Stone 62 -- a nice academic spat about methodology

Unspotted dolerite stone 62 at Stonehenge (courtesy Simon Banton)

I came across this on the University of South Wales web site:

https://pure.southwales.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/39397422/1-s2.0-S2352409X26003093-main.pdf

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2026.105874

On following it up, I find that there are three papers and a rather intense and detailed academic spat -- all centred on the methodology for the spot provenancing of dolerites on Mynydd Preseli.  It makes a nice change to find an academic dispute that I am not actually involved in! Anyway, in the right corner, Pearce, Bevins, Ixer and Pirrie, and in the left corner Ciborowski and Nash. These two teams have argued rather violently once before, on the matter of the sarsens of West Woods and Stonehenge, but for now we will leave that to one side.

Here are the other two references:

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2025.105513 (the original article by C&N)

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2026.106012 (the C&N response to the Pierce et al response)

To summarise:

The dispute is very technical, but in essence it is about visual bivariate plots versus mathematical precision and standardization.  The clash exposes a fundamental rift in how these two teams of specialists believe archaeological stone sourcing should be conducted.

Pearce, Bevins, & Ixer have for many years had visual bivariate grouping graphs right at the centre of their provenancing work.  For example, in 2022 they used portable pXRF to analyze Stonehenge Stone 62. They plotted elemental data (like Zirconium, Titanium, Barium, and Rubidium) on a series of visual bivariate graphs.  They concluded that because the data points from Stone 62 visually overlapped with the "field" of a specific small Preseli outcrop called Garn Ddu Fach, it was the definitive source.
This conclusion was inevitably tied into the attempts by Parker Pearson and others to link Stonehenge to nearby ancient sites like Waun Mawn.

 Nash and Ciborowski stepped in to challenge this subjective (and perhaps biased) visual approach. They explicitly argued that relying on a few chosen elements in a bivariate space introduces possible error. They argued that you cannot just pick two elements at a time, draw a loop around a cluster on a graph, and call it an objective match. To remove human selection bias, they developed a highly standardized mathematical method (using geometric mean multi-element ratios).

 In a defense of their methodology, Pearce et al fired back, explicitly stating that “the simple graphical approach using bivariate plots produces the clearest assignment of artefacts to sources.” They argued that  complex mathematical equations actually overcomplicate the data and create false anomalies, whereas a clean X-Y plot provides the most practical "fingerprint". They even pointed out data-formatting flaws in Nash's critique, arguing that Nash's team used rounded data numbers that distorted the true placement on the graphs.

In their latest contribution Nash and Ciborowsky push back, repeat their concerns about the subjectivity involved in selected and possibly cherry-picked bivariate graphs, and argue for an acceptance of a standard mathematical procedure based on ratios of multiple elements against a single immobile element (Zr).

We have probably not heard the last of this............

I'm not going to take sides here, but I am going to say that I have expressed many concerns in the past about the possibility for corruption to creep into bivariate graphs when they are used for "definitive" spot provenancing.  The corruption might be very suble.  Ah, the lure of banner headlines in the media is never very far away.

But I am going to gently chide both teams involved in this dispute.  They argue about Stone 62 and about Carn Goedog, Carn Ddafad-las and Garn Ddu Fach -- and other upstanding tors -- as if they are the only locations that matter:  prominent features in the landscape which must have been (they assume) the focal points in the Neolithic landscape.  But it has never been demonstrated that upstanding tors have provided more monoliths for Stonehenge or anywhere else, in preference to less prominent intervening areas.  They have not, it appears, ever thought seriously about glacial entrainment mechanisms, and persist with the ancient belief that wherever the stones came from, they must have been fetched by Neolithic stone collectors from prominent sacred places.  Big mistake.

Second, both teams have neglected to  address the issue of sampling bias. Even though Richard Bevins and others may have taken hundreds of samples from the tors and other igneous outcrops on Mynydd Preseli, there are vast expanses of igneous terrain that have never been sampled at all.  The geochemical and petrologocal analyses that have been completed -- and reported in the literature -- may represent the places that happen to have been sampled, but they cannot be taken as truly representative of the igneous masses concerned.  We do not know everything about everywhere.  As I have said repeatedly with reference to Rhosyfelin and the claim by Ixer and Bevins that they have done accurate provenancing of Stonehenge fragments to "within a few square metres" they have no idea where their sampled rock layers may crop out elsewhere, because their sampling point density is nowhere near adequate.  The same is true of the sampling of dolerite on assorted tors in the uplands.

All of the authors involved in this current spat are explicitly claiming they understand the full range of variation of an entire geological formation based on chipping away at a small handful of prominent upland rocks. They treat the landscape as if it contains only a set number of possible "addresses," completely ignoring the millions of tons of un-sampled surface dolerite and low-lying, heather-hidden outcrops such as those of Waun Mawn.

Third, on a related matter, the huge geochemical and petrological variation that occurs within the Preseli sills has not been adequately recognized or factored in to the analytical work.  I pointed this out in my published paper on Carn Goedog:

 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/390565216_Carn_Goedog_on_Mynydd_Preseli_was_not_the_site_of_a_Bluestone_Megalith_Quarry 

... and have said the same thing repeatedly on my blog.  A spot sample from a particular location on Carn Goedog may tell us a lot about that precise sampling point, but it tells us just a part of the story relating to anywhere else. In the exchange of aggressive articles by out two teams as noted above, we find this classic statement from Pearce et al:

"The calculation approach fails to take into account even the most basic petrographic observations, which in the case of Stone 62 at Stonehenge shows that it is a non-spotted dolerite, hence cannot be sourced from a spotted dolerite source such as Carn Goedog." 

Pearce et al do not seem to know that the Carn Goedog tor contains both spotted and unspotted dolerite.  It seems to me that a little fieldwork might come in handy, now and then.

So Carn Goedog is by definition a spotted dolerite tor?  Think again, chaps, and 

preferably do some fieldwork........

Finally, this is a pretty damning admission in Ciborowski et al 2026: ".... incompatible element variation (at least as elucidated by pXRF) within individual bluestone monoliths may be similar in scale to the petrological variation between individual Preseli dolerite outcrops."  And yet they persist in arguing about individual Stonehenge monoliths like stone 62, and about individual tors as places where reliable and representative spot provenancing can be done!!

This is not the first time that attention has been drawn to the variations that exist within individual glacial erratics or Stonehenge monoliths.  The same argument is currently going on with regard to the physical and chemical characteristics of the Altar Stone...........

If we have a wide range of geochemical and petrological characteristics within individual tors of sills on Preseli, and a similar wide range even within individual monoliths like stone 62, accurate spot provenancing becomes virtually impossible.  So why do assorted highly qualified scientists continue to pretend that it is not only possible but desirable?

They do say that Stonehenge makes people slightly mad.   If that is so,  those (including me!) who spend their time agonising over Bluestone 62 (or any other) are probably completely bonkers!

As far as I am concerned, if it can be shown that Stone 62 (or any other) possibly comes from somewhere on Mynydd Preseli, that is quite enough to be going on with.

The special status of "unhewn rocks" and glacial erratics

 The Trollasten dolmen in Skåne, Southern Sweden.  Big stones, glacially transported, and 

put there by a troll.........

Now here is an interesting question:  In the Neolithic, were glacial erratics more highly prized than monoliths of quarried rock?

This is relevant because, over the past decade or so, there has been a deliberate and coordinated campaign involving senior archaeologists and geologists designed to spread the belief that pillars of rock hewn from specially selected rock outcrops (such as Rhosyfelin and Carn Goedog) were highly prized if not sacred. Indeed, so the hypothesis insists, these "targetted" monoliths or orthostats were so special that they were transported for hundreds of kilometres across land and sea all the way to Stonehenge, involving logistical exercises on a scale out of all proportion when set against anything before or since.  Thousands of men were involved, so goes the story, over many decades.........

