenum mine here, sometimes worked and sometimes not, depending on global metal prices.  Nice metal resources, but devilishly difficult in terms of access.  All crushed ore has to be carried out on caterpillar tractor trains across the mountains to the coast -- up one glacier and down another.  In the novel this is called "Himmelbjerg" -- a very suitable place for the Twilight of the Gods.

Now here's a funny thing. When I was digging around for information which I needed to give the novel authenticity, I came across a declassified US document called "Technical Report EP-140. Environment of Southeast Greenland" and published originally by the Quartermaster Research and Engineering Center, Environmental Protection Research Division" in October 1961. Unclassified Catalog number AD 251 797. It is incredibly detailed. Although many pages are virtually illegible in the digitised version, there is enough detail visible to show that the East Greenland coast, adjacent to Denmark Strait, was being taken very seriously by the US military, and that they wanted to know EVERYTHING about it, including weather and climate, tides, sea ice conditions, landing beaches, anchorages, routes onto the ice sheet, vegetation, marine life etc etc. The discovery of the document was almost spooky..........

And here's another funny thing. While I was in the field as joint leader of an Oxford University expedition in 1962 there were two other scientists working in the area -- well-funded, with helicopter support. We never did work out whether they were doing serious research -- but we got to know that they were working under the auspices of the US Army.

The magnificent man in his flying machine

The magnificent man and his flying machine.  

You have to be slightly mad to be a bush pilot, and Andri Heidberg was nothing if not eccentric. He and his Brantly helicopter were famous in Iceland during the 1970's, and he said he could land just about anywhere. We hired him for 10 hours of flying time over 3 days in August 1973, in our "NW Iceland Reconnaissance Expedition." We flitted about all over Vestfirdir (the Western Fjords), covering a vast distance and making multiple landings. The money (£500) was well spent, and were able, as a result of our observations, to plan four further seasons of fieldwork very efficiently.  

While we were in the air we really did live life on the edge, because in the wilderness there were no refuelling options, and Andri insisted that we had to carry our fuel reserves with us in the cabin, in rather leaky jerry cans. So he packed us in first, and then packed the jerry cans of aviation fuel around us. Then off we went, on each of the three days of work. The trouble was that Andri was a chain smoker, and always had a lighted cigarette hanging from his lips........... Luckily, we did not explode. Sadly, Andri died in 1978, shortly after a helicopter crash and having survived for two days in the wilderness before being rescued.

The Budi stage in Iceland

 

Eythorsson's map showing the Alftanes and Budi stages in Iceland, showing ice front positions and moraines on the main island.  At the time of his research (1935) very little was known about the situation in the western fjords (Vestfirdir).  

Nowadays there is much more information in the literature, and as we have seen in earlier posts, the Budi stage seems to be represented by TWO short episodes of terminal moraine construction between 12,600 yrs BP and 11,200 yrs BP.  Broadly, these coincide with the Loch Lomond Readvance in the UK and the Milne Land stage in East Greenland.

The outermost of these two moraine systems represents the culmination of a substantial regional advance in response to a distinct North Atlantic cooling of climate.  The inner moraine seems to represent a very short-lived interruption in a period of overall ice wastage -- represented by a readvance of maybe a few hundred metres.  

How does this history relate to the evidence on the ground in Kaldalon, the Reykjarfjordur valley and other outlet troughs radiating fromnn the Drangajokull ice cap?  The "double moraine" situation does seem to be represented in Reykjafjordurdalur -- labelled as the O1 and O2 moraines -- but not in Kaldalon,  where the big moraine called Jokulgardur seems to represent but a single advance.  Must seek some further opinions on this dilemma...........

The mound of "Pleistocene gravels" at Silbury Hill

Chapter 8
SILBURY HILL: A MONUMENT IN MOTION
Jim Leary
From Leary, J. Ch 8. Silbury Hill: a monument in motion
In: Leary, Darvill and Field. 2010, Round Mounds and Monumentality in the British Neolithic and Beyond. Oxbow Books.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/308084271_Silbury_Hill_a_monument_in_motion

The first clear evidence for construction activity is a low, fairly unimpressive, gravel mound
overlying the old ground surface in the centre; it measured just less than a metre high and nearly
10 metres in diameter (Fig. 8.3 and Colour Plate 1). The material used for this mound was
Pleistocene gravels, suggesting that people would have had to quarry the material or found it
exposed in a river valley, for example the side of the River Kennet; either way, it was clearly very
deliberately imported and used here. Environmental evidence suggests that the material was
extracted from an open grassland environment.


