The collapse of the Preselite Myth: axe studies show that spotted dolerite was NEVER considered special or sacred

 

Stone axes come in many shapes and sizes.  Those that were made of "bluestone" were  strictly used as tools and were broken, re-fashioned sometimes, maybe sharpened, and then thrown away, having zero value or ritual significance.  In contrast, stone items from elsewhere that were prized evolved over time into ritual or ceremonial items, in highly polished versions, and associated with high status.  Such prized items are significantly missing from the British Preselite or bluestone axe catalogue, demonstrating that the very few bluestone axes that were made were throwaway items that had no value.  

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I have been digging deeply into the geological and archaeological debitage (appropriate word) at Stonehenge, and am appalled by what I have discovered.  So what is it?  Nothing less than the smashed up and discredited remains of a grandiose and totally false narrative.

Let's start with the Wilsford G54 ceremonial battle axe.  I have dealt with it briefly in another post, but on digging deeper I found this, from the English Heritage text:  

"Material: Spotted dolerite... It is made of the same material as the bluestones at Stonehenge and may well have been fashioned from a piece of one of these stones." 

The Wilsford ceremonial battle axe -- not Neolithic, and not Preselite......

As EH must know, this is a falsehood. The South-West Implement Petrology Group classified it in the County Register WILTS44 as an unspotted, medium-grained dolerite (diabase), lacking the characteristic macrophenocrysts of altered plagioclase feldspar that define the "spotted" Preselite (Group XIII) facies. While it is geochemically a dolerite within the broader Welsh/regional igneous spectra (Group XXIII), it is visually and texturally unspotted. It's also dated to the Bronze Age, not the Neolithic.

Back in 1999 (and in later years) Olwen Williams-Thorpe and others had already targetted museum pieces labelled visually as "Preselite" and had proved that multiple implements in Wiltshire collections —including unspotted variants like the Wilsford battle-axe—did not demonstrate a single provenance. Instead, they matched a wider, fragmented geological signature perfectly consistent with raw material collection from naturally scattered glacial drift deposits..

Williams-Thorpe, O., Potts, P.J., and Webb, P.C., 1999. Field-portable non-destructive X-ray fluorescence analysis of stone axe-heads. Journal of Archaeological Science, 26(2), pp. 215-237.

So EH is peddling a false narrative concerning the sacred or special nature of spotted dolerite at Stonehenge, as others have promoted the label "Preselite" for a special rock type from a specific place in West Wales and used for the manufacture of prized stone axes.   This has all the makings of a very murky business.  So where did the myth of the Preselite axes  come from?

I have been confused about this for some time.  In many of my posts I have referred to "Preselite" and to group XIII axes, but specific literature is distinctly lacking, and there are hardly any images of Preselite axes in circulation.  So where are these axes, and why are they apparently all being hidden away in museum cardboard boxes rather than being displayed as sacred or ritual objects?

More to the point, if bluestones (and especially those referred to as spotted dolerite or Preselite) were deemed to be special or sacred enough to be quarried in West Wales and for 80 of them to be hauled to Stonehenge, where are the axes that demonstrate their ritual significance?   Well, it turns out that there are very few of them in existence -- maybe 30 or 40 at the most -- and that these are not sophisticated works of art like the Wilsford Axe, but rough and ready items that had no ceremonial or ritual value at all.  Also, many of the axes which were originally referred to as Preselite (group XIII) have now been shown not to be in that category at all.  Some of those are now referred to as group VIII axes (rhyolites and tuffs), and others as group XXIII (assorted dolerites or diabases).  Within group XXIII there are subdivisions relating to the varying plagioclase-pyroxene mineral textures found across the igneous intrusive complexes of West Wales).

What are the physical characteristics of the few "Preselite" axes that actually are made of spotted dolerite?  

What we see are  crude, heavy-duty engineering tools.  They stand in stark contrast to the elegant, glassy, highly polished "prestige" stone axes seen elsewhere in Neolithic Europe.   Because spotted dolerite (diabase) is a coarse, intrusive igneous rock, its physical composition dictated exactly how prehistoric craftspeople had to handle it.   The body of a fresh axe varies from a dark greenish-grey to a deep, near-black tone. When weathered or exposed to acidic soil for millennia, the surface oxidizes into a dull, light-grey or pale-greenish crust (patination).  The defining visual trait is a scattering of irregular, creamy-white or buff spots. These are altered crystals of plagioclase feldspar. In some axes, these spots are dense and conspicuous; in others, they are completely sparse, bleeding directly into "unspotted" facies of the same rock in many exposures.  Unlike flint, chert, or tuff, dolerite lacks a highly fluid, predictable conchoidal fracture. It does not peel off in elegant, razor-thin flakes.  Consequently, known Group XIII axes feature deep, stepped, blocky flake scars. The edges are naturally jagged and irregular rather than smooth.  True to their utilitarian nature, these tools were rarely polished across their entire surface. Grinding and smoothing were almost exclusively confined to the cutting edge (the bit) to produce a working wedge. The main body or "butt" of the axe was left roughly pecked, uneven, and coarse to provide a high-friction grip when lashed into a wooden handle.