The trouble with that bluestone quarrying and transport narrative, of course, is that it is unsupported by any evidence.  Speculations and assumptions proliferate, but there is nothing solid on the ground which is capable of supporting the preferred story.  The evidence of Neolithic quarrying at Rhosyfelin, Carn Goedog and Carn Meini does not withstand scrutiny, as my colleagues and I have demonstrated in the peer-reviewed literature. There is no sign of the preferential use of foliated rhyolite or spotted dolerite in prehistoric structures either in west Wales or on Salisbury Plain.  "Preselite" -- a term used loosely for spotted dolerite -- does not seem to have been particularly valued for tool making or for any ceremonial purpose.  The sophisticated "quarrying techniques" supposedly used in the "special" Pembrokeshire quarrying locations are unsupported by any evidence from the Neolithic or the Bronze Age anywhere in the British Isles.  No cultural or technological links with Stonehenge can be demonstrated at megalithic sites anywhere in West Wales. 

So the quarrying and man-hauling narrative is entirely unconvincing, and should be abandoned forthwith.   What can we put in its place?

Well, the simple idea that large boulders, pillars and slabs lying around in the landscape were valued in some way simply because of what they were -- not because of where they might have come from.

Let's dig a bit deeper.  First, the Gorsedd Circle at -- or immediately adjacent to -- the designated and demarcated site of the 2026 Llantwd National Eisteddfod. In a couple of recent posts I have been trying to uncover the truth about it.  But the genuine stone circle at Croft consists 15 orthostats made -- as far as I can see -- of dolerite.  These stones are clearly glacial erratics, picked up from within the local area.   So they are "unhewn" and authentic stones, chosen and installed as a gentle dig against the use of fibreglass "imitation stones" used in the "official" stone circle on the Eisteddfod Maes. 

The preferential use of "unhewn" stone for ceremonial or ritual use goes back a long way.  I don't often quote from the Bible on this blog, but here goes:

"And if thou wilt make me an altar of stone, thou shalt not build it of hewn stone: for if thou lift up thy tool upon it, thou hast polluted it." (Exodus 20:25)

"And there you shall build an altar to the Lord your God, an altar of stones. You shall wield no iron tool on them; you shall build the altar of the Lord your God of uncut stones..." (Deuteronomy 27:5–6) 

"Joshua built an altar to the Lord God of Israel on Mount Ebal...........an altar of unhewn stones, on which no iron tool has been used" (Joshua 8:30–31)

I'm not suggesting that Neolithic tribesmen were motivated by the same belief system as the Old Testament prophets and kings, but it is well known that Iolo Morgannwg, the inventor of many of the National Eisteddfod rituals and traditions, was attracted by the idea that anything carved, squared, or polished by modern industry was artificial. Unhewn stones—boulders collected in their natural state from the local landscape—symbolised honesty, ancient permanence, and a direct connection to nature. Iolo's emphasis on the use of "unhewn stone" stems from a mixture of his Romantic-era imagination, pseudo-archaeology, and a clever appropriation of biblical law. He correctly assumed that his invented Druidic rituals involving "unhewn stone" would appeal to a highly religious, nonconformist 18th-century Welsh public. Iron was of course associated with weapons, violence and warfare.  By declaring that the Gorsedd stones must be natural and untouched by iron tools, Iolo framed the Druids not as pagans, but as primordial, holy men practicing a pure, uncorrupted form of patriarchal religion.

Ironically, before becoming a romantic antiquarian and master forger, Morgannwg's actual trade was working as a professional stonemason and stonecutter.

During the 1700s, antiquarians like John Aubrey and William Stukeley popularized the theory that megalithic monuments were built by Celtic Druids. Iolo visited the massive, natural stone circles at Avebury in Wiltshire. Unlike the heavily shaped trilithons of Stonehenge, Avebury's stones are famously rough, wild, and unhewn. This deeply shaped Iolo’s vision of what an authentic "Druidic" ritual space should look like.

By the late 1880's, The Eisteddfod had formalised Iolo’s romantic vision, decreeing that a permanent circle of 12 massive, unhewn local stones must be erected in the hosting community a year before the festival.  Here is a list of all the Gorsedd circles and their locations:

https://sublimewales.wordpress.com/attractions/18th-and-19th-century-stone-circles/gorsedd-circles/list-of-gorsedd-circles/

Up to 2004, when a Welsh town hosted the National Eisteddfod, local organizers were instructed to go out into the surrounding fields and gather natural, surface-weathered glacial erratics to construct the circle. Rather than quarrying fresh pillars, they specifically targeted stones shaped entirely by natural processes. 

The point of all this is to show that in at least one ancient culture, natural boulders found in the landscape were accorded greater respect than quarried stone. It is perfectly possible that in glaciated British terrains erratic boulders -- often very impressive features in themselves -- were viewed as special or mysterious. Because glacial erratics contrast sharply with the local bedrock and sit isolated in landscapes, prehistoric and historical cultures across North America, Europe, and Asia routinely incorporated them into their spiritual systems. 

As pointed out by Lionel Jackson and myself, the Foothills Erratics Train (which includes the iconic Okotoks "Big Rock" in Alberta, is deeply revered by the Blackfoot (Siksikaitsitapi) nation. They left red ochre pictographs on it and still pass down the famous legend of Napi (the Trickster) and his mobile rock. 

Other sacred erratics across glaciated North America include:

The Skystone (Washington, USA): Located in Bonney Lake, this andesite erratic features distinct depressions and alignments. It is traditionally used by the Puyallup tribe for ancestral astronomical tracking and spiritual observations.
Medicine Rocks / Prayer Boulders: Across the Upper Midwest (Minnesota, Wisconsin, and the Dakotas), solitary granite erratics on the limestone prairies were treated as Inyan (the primordial rock spirit in Lakota/Dakota cosmology). Native peoples left offerings of tobacco, painted them with vermillion, and sought visions near them.
Turtle Mounds and Effigy Alignments (New England): Indigenous communities frequently selected specific glacial erratics—propped up or stabilized intentionally on smaller stones—to serve as structural centers for ceremonial stone landscapes and effigy markers. 

In glaciated northern Europe, the spiritual co-opting of erratics spans from the Stone Age to Christian-era folklore.  During the Neolithic, prehistoric peoples across Denmark, northern Germany (for example the island of Rügen), and Poland harvested heavy erratics to build their megalithic tombs, passage graves, and dolmens. The stones were treated as permanent spiritual thresholds separating the worlds of the living and the dead.   In Northern Poland and the Baltic region, large erratics like the Devil’s Rock in Bisztynek were revered as pagan altars. Natural depressions in the stones were interpreted as the footprints of gods, devils, or witches. Because they were considered sacred or cursed, local populations heavily resisted breaking them down for building materials, creating an early form of folk conservation.
 In Swedish and Norwegian folklore, erratic boulders scattered across fields were explicitly called jättekast (giant-throws). They were believed to be weapons hurled by Frost Giants targeting Christian church bells, imbuing the stones with a dark, supernatural aura. 

 Carn Arthur, a spectacular perched block in Preseli

Similarly, in west Wales large erratic stones in prominent positions (often used in megalithic settings) were named after gods, giants. angels, saints, monsters and heroes.  So we have Carreg Coetan Arthur, Coetan Arthur, Bedd Arthur, Bedd yr Afanc, Carreg Samson, Carn Ingli, Cerrig Marchogion, Caerfyrddin, Bryn Myrddin, Tyddewi, Carnedd Meibion Owen, Llanrhian.  And many more.

And so to Geoffrey Kellaway and the blau stones.  As reported a number of times on this blog, Kellaway argued in "Nature" in 1971 (and in other papers)  that the bluestones were never described as BLUE stones by the early visitors to Stonehenge, but that in the Middle Ages (ie around the time of Geoffrey of Monmouth and later) they might have been referred to in Ango-Saxon as BLAU stones — with the word “blau” meaning striking, different, or of unusual or striking appearance.  This would make sense, since the stones are not actually blue at all — no matter what people might pretend, they are not that different in colour from the sarsens. But it’s intriguing to think that from an early stage people might have recognized them as simply DIFFERENT or exotic.