Bedrock: chalk, with a mantle of clay-with-flints which has been mobilised downslope.


The gravel mound is something of a mystery. Could it have been an in situ Pleistocene landscape feature. or maybe even something relating to past glaciation -- for example a low morainic remnant, or a small patch of glaciofluvial material? Jim Leary clearly thinks that the gravels might be river gravels from the banks of the river Kennet or from another river valley -- but we know nothing about their characteristics or about the presence (or absence) of bedding features. The literature suggests that the gravels were imported and laid onto a pre-existing and prepared old ground surface -- but I am not sure where the boundary lies between hard evidence, carefully described, and supposition.........


If the gravels really were imported onto the site, why did the builders do that, if they then had to put up with gravel flowage or settling, requiring containment by timber and stones around the circumference of the circle? Was this strange little mound a ritual feature? That seems a bit far-fetched. Or maybe a drainage feature designed to deal with spring seepage and to stabilise the mound as it was built higher and higher?


The current view seems to be as follows:1. The Neolithic builders stripped the ground of its natural topsoil and turf, leaving behind a sterile layer of clay. This was then trampled and compacted by foot traffic.
2. The first act of construction was to pile gravel, possibly sourced from the nearby River Kennet, into a modest mound approximately one meter high.
3. This initial gravel heap was then contained by a circular revetment—a kerb—of wooden stakes and large sarsen boulders. The presence of this deliberate, human-made boundary confirms that the gravel core was a specific building phase, not a random, pre-existing geological deposit.


This is all very interesting. I'm trying to dig up the hard evidence that underpins this story --- at the moment it all seems to be based on speculation rather than hard published data.

Happy New Year!

 

Happy New Year to all our faithful followers!  

Also, a small celebration is in order because we have gone through the 5 million barrier -- that was on 15th December, so in little more than a fortnight we have added over 94,000 page views.

We have been doing some research with the aid of Blogger analytics, and we are sure that the vast majority of the page hits have come from visits by bots, rather than human beings.  And the latest trend seems to be hits in China...... what are we to make of that?

Late Glacial to Holocene climate oscillations

Below I reproduce the sequence of climate oscillations from the time of the LGM ice wastage period through to the present day.  After Prof Mike Walker and others.  In spite of a vast amount of research effort over the years, there is still doubt about the precise dates allocated in this table -- radiocarbon ages and calendar ages are still being revised.  Among the questions still being mulled over:  To what extent is this sequence fully representative of various parts of the North Atlantic arena?  Was there really an Older Dryas phase that can be picked up in the field or the laboratory in multiple dispersed locations?  How widespread was the Allerod Interstadial?  Where do the Alftanes and Budi stages in Iceland fit into this table?  The Little Ice Age fits into the Sub-Atlantic phase, but where does the Neoglacial fit?   Should that label actually be used at all?

From Wikipedia:  The neoglaciation ("renewed glaciation") describes the documented cooling trend in the Earth's climate during the Holocene, following the retreat of the Wisconsin glaciation, the most recent glacial period. Neoglaciation has followed the Hypsithermal or Holocene Climatic Optimum, the warmest point in the Earth's climate during the current interglacial stage, excluding the global warming-induced temperature increase starting in the 20th century. The neoglaciation has no well-marked universal beginning, in particular not in the Greenland Icecore temperatures: local conditions and ecological inertia affected the onset of detectably cooler (and wetter) conditions.

13. Sub-Atlantic -- 2500 yrs BP to present

12. Holocene -- Sub-Boreal 5,000 -- 2500 yrs BP
11. Holocene -- Atlantic 7,500 - 5,000 yrs BP
10. Holocene -- Boreal c 9,700 - 7,500 yrs BP
9. Holocene interglacial -- Pre-Boreal c10,300 - 9,700 yrs BP
8. Sharp warming -- onset of Holocene c 10,000 yrs BP
7. Younger Dryas (Zone III) cold snap / Loch Lomond readvance c 11,000 -10,000 yrs BP
6. Allerod (Zone II) "interstadial" -- warming 11,800 - 11,000 yrs BP
5. Cooling erratically to Older Dryas (Zone I) 12,000 - 11,800 yrs BP
4. Sharp climate oscillations: mid-Weichselian substage 14,000 - 13,000 yrs BP
3. Bolling "interstadial" -- warming to almost interglacial level, started c 14,700 yrs BP (some dates place this event around 12,500 yrs BP)
2. Continuing cold -- sparse tundra vegetation 20,000 - 15,000 yrs BP
1. Deglaciation around 20,000 yrs BP