Group XIII axes are notably thick and heavy relative to their length. They feature broad, oval, or sub-rectangular cross-sections. Because the stone is prone to breaking if knapped too thin, craftspeople left them bulky. They were designed to rely on raw mass and momentum for chopping, clearing brush, or crushing, rather than acting as fine, sharp slicing blades.  The overwhelming physical characteristic of nearly every recovered specimen is severe wear and tear. They look like tools that were used hard and pushed to their mechanical limits.  The cutting edges are frequently uneven or lopsided, showing clear evidence of repeated, ad-hoc re-sharpening after the blade chipped or blunted on impact.  The back end (poll) of the axe head often exhibits heavy crushing, splintering, and impact fractures. This indicates they were frequently used as heavy wedges and directly struck with wooden or stone mallets to split timber or pry open rock fissures.  They are rarely found in pristine, perfect condition. They are typically recovered as broken fragments or completely exhausted, stunted stubs that were casually discarded into domestic rubbish pits or left scattered in agricultural topsoils once they could no longer be re-sharpened.

In short, the physical profile of a known Preselite axe is that of an ugly, rugged utilitarian tool. Its design prioritized survival against heavy mechanical shock, completely lacking the aesthetic artistry, glassy finish, and delicate proportions associated with prehistoric items of high value or spiritual status like the jadeite or Langdale axes which are found in great abundance.

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The spotted dolerite / Preselite myth already looks very shaky indeed, so let's just look at its origins.  Probably the myth started with Rev Done Bushell who thought that megalithic monumente were so abundant in eastern Preseli and the mid-Pembrokeshire foothills were that there must have been a sort of "Prehistoric Westminster" there.  Around 1911 he coined the term "land of mystery and enchantment" although there was nothing in the Mabinogion or in any other Welsh documents to support that designation.  He was wrong about the density of monuments too........  but let that pass for a moment.  Then along came HH Thomas, who in 1923 distorted the geological and geomorphological evidence and managed to convince himself and the world that the glacial transport of the bluestones would have been impossible.  So he invented the human transport myth, and argued that the bluestones (as they were later called) were chosen for transport to Stonehenge because of their prominence as tors and upstanding crags in the landscape of Neolithic Pembrokeshire.  So the idea of reverence and a "sacred landscape" appeared in his work.   He speculated that Preseli must have been the home of a deeply revered and long-established stone cult in which certain stones were venerated and considered irreplaceable.  This theme, concentrated later on into "the sanctity of spotted dolerite", was developed further by Richard Atkinson (who argued for a great and heroic national effort of bluestone transport) and then by Geoffrey Wainwright and Tim Darvill, who brought in the idea of the magical or healing nature of the rock.  By the time Mike Parker Pearson and his colleagues appeared on the scene, it was already established in archaeological circles and it was widely accepted -- on the basis of zero evidence -- that spotted dolerite and other Preseli rocks as well were special if not sacred, and that they came from a sacred landscape.

By this time, as the reader will appreciate, we are well into circular reasoning territory.  Not that that has ever worried the archaeological establishment.  So the bluestones (especially the spotted ones) were sacred because they came from Preseli, which was a place greatly revered.  So they were quarried and taken to Stonehenge because they had inestimable value as sacred objects.  Because they were used at Stonehenge they became sacred, even if they were not sacred already, and that demonstrated that Mynydd Preseli must have been a very sacred place.  Round and round.  Onward and upward, to the heights of absurdity, as represented in the wildly convoluted bluestone narrative currently promoted by Parker Pearson, Ixer, Bevins and assorted others......

Just as the term "bluestone" has no geological meaning or value, the word "Preselite" is an invented term which has probably caused more trouble than enlightenment.  It was invented in 1936 by Alexander Keiller who was working hard to establish a centralized and systematic framework for the study of British prehistoric stone tools.  Ironically, the two stone axes from County Antrim which Keiller labelled as being "Preselite" from the spotted dolerite outcrops of Mynydd Preseli turned out later to be unspotted dolerite, possibly not from Preseli at all.  Similarly, other axes initially labelled as belonging to the Preselite group XIII have turned out not to belong to it at all.

But the geologists and archaeologists know that by calling a rock Preselite" they imply that it is  an exotic, rare mineral—providing the perfect, stylized vocabulary which has allowed promoters like Atkinson, Wainwright, and Darvill to build their romanticized "magic talisman" narratives.

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To conclude, we already know that in West Wales the terms bluestone, spotted dolerite and Preselite have no value whatsoever, since there is nothing in the archaeological record to show that any of the rock types found in the Stonehenge erratic assemblage were revered in any way.  They were not preferentially used either in megalithic structures or in the manufacture of axes or other implements.  They were not deemed special or valuable -- and this removes any rationale for them to have been targetted, quarried, removed and used by our prehistoric ancestors.

Now the same can be said of Stonehenge, which was clearly used as a stone quarry in late Neolithic and early Bronze age times.  The axes that were made at Stonehenge and maybe also in Pembrokeshire were rough disposable tools made from rock types which were not easy to work with.  If spotted dolerite and rhyolite (for example) had been venerated or highly prized, they would have been used for the production of highy polished and stylised ceremonial or ritual objects.  And these would by now have been found in burial and other contexts.

Axe studies, which should be underpinning the fantastical narrative of Parker Pearson and others, show us that it is not really worth a moment of anybody's time.  The tragedy is that this has been said before, by Kellaway, Briggs, Williams-Thorpe and others -- who have been steadfastly ignored by an academic and commercial establishment which has been blindly indifferent to the facts of the matter.

Conclusion:  spotted dolerite has NEVER been considered special or sacred, either in Pembrokeshire, at Stonehenge, or anywhere else.