There is of course a tendency for people to see different, unusual, or striking stones in the landscape and and to wonder where they came from or why they are here rather than there.  I think it's perfectly reasonable to suggest that when the Neolithic people living on Salisbury Plain wanted to put up the early stone settings at Stonehenge, they gathered up as many stones as they could find, showing particular interest in any stones that were "different" from the common sarsens which were widely distributed across the landscape. Maybe -- like the Neolithic tribes elsewhere in NW Europe -- they even invested these "different" stones with magical or sacred significance -- with those special qualities entirely unrelated to source of origin or distance carried. I agree with many others who have suggested that the builders of Stonehenge did not have a clue where the bluestones had come from.

Kellaway argued that the stones were collected up on Salisbury Plain simply because they were there and because they looked different and interesting. Like Briggs, be preferred the 

"utilitarian" explanation.   I think we might go further than that, and argue, on the basis of the info contained in this post, that the erratics might well have been invested with significance.  If there was any stone-related reverence around in Neolithic times, it is much more likely to have been directed at scattered glacial erratics than to useless and broken bits of foliated rhyolite quarried at a faraway place called Rhosyfelin..........

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2024/06/nothing-new-under-sun.html

The Gorsedd stone circle at the Llantwd National Eisteddfod

 Had a grand day out at the Welsh National Eisteddfod in Llantwd, near Cardigan, on Friday.  Here is Inger perched next to one of the standing stones in the Gorsedd Circle -- in the maes or large open area where assorted ceremonials are conducted.

The Gorsedd Circle is a profound disappointment!  I am greatly saddened.  I had expected something grandly spectacular, but what we found was a rather feeble circle of 12 stones, each one just over a metre tall, all made of fibreglass and some sort of modern resin -- and all given a garish blue colour.  Well, the Eisteddfod was branded as "Eisteddfod y Garreg Las"  -- the bluestone eisteddfod.  On doing a bit of research, I discovered that the pseudo "stones" are used every year at the eisteddfod, in the centre of whatever location might have been chosen.  

The artificial stones are expected to have a life of about 50 years, and they were first used in 2004.  This was done initially to reduce the cost of installation (and removal, if the stones are put up on farmland) but of course it is argued that it would not be a good idea to plunder the natural stone resources of protected areas such as Mynydd Preseli........ and that is fair enough.  So there are no modern bluestone quarries, much to the disappointment of the bluestone quarry hunters...... and if it comes to that, no pieces of terrain from which bluestone erratics have been collected up and carted away by the eisteddfod faithful.

To make matters more confusing, there is actually a modern stone circle associated with the Llantwd Eisteddfod, but that is in Narberth, many miles away in mid-Pembrokeshire.  That was built in 2025, for the proclamation of the eisteddfod -- which has to be done, according to an invented tradition, at least a year and a day prior to the esteddfod itself.

And to make matters even more confusing, there is a Gorsedd Circle in Cardigan, close to the Netpool, which comes up accidentally on Google searches -- but that circle relates to the Cardigan eisteddfod of 1976 -- and it has nothing at all to do with 2026.

By the way, the stones are supposed to be "unhewn" -- ie unquarried, but collected up in their natural state from the litter of erratic rocks occuring in the landscape. Where did that rule come from?  Was there maybe a geomorphologist in some early Eisteddfodd Gorsedd of Bards who insisted on respect for natural processes?

The symbolism of the Gorsedd Circle?  Well, there are supposed to be 11 equally spaced stones in the circle, and one additional outlier or inlier creating an alignment  to the midsummer solstice.  In the centre of the circle there has to be a larger recumbent stone referred to as the Altar Stone.  It can be seen near the right hand edge of the photo, with handy handrail.  As far as I can gather, the practice of sacrificing virgins was given up some years ago, out of deference to local sensibilities.

The glacial transport of the bluestones: the glorious irrationality of the Stonehenge establishment

The "traditional" map of known ice movement directions as it was around 1900.  In several sectors subsequent research has shown a more extensive ice cover.  HH Thomas must have known this map, but chose to misrepresent it.  The evidence base for ice movements on the western flank of Great Britain has always been stronger than the evidence base for the east coast.

As far as I can see, the latest suggestion relating to the glacial transport of the Altar Stone from northern Scotland to the Dogger Bank has been broadly accepted by the Stonehenge archaeology establishment.  At least, nobody has come out in opposition to the idea, although there have been a few murmurs about the rather fanciful Dogger Bank / Dogger Island part of the narrative.

Clarke, A. J. I., Veness, R. L. J., Kirkland, C. L., Clark, C. D., Gandy, N., Emery, A. et al. (2026) From Highlands to Henge: Refining the Provenance and Transport Pathways of Stonehenge's Altar Stone. Journal of Quaternary Science, 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1002/jqs.70080

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/jqs.70080

So we now have a "hybrid theory" for the east coast of Great Britain, with the acceptance of the idea that the Altar Stone may well be a large glacial erratic, transported on at least part of its journey by south-flowing glacier ice.  There are no other known ORS monoliths on Salisbury Plain that can be matched to the Altar Stone, and there is no known erratic trail from A to B.  As noted by Clarke et al, it might be there, but if it is there it is very conveniently situated on the floor of the North Sea.......... out of sight and out of mind. So the speculation cannot be contradicted by hard evidence.

Now we come to the entertaining bit.  Over the course of more than a century geologists like Judd, Kellaway and Williams-Thorpe have argued that something similar happened on the west coast of Great Britain, with the Irish Sea Ice Stream transporting a wide array of glacial erratics from sources along its known route and dumping some of them on the floor of the Bristol Channel and others above present sea level on the coasts of South Wales, Devon,  Cornwall and Somerset. Ice movement directions are well known, and erratic provenances are broadly agreed by the experts. The evidence is well described in the literature, and is undisputed by glacial geomorphologists.  

But it is bizarre,  to put it mildly, that archaeologists -- and especially those who are influential in Stonehenge circles -- insist that the glacial transport of the bluestones was impossible, basing that outrageous belief on a very dodgy statement by HH Thomas back in 1923 that the ice of the Irish Sea Glacier could not have extended much further than the coast of South Pembrokeshire.  He invented the human transport hypothesis, and a large part of the academic establishment and the Stonehenge media machine has promoted that as "the truth" ever since.

On the basis of Thomas's dishonesty the human transport of the bluestones has been ruthlessly promoted as "the only story that makes sense", with MPP and his colleagues developing an ever more complex and fanciful narrative (involving quarries, lost stone circles etc) and with the backing of geologists like Bevins and Ixer, who should be ashamed of themselves.  The bandwaggon has also made room for one or two geomorphologists, who shall be nameless.

So the glacial transport of large lumps of rock is OK off the east coast, but not off the west coast.  This is hilarious, pathetic, outrageous and reprehensible in equal measure.

The only story that respects the evidence and makes sense is the hybrid one, involving glacial erosion, entrainment and erratic transport as part one of the bluestone monolith journey, and then human transport for the last part of the journey from several locations yet to be discovered, through to Stonehenge.  Those locations WILL be found, and that is where future research should be concentrated.

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

Quote from one of my earlier posts:
All things considered, the accumulated evidence shows that by 1910 the broad outlines of glaciation in the Bristol Channel / Celtic Sea arena were already established, involving thick and active ice carrying erratics and other glacial materials from the NW across Pembrokeshire and up the Bristol Channel, affecting the coasts of South Wales and the South-West Peninsula. In making his claims about the impossibility of bluestone transport towards Stonehenge HH Thomas wilfully ignored a great amount of evidence in the printed literature, and wilfully misrepresented the opinions of senior "glacialists". It is quite extraordinary that he got away with it -- but that, maybe, was because he was a geologist talking to archaeologists or antiquarians. If he had been a geologist talking to other geologists, he would certainly not have got away with it. They would have had his guts for garters.

The Ixer / Bevins "lumping" con

Oh dear -- yet another piece of "dusty box" geology from the infamous bluestone duo who like to call themselves the "pet rock boys".........

