In his commentary, Richards says: "Did the glacier just conveniently deposit about 80 stones of just the right size here on Salisbury Plain, and nothing else? Where are all the other stones? Where's the evidence?"
That's the classic straw man tactic. Invent an assumption that you would like other people to have held, and then rubbish it. As far as I know, nobody has ever claimed that "80 stones of just the right size" were dumped on Salisbury Plain. And where does the figure of 80 come from? Answer -- inside Richards's head. He does not know that the Stonehenge bluestone or sarsen stone settings were ever completed. We know about 43 bluestones, and maybe that's all there ever were. And the most parsimonious explanation for the apparent abundance of stone sockets is to say that there never were enough stones, and that the builders used them in one experimental setting after another before finally giving up on the project.
As for the silly blank pages stunt, he jokingly refers to "a complete guide to all the glacial erratic stones such as Welsh bluestones known on Salisbury Plain to have been naturally deposited." So who decides what is naturally deposited, and what is not? If I tell him that bluestone 32 was naturally deposited before being used in a stone setting, how is he planning to prove me wrong?
This is not good science. But are we surprised?
What's been said? (it's not clear: I haven't looked at any of these videos so difficult to know what the issue is.)
ReplyDeleteA bit added to the post by way of extra info, Jon.
ReplyDeleteAha. Julian once told me he was 50/50 about wanting to know what Stonehenge was for (on basis that it would kill the mystery) so it's a bit odd he's making all these videos. Seems better to leave it alone if you're not that interested.
ReplyDeleteMe and my A.I. robot trawled 11,302 pages of A303 tunnel reports. And found, not a lot, but enough to write in his book, so certainly not blank pages.
ReplyDeleteOne context table interpreting a deposit east of Stonehenge as "glacial till", with forty litres of it retained by Wessex Archaeology and never examined; four sealed cores sent for luminescence dating whose results appear nowhere; rare quartzite in one inspection pit; a belt of hummocky ground at Stonehenge Bottom that has never been trenched. A total of 44 hints.
And, before anyone asks, no dolerite, rhyolite, dacite or tuff anywhere in the 698 holes; I say so in the post.
https://stonehen.ge/glaciala303
Hi Steve -- interesting. by the way, that hyperlink does not work. can you correct it? I did look at some of the A303 reports quite a while ago, and found not very much. But I didn't do a systematic search. I recall a mention of a "drift cover" but I don't think they were looking for erratic stones. If they had found some, they might not even have mentioned them.
ReplyDeleteSorry. Seems to work fine for me. Will investigate.
ReplyDeleteTry this:
https://www.buystonehenge.com/the-glacial-a303/
Ah, that's better, Steve. You have been working hard!! Much of interest in there -- look forward to reading through it properly.
ReplyDelete