"Current curatorial thinking...."

 I got this message from a friend today, on the topic of bluestone transport:
"I went to Nat Mus Wales yesterday --  they just have "man handling theory" writ large. I of course went and found a big wig and complained!!  He blanched as he had to answer to a genuine probe and had no peers to review his answer to me...... He said that it was a curatorial choice based on current archaeological thinking!"

This page on the NatMus web site is fairly straightforward and measured, but the displays might well be a very different matter.

http://www.museumwales.ac.uk/en/rhagor/article/sourcing_bluestones/ 

I must look in again one day -- it's ages since my last visit.....  But if the displays are wedded to that old HHT theory from all those years ago, it's high time that somebody in there got those exhibits updated.  I'm more than a little surprised and disappointed that nothing much has changed, because Richard Bevins (who has done a lot of the recent geology on the bluestones with Rob Ixer) must know about the glacial theory, as he must know about the shortcomings (and they are abundant) of the human transport theory.  Or does the Geology Department not have any input at all into the displays organized by the Archaeology Department?  I suppose I shouldn't be surprised...... after all, who wants to spoil a good story?

The top end of a glacier

Another wonderful image from the "Glaciers Online" web-site -- this is the accumulation area of the Monte Rosa Gletscher in the alps.  Click to enlarge.  There are a few ski tracks here and there.  But note the phenomenal amount of accumulation here among these high peaks -- this is the snow and firn that finds its way down-glacier under gravity and eventually gets transformed into glacier ice.

The amazing colour on this photo is natural -- this is the after-glow that occurs immediately after sunset.  What a beautiful world.....

Is this the daftest question ever?

 Acknowledgement:  Stone-Circles web site.  

The "immaculate monument" as fondly imagined 

by EH and a multitude of the faithful.....

The other day, in quite a learned article designed to shoot down the "bluestone glacial transport theory" I came once more upon this idiotic question:  "If the glacier carried the bluestones to Stonehenge, how come it carried precisely the right number, so that there was not a single one left on Salisbury Plain when the monument was complete?"

This question is so loaded with assumptions that it becomes embarrassing.  Those who ask the question, in various ways, presumably have been given divine guidance to the effect that Stonehenge was complete and immaculate at some stage, and they presumably know precisely how many bluestones were involved.  Were there 80 or 82?  Doesn't really matter.......

If we count all the bluestones, including those standing, leaning and buried as stumps, the total is 43, give or take a couple.  Now even if quite a few stones were smashed up or stolen in the past, there is not a shred of evidence to demonstrate that Stonehenge ever stood as an "immaculate monument" in the form we see above -- and indeed, as we have discussed often on this blog, the drift of opinion is now that Stonehenge was abandoned, incomplete, having gone through a series of stone rearrangements.

So next time anybody asks me that insane question again, or simply trots it out in some learned article,  I shall sigh deeply and go and have a cold shower........

Two Altar Stones at Stonehenge?

Now here's an interesting thing.  I was hunting about on the web (as one does) and I came across the web site for the Hunterian Museum in Glasgow, where certain slides relating to the bluestones of Stonehenge are found.  These slides come from the Heddle Collection.

There are many thin sections which can be examined by geologists and the uninitiated as well.  Then there are five further slides flagged up as being of special historic interest.  They include two dolerite samples,  two sandstones (one from a sarsen stone and another from the Altar Stone) -- and then one labelled as follows:

volcanic breccia?; showing strong foliation, with albite and/or quartz?, chlorite, epidote, euhedral zircon, and large metabasalt clast

TS only
Dimensions: 75x25mm
Locality: Stonehenge, [Wiltshire], [England]
Context: "Altar Stone", [Neolithic]
Catalogue number: GLAHM 148302

Very strange indeed!  You can see a photo of this one on the web site.  A volcanic breccia labelled as "Altar Stone"?  Could this be a case of a sample being mislabelled?  That would be very strange, since the labelling of all the other samples seems to be fastidious.  Alternatively, is there really another Altar Stone hidden somewhere beneath those fallen sarsens?

Further info here:

http://www.huntsearch.gla.ac.uk/cgi-bin/foxweb/huntsearch/SummaryResults.fwx?collection=all&Searchterm=stonehenge+heddle

http://www.huntsearch.gla.ac.uk/cgi-bin/foxweb/huntsearch/DetailedResults.fwx?collection=all&SearchTerm=148302&mdaCode=GLAHM&reqMethod=Link

The Carn Briw Folk Conspiracy

I was up on Carningli yesterday (and delightful it was too) -- and when I visited the Bronze Age (?) burial cairn called Carn Briw I was struck by the fact that although the cairn is somewhat battered around its flanks, there is a sort of folk conspiracy to keep it as a conical mound.

The damage on the flanks -- various pits and rearrangements -- is reputed to have been done for the most part by the Home Guard during WW2, when there was an observation post here, with some poor fellows stuck up here with their binoculars and radio sets, constantly scanning the skies and the waters of Cardigan Bay for signs of enemy activity.  It's very exposed, and I suppose one can't blame them for building windbreaks out of all those handy stones, and making pits in which to shelter from the rain.  Since the end of the war, small boys and young people doing their Duke of Edinburgh award schemes have camped out here, probably freshening up the holes and the windbreaks........

But if you look at the photo (click to enlarge) you'll see that the stones on the gentler slopes of the mound are lichen-covered (which means they have not been moved for very many years) whereas the stones on the conical summit look "fresher" and cleaner.  Many of them have been moved about over recent years.  This means there is a sort of "folk conspiracy" to maintain this conical cairn top so that it keeps its "proper" shape.  Sometimes some people knock stones off the top of the cone (children cannot resist standing on top of it), and then people rebuild them back up again.

Somehow I find that reassuring......

Periglacial blockfield on Carningli

I have often referred in the past, on this blog, to periglacial blockfields.  Here is a classic example, on the undulating plateau to the west of Carningli summit.  Last year, burning stripped off a cover of gorse and heather, and now the vegetation is re-establishing itself.  But the litter of angular and jagged boulders and stones of all sizes is readily apparent. 

Although there is some till here, and occasional erratic boulders, most of these rocks are very local -- dolerites, rhyolites and some gabbros and ignimbrites.  Frost has done most of the work here, covering this landscape with a layer of frost-shattered debris, maybe over several glacial episodes.  There is no trace of patterned ground (circles or polygons) -- but there are occasional "stone take" hollows, traces of old field boundaries and trackways -- this has been an inhabited landscape since Neolithic times, and there is a substantial hillfort on the summit in the middle distance.  That is assumed to be Iron Age, but parts of it might be older.

The Stonehenge prehistoric landscape

I found this wonderful image on the stone-circles web site.  See it here:
http://www.stone-circles.org.uk/stone/stonehenge.htm

It shows the "ritual" and non-ritual features in the Stonehenge area -- with the features themselves overlaid onto a satellite image of the district.  Click to enlarge.

Chris Collyer's site is thoroughly recommended -- it's full of very useful info.