We have been here before -- many times:

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2023/09/when-is-bluestone-not-bluestone.html

This 2026 item seems to be essentially the same as something previewed last year:
https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2025/10/more-on-cunningtons-rock-samples-and.html

Ixer and Bevins just love digging out ancient slides made decades ago by other geologists who have been involved in Stonehenge digs, describing and classifying them and making yet more changes to their list of bluestone lithologies -- while in the process promoting their view that none of the erratic material in the Stonehenge landscape can ever have been anywhere near a glacier.

Anyway, this is the reference to the latest contribution:

William Cunnington's 1884 Stonehenge lithologies revisited
Rob A. Ixer, Richard E. Bevins, Duncan Pirrie, Matthew Power, Nick J.G. Pearce
Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Magazine
1 Nov 2025

Abstract

The rediscovery in 2021 of 33 thin sections of mainly Stonehenge bluestones and the re-cataloguing of their associated rock specimens has allowed for a re-evaluation/re-examination and up-dating of William Cunnington’s 1884 ground-breaking account. All the major bluestone debitage groups are represented within the thin sections (other than Rhyolite Group E from orthostat Stone 48). The thin sections include the type material for the major Andesite Group A class of debitage (from Stone 32c) and single examples for the minor groups, namely the Altar Stone, Dacite Group D and a further example of orthostat Stone 38, the type sample for Dacite Group B debitage. Spotted and unspotted dolerites and Lower Palaeozoic Sandstone from within the stones and in the wider Stonehenge Landscape are also sampled. There is a lack of any other lithologies, the only non-local, non-bluestone materials are Greensand and sarsen.

The composition of the Cunnington bluestone assemblage as seen within the thin sections and by the rock specimens is the same as those collected in the 20th and 21st centuries and this is important as it was the last to be collected from the Stonehenge Landscape before significant human disturbance/contamination of the area; hence it represents a pristine lithological base line. The plethora of exotic erratic lithologies hoped for by others is totally absent.

Several points need to be made again.

1. The obsession with "modern contamination".  This is a typical straw man situation -- put something up just in order to knock it down.  The assertion that "modern contamination" is a major obstacle in the way of scientific accuracy or a widely held concern among Stonehenge researchers is a highly insular viewpoint.  For the vast majority of geologists and archaeologists working on Stonehenge, the landscape's modern gravel paths, car parks, and military camps were never considered a serious threat to working out the site's history.  The concept of a "pristine baseline" has no value.  In their re-examination of the William Cunnington archives, Ixer et al have used the phrase "pristine lithological baseline" to proactively bulletproof their own data. Because they were trying to provenance tiny flakes of debitage (rather than large, obvious standing stones), they framed Cunnington's 1880s collection as a "clean sample" to shut down any possible counter-arguments before they could be made. 

2.  This is all about lumping and splitting.  In geology, as in other disciplines, there are lumpers and splitters.  In their increasingly desperate attempts to support their human transport and monolithic quarrying hypothesis, Ixer and Bevins have systematically engaged in "lumping".  Their goal has been to show that the thousands of loose debitage flakes scattered around Stonehenge match a very restricted, narrow set of parent monoliths.  Obviously, if you can lump hundreds of disparate debitage fragments into just a few "coherent" groups, you can argue that they all came from a tiny number of precisely targeted human quarries. They assume, without any justification,  that all of the debitage has come from destroyed monoliths. This creates an illusion of neatness and strict human selection.  For example, in the Pont Saeson - Rhosyfelin area the debitage was initially deemed to contain various rhyolite subdivisions (Group A, Group B, Group C).  Ixer and Bevins then engaged in a prominent lumping exercise, combining these groups under a broader category to tie them directly to a single primary source -- which was then deemed to be a Neolithic monolith quarry.  They have done the same thing with the variable spotted dolerites from the Carn Goedog sill.  We should never forget that (a) there is no quarry at Rhosyfelin, and (b) that there is no matching foliated rhyolite monolith at Stonehenge.  There are similar problems with Group D albitised dacitic tuffs, altered gabbros, and a mixed bag of other volcanic fragments, limestones and sandstones.  Multiple rock types, and therefore multiple provenances

3.  On the matter of "spot provenancing" and the attempts to identify as small a number of actual monolith provenances as possible, Ixer and Bevins are essentially falsifying the record.  If you look beneath the label of any single Ixer/Bevins rock type or "group,"  the internal petrographic and geochemical variation turns out to be massive.  Within their single designated rock types, individual samples display wildly different internal fabric textures, mineral variations, altering degrees (like epidotisation or albitisation), and localized structures.   If a strict, unbiased "splitting" methodology is applied to the debitage, we end up with over 40 distinct rock types rather than a tidy handful. Many of these fragments—such as the highly altered gabbros, independent dacites, and unique sandstones—still cannot be matched to any surviving standing stone at Stonehenge.  Since the debitage types contain vast internal variation and include rocks that do not match the monument's orthostats, it heavily undermines the idea of clean, targeted human quarrying. Instead, it strongly implies multiple provenances.  As I never tire of pointing out (somebody has to do it) this degree of variation is exactly what you would expect from a glacier entraining detritus across a diverse volcanic landscape (like the Fishguard Volcanic Group terrain) and depositing a mixed bag of gravels, cobbles, and boulders on or near Salisbury Plain.  It also suggests that prehistoric builders weren't just bringing over perfectly uniform, prized pillars from two specific Welsh quarries. They were scavengers and opportunists who knew all about the minimisation of effort and cost - benefit analysis, as popinted out by Stephen Briggs.  Instead, they—or the glaciers that preceded them—were gathering a highly heterogeneous collection of "exotic" rocks from many different outcrops.  By lumping the rocks together, Ixer and Bevins enforce an artificial uniformity that obscures this geological variety, effectively fitting the data to support human transport while sweeping the inconveniently diverse "fingerprints" under a single taxonomic rug.

Very spotty dolerite at Carn Goedog

Very unspotty dolerite from Carn Goedog

4. The obsession with finding a "reslistically small" number of monolith provenances and quarries ignores a fundamental principle of sub-glacial geomorphology that completely upends the "quarry" narrative. Running through the work of Ixer and Bevins is a preoccupation with prominent, dramatic rock tors as the only possible source of megaliths.  This is  a profound misreading of how a moving ice sheet actually behaves, as I have pointed out in numerous posts.  The mainstream archaeological assumption is that if a stone more or less matches a specific rock formation, it must have been physically taken off the highest, most visible cliff face available.  The more prominent, the more sacred.  
Glacial geomorphology shows that the opposite to be true.  When a cold-based or thick ice sheet overrides a prominent rock tor, the ice is often frozen directly to the bedrock at the summit. This stagnant ice acts as a protective shield, preserving the tor's profile rather than destroying it.  In contrast, the deeper, lower-lying valleys and intervening depressions between the tors experience increased pressure and friction, leading to warm-based bottom melting, plucking and entrainment.  This  creates a highly varied trail of erratics.  This also explains why the chemical signatures of the Stonehenge debitage and the Waun Mawn stones are so untidy.

Carn Goedog -- eroded or protected by Irish Sea ice?

To conclude:  They say of the Stonehenge landscape "The plethora of exotic erratic lithologies hoped for by others is totally absent."  The plethora is there all right -- it's just that Ixer and his colleagues have chosen to ignore it in the context of a rather silly lumping stunt.

East coast erratics from Scandinavia and Scotland

Generalised directions of ice flow on the eastern side of Great Britain, interpreted from erratic finds and till characteristics.

Erratic finds on the east coast indicate that at various times ice from the Lake District and western Scotland flowed across the main watershed, on three main routes: via the Tweed Valley, the Tyne Gap and the Stainmore Gap.  It is inferred that there was a powerful southward-flowing ice stream from Scotland very close to the current coastline.

I'm intrigued by the modelling done by Chris Clark and his colleagues for the latest paper which floats the idea of long-distance glacial transport of the Stonehenge Altar Stone. 

The paper suggests that  southwards transport of ORS material from the far NE of Scotland might well have been possible -- but that the "footprint" of the ice stream involved would have been rather far offshore, out in the middle of the North Sea.  Probably the modelling showed ice from the Grampians and southern Scotland streaming down the east coast of England not far away from the present coastline.  Further, the model might be based in part on the presence of lineations on the sea floor.  We don't have a lot of detail on how the model was created.........

Anyway, one point of interest arising from this publication is the occurrence of Scandinavian and Scottish erratics in many locations on the east coast of England.  More than a century ago it was believed that Scandinavian erratice were abundant -- but there was a lot of mis-labelling and mis-identifications in the early days of erratic studies, and many of the boulders vand cobbles thought to have come from Oslofjord and the south coast of Norway are now believed to have come from Stotland and even northern England.

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

See the following:


Glaciodynamics of the central sector of the last British–Irish Ice Sheet
in Northern England
Stephen J. Livingstone, David J.A. Evans, Colm Ó Cofaigh, Bethan J. Davies, Jon W. Merritt,
David Huddart, Wishart A. Mitchell, David H. Roberts, Lynda Yorke

Earth-Science Reviews 111 (2012) 25–55

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

Finds from till etc on the "Ice Age Coast" (Hull Geological Society):

https://hullgeolsoc.co.uk/erratics4.htm

Igneous Rocks 

"Cheviot Porphyry"* (Cheviot Porpyrite of old surveys) - medium grained porphyry (smaller phenocrysts than Norwegian Porphyry) in a red, brown or black matrix. Always looks glossy as if it has been polished. Origin - ?Cheviot Hills.

Dolerite

Gabbro

Grey Granite  

Larvikite - coarse grained dark rock, shines blue in sunlight when wet. May have been described as Augite-Syenite in early boulder survey publications. Origin - Larvik in Norway.

Norwegian Porphyry - yellowish phenocrysts up to 1cm in a red-brown matrix. Phenocrysts may be zoned. Origin - Oslo Fjord in Norway

Peterhead Granite - looks a bit like Shap Granite but the orthoclase phenocrysts are more of a tinned-salmon pink and not as domino shaped.

Rapakivi Granite - origin Aaland

Rhyolite - reddish-brown fine grained igneous rock. May exhibit flow banding and contain small phenocrysts. Origin - ?Cheviot Hills.

Shap Granite - pale granite containing distinctive large crystals of pale pink orthoclase (like pink dominoes), sometimes with obvious simple twinning. It is difficult to identify in small specimens because you need to see the phenocrysts, so it may be under-reported. Origin - Shap in Cumbria. There is a large boulder near the base of Sewerby Steps that can be seen when it is not covered with sand. In older publications it may be called Shap Fells Granite.

Tilberthwaite Tuff - green fine grained rock, sometimes with current bedding, fining upwards bedding and volcanic bombs. This is a volcanic ash that fell into water and was later metamorphosed (so it is an igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic rock in one!) - Origin - Lake District.

"Whin Sill" * (Whinstone of older surveys) - medium grained almost black. Origin - northern England.

Sedimentary Rocks

Black Flint - hard, black, sharp if broken, may have a white cortex. Origin - Upper Campanian and Maastrictian of the North Sea and Holderness. "Rowe Formation". May containg fossils.

Black Shelly Carboniferous Limestone - pale brown shells in a black matrix which may weather to brown. Origin - midland valley of Scotland. Matrix may be bleached or weathered to a chocolate brown colour.

Brockram - a breccia, pieces of grey limestone (usually around 25mm across) in a dull red matrix.

Brown flint - dark gey brown, hard, breaks with a conchoidal fracture, with a paler brown cotex. Probably weathered Black Flint. Not so common in Yorkshire.

Brown ripple bedded sandstone - fairly fine grained pale sandstone with ripples picked out in darker brown

Carboniferous Limestone - dark grey limestone (Mountain Limestone in older surveys)

• Coral - packed with colonial corals

• Crinoidal

• ice scratched - polished and striated; evidence of grinding with other rocks within the glacier

 

Striated Carboniferous Limestone cobble

Carstone - phosphatic nodules from the Aptian, occasionally steinkerns of Jurassic fossils. . Found south of the Humber.

Cementstones - large (over 30cm), grey flattened nodules, usually septarian. Origin - mostly from the North Sea or Vale of Pickering.

• Kimmeridge* - darker grey than the Speeton Clay ones

• Speeton Clay - from the B Beds

Chalk - hard, very fine grained, white. Origin - Yorkshire Wolds or North Sea (see also Soft Chalk)

Dogger* - hard orange or red fine grained ironstone from the middle Jurassic often containing fossils

Flow banded porphyritic rhyolite (Dimlington) 

Frosterly Marble - dark grey to black Carboniferous Limestone with numerous large solitary corals. May be under-reported because you need ta large enough specimen to recognise it. Origin - Lower Carboniferous of Weardale.

Green Lake District conglomerate (a.k.a. "Ingleton Granite" or Greywacke Grit of old surveys) - a conglomerate with rounded clasts of quartz and other minerals up to 1 cm in size in a green matrix

Green sandstone - medium grained,

Grey Flint - from the Yorkshire Chalk. Pale or very pale grey, hard, foes not break with the conchoidal fracture you would normally "expect" for flint. Origin - Yorkshire Wolds or North Sea.

Jurassic plant bed (Esturine Sandstone of old surveys or Deltaic Sandstone) - pale grey, well bedded, mpstly quartz grains with some black plant remains.

Kimmeridge Clay - a dark grey shale often containing flattened white ammonites. Origin - Vale of Pickering or North Sea

Magnesian Limestone - quite hard, fine grained, creamy yellow colour.

Oxford Clay - grey or dark grey clay. Occasionally seen as "rafts" on the beach or in the cliff in the area around Aldborough. Origin - probably from the North Sea.

"New Red Sandstone" - medium to fine grained, with some mica, brick red colour. Origin - Permo-Trias of north west England.

"Old Red Sandstone" - medium to coarse grained, dull blood red colour. Origin - Devonian, perhaps Scotland.

Orange brown coarse sandstone - bright rusty brown colour, grains about 1-2mm, poorly cemented, may contain Tertiary foraminifera. Origin - probably from the North Sea.

Phosphate nodules - small pale brown nodules from the Speeton Clay, may contain fossils.

"Pink Chalk"* - hard, very fine grained, pink. It may not necessarily be from the "Red Chalk Formation", you would need to see distinctive fossils to be sure. Origin - North Sea and Yorkshire Wolds.

Red flint - hard, reddish brown, sharp if broken, may have a white cortex. Origin - perhaps the Danian of Denmark

Rhaxella Chert - found in Trent Valley and Norfolk, said to be from the Jurassic of the Howardian Hills (not recorded in Holderness)

Septarian nodules ( "turtle stones" ) - (see also Cement Stones)

Shelly Jurassic Limestone* - darkish grey limestone with fossils including Gryphaea, Lower Jurassic. Origin - North Yorkshire or the North Sea

Soft Chalk - white, putty-like. Can be seen in "rafts" in the cliffs. Origin - Upper Campanian and Maastrictian of the North Sea and Holderness. "Rowe Formation"

Speeton Clay - seen as "rafts" on top of the Chalk of the Flamborough area.

Red Flint - very hard, red-brown, sharp when broken, may have white cortex. Origin - perhaps the Danian of the North Sea and southern Scandinavia.

Tilberthwaite Tuff (see above under Igneous Rocks)

Metamorphic rocks -

Garnet mica schist - hard rock with sparkly muscovite and small red garnets. Occasionally you may find a version which is mostly biotite and garnets that crumbles when you try to collect it.

Gneiss

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

See also:

https://www.northfolk.org.uk/geology/erratics.html

and

Busfield, M.E., Lee, J.R., Riding, J.B., Zalasiewicz, J., Lee, S.V. 2015. Pleistocene till provenance in east Yorkshire: reconstructing ice flow of the British North Sea Lobe. Proceedings of the Geologist’s Association 126, 86-99

Map from Busfield et al, 2015

The main point arising from all of this is that there is substantial evidence of long-distance erratic transport broadly southwards along the east coasts of Scotland and England. Since abundant Scandinavian erratics have ended up in the coastal till and fluvioglacial deposits, there must have been at least one episode during which the ice of the Fennoscandian Ice Sheet dominated the ice of  the BIIS and entered the territory portrayed in the map above. 

It would therefore not be particularly surprising if some material from NE Scotland found its way into a southwards-flowing North Sea ice stream.

But why does Doggerland and Dogger Island need to come into the frame at all?  That is an unnecessary complication in the narrative, introduced entirely for the  purpose of demonstrating some human involvement in the movement of the Altar Stone..........

More fantasising on the Altar Stone

Suggested area (pink) across which Late Devensian erratics from northern Scotland might have been distributed. The map also shows the "footprint" of the Anglian glaciation, during which ORS erratics might have been carried even further southwards.

A very strange article has just been published, in the very respectable JQS journal which normally steers well clear of fantasies and speculations.  I'm rather surprised that it was accepted for publication, since it contains virtually no new data and builds yet more speculation onto an already very speculative narrative. In short, the article is filled with assumptions built on uncertainties, and the media coverage of it is completely bonkers.  Not surprisingly, some journalists flag up the "glacial transport" side of the story as an exciting discovery, while others claim that the human transport hypothesis is now proved.  Like the JQS article, it's all a bit of a mess.........

Here is the press release from Curtin University in Australia:

https://www.curtin.edu.au/news/media-release/study-details-epic-transportation-of-stonehenge-stone-across-ancient-britain/

The article:

Clarke, A. J. I., Veness, R. L. J., Kirkland, C. L., Clark, C. D., Gandy, N., Emery, A. et al. (2026) From Highlands to Henge: Refining the Provenance and Transport Pathways of Stonehenge's Altar Stone. Journal of Quaternary Science, 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1002/jqs.70080

 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/jqs.70080

ABSTRACT:

The Altar Stone, the 6000 kg central sandstone megalith at Stonehenge in southern England, is suggested to have originated from the Orcadian Basin in northeast Scotland, some 700 km away. However, its source location within this large basin remains unresolved and its mode of transport uncertain. Proposed mechanisms include Neolithic human transport via marine or overland routes or southward movement as a glacial erratic. Here, we combine sandstone provenance analysis with ice flow modelling to constrain potential sources and transport pathways. Ice sheet reconstructions show that southward transport vectors from northeast Scotland were highly localised, making precise source determination critical to evaluating glacial erratic transport plausibility. Candidate source areas farther south within the Orcadian Basin are more compatible with southward glacial dispersal, but show weaker correspondence with the detrital zircon age spectra that characterise the Altar Stone. By contrast, sandstones from Caithness on the mainland of northeast Scotland provide the closest match in zircon age structure; yet, modelled glacial transport from this region is predominantly towards the north‐east, with a localised south‐eastward pathway directed towards Dogger Bank. Glacial dispersal to Dogger Bank would reduce the anthropogenic transport distance required to Stonehenge from 700 km to 400 km. However, such a model raises an additional temporal problem, as Dogger Bank was inundated by post‐glacial sea‐level rise before the Altar Stone likely arrived at Stonehenge. Glacial transport may have provided an intermediate stage in the stone's journey, but alone cannot account for the final emplacement on Salisbury Plain. Even under a glacially assisted scenario, substantial anthropogenic transport would have remained necessary.

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

Right from the outset there is bias that should have been picked up by the referees. In their introductory paragraph the authors refer to "three lithologies" in the "building block" collection at Stonehenge, specifically creating a seperate category for the Altar Stone.  Ixer and Bevins, for reasons that are not difficult to discern, decided not so long ago that the Altar Stone should no longer be referred to as a "bluestone" but should be dignified by the creation of a new rock category.  There is no earth science logic to that, since the bluestones (of all shapes and sizes) found in the Stonehenge landscape do not all come from Mynydd Preseli, and the Altar Stone is not the only sandstone.  If we look at the sarsens and the erratic bluestones around Stonehenge, there are scores of lithologies represented, and ORS sandstone is just one of them.

This labelling device, right at the beginning of the article simply flags up the authors' specific intention to demonstrate that the Altar Stone was not just special or sacred, but that it was even more sacred than the bluestones.

In mentioning that Parker Pearson's Waun Mawn "lost bluestone circle" has been criticised, they cite Darvill (2022) who refuted the hypothesis on archaeological grounds, but they fail to cite my much more comprehensive 2024 criticism and dismissal (in the "Holocene" journal) of the MPP narrative on earth science grounds.  One might have expected an acknowledgement of this in an article published in JQS..............

In referring to monolith transport, the authors refer to the glacial theory, but say "recent detrital zircon–apatite fingerprinting of Salisbury Plain river sediment found no evidence that glacial processes delivered the bluestones to southern England (Clarke and Kirkland, 2026)".  It would have been more honest for the lead authors to state that their own zircon study is deeply defective, since the findings are based on just four river sand samples (accepted as valid without any refence to sampling procedures) and a lack of any control studies.  This and other defects were discussed in another post on this blog:

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2026/03/probable-bias-in-zircon-apatite.html

We have similar problems with the other key samples used by Clarke and others in their studies of the Altar Stone.  All 4 of them -- from Stonehenge, Orkney and Caithness -- are surrogate samples, not collected by the authors during fieldwork but taken from second hand sources:

ALTAR STONE
1 National Museum of Wales ( assumed to have been excavated Hawley in the 1920s)
2 Salisbury Museum (assumed to have been collected from the underside of the Altar Stone in 1844)

ORCADIAN BASIN SAMPLES
Two Old Red Sandstone rock samples from the Orcadian Basin, bought from Natural Wonders Ltd, Whitby:
1 Cruaday, Orkney
2 near Spittal, Caithness

The Altar Stone samples are simply assumed to be truly representative of the Altar Stone itself -- but if that attribution is faulty, then this article, like several others, becomes nonsensical.  Given this fundamental research defect, why on earth did not one or another of the authors actually pop up north for a few days with a geological hammer and collect some proper, fully authenticated, rock samples?

Anyway, on a more positive note I welcome and agree with the paragraph on erratic transport routes and with the point that glacial erratics take thousands of years to be transported within the ice, during which ice flow vectors can shift in direction.

Quote:

This motivated us to model trajectories of glacial erratics, accounting for such shifting flow vectors over time to yield predictions of transport routes and distance. A complicating factor is that the Orcadian Basin sat near the ice sheet's north–south ice drainage divide (>1 km thick at times). Small movements (tens of kilometres) of this ice divide, as the ice sheet fluctuated, could have transported boulders in a multitude of directions. An investigation of the possible time-integrated flow routes is thus warranted to explore the plausibility of southward transport as an erratic. The key here is that rather than considering a single ice transport vector, we now examine if the Altar Stone could have first been transported in one direction and later in another as ice flow directions shifted. Could such multistage ice transport have carried the Altar Stone closer to Salisbury Plain? Given the complexity of ice flow directions in the region, refining likely locations of the source area is crucial to exploring this time-integrated ice flow analysis of possible erratic pathways.

This is fine, and could also, of course,  be applied to the west coast of Scotland in our attempts to discover how erratics apparently from the Western Isles might have been transported to the coasts of the Bristol Channel.  Indeed, I have already cited another article by Veness and others in a recent post about Scottish erratic trails.

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2026/05/scottish-erratics-and-irish-sea-ice.html

In the discussion of "detrital zircon data sets" from the Orcadian basin and elsewhere, the authors present no new fieldwork and no new samples.  They depend entirely on the published work of other authors, and their conclusions are therefore based on pre-selected data sets, with a vast expanse of ORS sandstone territory unsampled and effectively ignored.  This represents yet another powerful bias in the work.

On the matter or erratic trains, the authors suggest -- in line with BRITICE and other modelling work -- that erratics derived from Caithness and Orkney are unlikely to have found their way to the Dogger Bank during the Late Devensian Glaciation (LGM), but that they might have travelled south if they had previously been emplaced by eastward-flowing ice in (for example) the Wolstonian or Anglian Glaciation and then later entrained by a southward flowing ice stream.  On the other hand ORS erratics from New Aberdour or the Inverness area could well have been entrained on the south side of an ice shed and transported southwards to the Dogger Bank.    In other words, the modelling work suggests that the Inverness and New Aberdour areas are more likely to have provided Dogger bank erratics than outcrops in Caithness or Orkney.  I have no problem with any of that, except to say that other outcrops of ORS around the Midland Valley Basin were even more likely to have provided erratics for the southward-flowing ice stream in the North Sea. 

In the section of the article entitled "Human and ice transport?" the authors seem to lose touch with reality.  First, they accept that the Stonehenge landscape "lacks the detrital signature expected from direct glacial delivery of megalith-derived material from northeast Scotland".  They cite Clarke and Kirkland 2026, but (as mentioned above) they fail to appreciate that their conclusion is highly contentious, having been based on just four sand samples about which we know virtually nothing.  Clarke and Kirkland are joint authors of the article which we are scrutinizing.......... enough said.

 Then the authors embark on a series of speculations on "human agency" in the movement of the Altar Stone from Dogger Bank to Stonehenge which are so bizarre as to be embarrassing.  How this section got through the refereeing process, maybe we will never know........

They suggest that Dogger Bank might have been a "topographic high point in the landscape" which might have held some cultural significance for Palaeolithic or Mesolithic inhabitants. They then suggest that the Altar Stone, found as an erratic, must have been special or sacred enough to justify collection and transport towards Stonehenge via maritime and land-based pathways three thousand years before it was incorporated into the Stonehenge monument.  Talk about forward planning.........!!!

The idea of Dogger Island and its sacred stone -- seized upon, of course, by the media -- is so absurd that even our old friend MPP might be worried about it!  There is no evidence at all that Palaeolithic or Mesolithic tribesmen in the period 9,000 - 7,000 BP had either the desire or the capability to move a six-tonne slab of rock from one place to another in Doggerland or anywhere else.  As far as I am aware, there are no Palaeolithic of Mesolithic standing stones anywhere in Europe.  At the time of Dogger Island's final inundation, and indeed for millenia before that, this was a densely wooded landscape of rivers, lagoons, bogs, fens and marshes -- good hunting, fishing and gathering territory.  But I think we can safely dismiss the idea that the inhabitants knew that their island world was going to disappear, and that they planned and executed a move westwards for a large sacred stone while the going was good.  Of course the media love this sort of narrative, but it's completely bonkers.  

The "Dogger Bank scenario" involves "prolonged cultural significance or multiple-phase activity, across an exceptionally large temporal gap" -- but the authors also suggest that the boulder might have been moved south-westwards from the North Sea coast during the Anglian Glaciation and then dumped somewhere near the Chilterns ice edge.  This would have involved a relatively short "anthropogenic transport route" along the Berkshire Ridgeway towards Stonehenge.  In yet another scenario the authors suggest that the Altar Stone might have been ice-rafted through the Strait of Dover following one or another of the envisaged mega-floods, and then dumped somewhere on the south coast of England.  That's a remote possibility, but before taking it too seriously we need to know much more about pre-Devensian glacio-isostatic adjustments and sea-level changes.

In summary, this is a very strange article.  While I welcome the fact that some authors are at least taking the idea of long-distance glacial erratic transport seriously, the scenarios examined in the article all involve the human transport of a large bluestone monolith -- the Altar Stone.  I'm still highly sceptical about that, and I think that the authors here have accepted far too easily that the Altar Stone did indeed come from the far NE of Scotland.  I do not think that has been proved. 

Clarke and Kirkland have rushed into print far too early.  Their sampling and the use of surrogate samples suggests substantial bias.   If I am to be convinced by their provenancing, I would like to see the lead authors of this piece get out into the field, collecting samples from many ORS locations in various parts of Scotland, specifically for the testing of their hypothesis.  Once they have done that, and published their test results, I might be prepared to abandon my scepticism about the quality of their work.

See also Mike Pitts, who compounds the confusion:

https://mikepitts.wordpress.com/2026/06/05/stonehenge-altar-stone-glaciers/

The bluestones and their "quarries" -- some forthright views from Peter Kokelaar

One of the figures from Peter's blog.

I have been following up some very interesting material relating to the glaciation of the Gower, and have looked again at Prof Peter Kokelaar's blog.  

https://kokelaargower.com/

It's a treasurehouse of field observations and new data, summarising the contents of his book called "All our own Water" and adding much new material.  There are two blog posts that are of particular interest:

https://kokelaargower.com/stonehenge/

https://kokelaargower.com/towards-stonehenge-the-anglian-glaciation-of-gower/

Many of the points made in Peter's posts are very similar to the points I have made repeatedly on this blog and in my published papers  -- but I had forgotten how forthright some of his language is! 

Quote: 

"Many people will be aware of a long-running, media-fuelled ‘debate’ regarding the delivery to Stonehenge of a suite of rocks – the so-called bluestones – most of which certainly originated in Pembrokeshire. I shall not engage with the negative elements of that ‘debate’, which rather uncompromisingly set human transport against glacial (erratic) explanations. I do, however, briefly explain what seems reasonable to believe and might just nudge the reader towards a possible half-way house....."

Most of Peter's critical scrutiny of the literature occurs in the article entitled "Stonehenge" -- and in spite of attempting great restraint, he cannot resist (and who can blame him?) some choice phraseology! On the bluestone debate he refers to "a jumble of confusing claims, counterclaims and manifest nonsense, with a good measure of misleading media hype thrown in....."

Quotes:
"..........the ‘debate’ has involved somewhat alarming instances of serious subjectivity and media hype unlikely to promote the lay person’s trust in ‘expert opinions and methods’, probably to the contrary."

".........when all of the claims for human transport are stripped away for being without any foundation, ice is the only obvious agent, even if the last reach of it is not obviously or unequivocally recorded. Largely because of the media hype, which persistently favours the “extraordinary human endeavour”, ice transport currently gets practically no mention (e.g., the BBC Countryfile on Stonehenge of 14th December 2025 and the Channel 5 “Stonehenge: Secrets of the new stone” of 3rd March 2026), but that is misleading. Ice transport warrants the light of reasonable consideration."

"........we will recall some of the media’s misdirected presentations of the human transport view as if it was well supported by archaeological or scientific facts. This has been a bizarre distraction at least, if not damaging."

"There has been a strong tendency to interpret all fragments of monolith stone types as reflecting ‘dressing’ and accidental distribution by human hands and thus to refer to them as ‘debitage’. This might be justified in the vicinity of the monuments, but the interpretation potentially involves circular reasoning."

"Motivation for the “stupendous feat” in human transport has always been a problematic weakness in the case, earlier attributing fantastic reasons like magical powers or sonic properties to the stones, or later mistakenly claiming reverence for them in sites of previous circles that then acted as sources for removal and transport (e.g., Parker Pearson et al. 2021). Fantastic claims, including inference of active quarrying to produce the stones at rock outcrops that are actually typical of natural jointing, weathering and collapse, are now, with sensible geology and geomorphology, and with robust geochemical evidence, thoroughly debunked. So, no quarries and no uprooting of former monuments (Bevins et al. 2022; John et al. 2015; John 2025)."

On the Boles Barrow spotted dolerite boulder: "However, the range of convoluted and contradictory claims made through time, not helped by the boulder being temporarily ‘lost’ and including the suggestion that it was transported to Stonehenge and then stolen for a garden ornament (subsequently refuted), is astonishing and mind-numbing."

"There is not a shred of evidence that humans transported any ‘bluestones’ all the way from Pembrokeshire to Stonehenge. The human-transport view was initiated with HH Thomas (1923) and thereafter centred on the lack of spotted dolerites in the erratic trail beyond Pembrokeshire, plus the seeming absence of evidence of ice movement onto Salisbury Plain. The supposed quarries and previous-monument sources have been disproved and the bizarre embellishment concerning the transport by cattle similarly is unwarranted."

On the so-called bluestone quarries: "........nothing about those virtually pristine igneous rock outcrops could lead a field geologist to consider them anything other than naturally formed, including their aprons of fragmental debris. .......... To ‘inform’ the BBC-viewing public that quarrying by humans broke out the pillars ready for transport at the very summit of a perfectly natural outcrop, is ridiculous "

"There are hundreds of perfectly natural outcrops of jointed dolerite like this dotted throughout upland Britain, some quite nearby too, and of course also abroad. Surely many thousands of years of freeze-thaw mechanical break-up cannot be overlooked? From this nonsense, ignoring simple natural processes and geology and by implication suggesting ancient quarry sites all over the country, there apparently can have been no scientific-editorial oversight and advice for the archaeologist(s). Gross mis-pleading like this, on a television channel that prides itself in distinguishing the truth, surely undermines simple enquiry and learning, undermines the credibility of actual experts, and, given the n-fold repetition of the BBC programme, is effectively misleading a host of people. Thankfully numerous sensible people have taken issue with the programme and the ‘quarries’ have been debunked and abandoned amongst aficionados, although the BBC continues the promotion."

"Despite objections made regarding the ‘quarries’ (e.g., John et al. 2015), there was no retraction while the focus shifted to removal and transport to Stonehenge of stones from pre-existing monuments (Parker Pearson et al. 2021)."

Regarding "The Lost Circle" TV programme: "...........the whole programme, with its intense and dramatic revelations of quarrying and removal from a former stone circle, proved to be spectacularly wrong. One might say that hindsight is a wonderful thing, but contemporary expert advice was always available and ignored, and the media show on what is known to be a topic of wide interest was an information disaster."

"The nonsense carried on. After the Altar Stone saga in 2024, in 2025..... there came another remarkable gem of mis-information." Regarding the claims made about a cattle tooth: ".......nothing supports these contentions, which are false and are sheer hype."

"The claim that the cow-tooth findings add to confirmation of the “theory” that cattle were involved in transport of the megaliths is udderly ridiculous. Apart from confusing theory and hypothesis in this media hype, the unjustified claims were disturbing as they came from the Press Office of the British Geological Survey; no sane geologist would support them. Actually, the original scientific report of the cow-tooth findings, in contrast to the hype, was quite reserved, acknowledging limitations to interpretations that should be borne in mind. What is it then, really, that causes decent science to be so compromised in the media? There certainly is cavalier ignorance on the part of media producers, whose driver seems to be promotion of viewing figures or sales… Honesty about the issues might have been more interesting and more stimulating of genuine interest… Some of the media nonsense is arrogant and insulting."

So there we are then......... I am clearly not alone in expressing concern about the pseudo-science being fed to the world by the the most vociferous part of the Stonehenge establishment.

More contributions to the bluestone transport debate

I have been looking at Prof Peter Kokelaar's blog, and  have discovered there a great deal of new evidence relating in particular to his work in Gower and north Pembrokeshire.  These three blog posts are particularly useful:

https://kokelaargower.com/stonehenge/

https://kokelaargower.com/towards-stonehenge-the-anglian-glaciation-of-gower/

https://kokelaargower.com/gowers-famous-patella-beach/

Peter's work concentrates in particular on the effects of the Anglian Glaciation.  I don't agree with everything he says, but we can agree to differ until more conclusive evidence on glacial episode dating comes to hand.  But it's gratifying to know that in his work -- quite independent of mine -- he has come to broadly the same conclusions.  He suggests that much of the narrative developed by MPP, Ixer and Bevins about quarries, lost circles and so forth is unreliable, and that the glacial transport theory is far more likely to be correct than the human transport theory which suffers from a complete lack of supporting evidence.  He is also very sceptical about the proposal that the Altar Stone has come from the far NE of Scotland -- basing his views on zircon work which will no doubt be elaborated in future publications.

I like his work on Stonehenge bluestone shapes (Fig 3 in the Stonehenge article) but note that he shows some of the bluestone monoliths as pillars, whereas I have classified them as slabs.  That is a small point.  I look forward to further work on this topic.

And I also like his idea of the "contentious reach" -- an ill-defined area between the Somerset coast and Stonehenge, where the evidence is very subtle and difficult to interpret.  It's shown on his map which I reproduce at the head of this post.

Quote:

...........In the human-transport view, Stonehenge would be the only known ritual site where numerous (at least 43) pieces of non-local and not especially remarkable material, up to 3.5 tonnes in weight, were carried several hundreds of kilometres (overland some 300 km / 186 mi and by water 435 km / 270 mi). There is no known field record of this anywhere. We do know, however, that prominent, weather-resisting stones lying around within a largish area – perhaps 10s of kilometres away – definitely were commonly collected, brought together and carefully erected. Some of the Stonehenge sarsen stones, a few over 30 tonnes, are thought to have been collected from about 24 km away (Field et al. 2015; Harding et al. 2024; Daw 2025). In the Preseli area spotted dolerite stones were only used where they occurred locally, near to where they are found today, and there exists no evidence of them being especially revered. Motivation for the “stupendous feat” in human transport has always been a problematic weakness in the case, earlier attributing fantastic reasons like magical powers or sonic properties to the stones, or later mistakenly claiming reverence for them in sites of previous circles that then acted as sources for removal and transport (e.g., Parker Pearson et al. 2021). Fantastic claims, including inference of active quarrying to produce the stones at rock outcrops that are actually typical of natural jointing, weathering and collapse, are now, with sensible geology and geomorphology, and with robust geochemical evidence, thoroughly debunked. So, no quarries and no uprooting of former monuments (Bevins et al. 2022; John et al. 2015; John 2025).

Quote:

Craig Rhosyfelin also features as a bluestone megalith quarry, in this case of rhyolite (foliated rhyolitic tuff), despite there being no known megaliths from there, just a buried stump and a few lumps and many chips recovered at Stonehenge. The provenancing is robust, for its geochemistry and rock texture, but again, despite extensive and time-consuming excavations, no quarrying could be established. Despite objections made regarding the ‘quarries’ (e.g., John et al. 2015), there was no retraction while the focus shifted to removal and transport to Stonehenge of pre-existing monuments (Parker Pearson et al. 2021). In the now infamous BBC ‘Stonehenge: The Lost Circle Revealed’ (2021) a long search eventually ‘found’ the site of a dismantled circle at Waun Mawn that was claimed to have sourced Stonehenge stones. This was proved for viewers by the imprint of a removed stone at Waun Mawn that fitted a stone at Stonehenge “like a key in a lock”, with computer-graphic confirmation. The stone that was supposed to fit is Stone 62 (see Figs 1 and 2). The interview based on this ‘clinching discovery’ concerned a revolutionary new view of collaboration between ancient societies. The trouble is, however, that robust data show that the Waun Mawn stones came from a local source (Bevins et al. 2022) unlike anything at Stonehenge, while Stone 62 came from the eastern Preseli hills not far from other known natural sources. So the whole programme, with its intense and dramatic revelations of quarrying and removal from a former stone circle, proved to be spectacularly wrong. One might say that hindsight is a wonderful thing, but contemporary expert advice was always available and ignored, and the subsequent media show on what is known to be a topic of wide interest was an information disaster.

And on the "cow tooth" findings:

The claim that the cow-tooth findings add to confirmation of the “theory” that cattle were involved in transport of the megaliths is udderly ridiculous. (BJ -- I wish I had thought of that one!) Apart from confusing theory and hypothesis in this media hype, the unjustified claims were disturbing as they came from the Press Office of the British Geological Survey; no sane geologist would support them. Actually, the original scientific report of the cow-tooth findings, in contrast to the hype, was quite reserved, acknowledging limitations to interpretations that should be borne in mind. What is it then, really, that causes decent science to be so compromised in the media? There certainly is cavalier ignorance on the part of media producers, whose driver seems to be promotion of viewing figures or sales…

I'll return to these blog posts on another occasion when I have had a chance to read them more carefully.  As we see in the above quotes, in quite a few places in his posts, Peter does not mince his words.........

Prof Peter Kokelaar, who was George Herdman Professor of Geology in Liverpool University