Holgar and the bluestone voyage

The 14-man crew at work (12 paddlers) on their epic voyage......

The other evening I gave a talk at Verwig and was happy to meet Nick Newland, who was heavily involved in the building of the Holgar and in the voyage filmed in August 2012 by the Discovery TV Channel.  We had a chat about it, and Nick promised to send me the only material ever written about the boat and the voyage -- it was published in a boatbuilding magazine but has never, apparently, been put online.

I wrote a previous report here:
https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2012/10/latest-discovery-channel-spectacular.html

Much of the article is on the technical aspects of building Holgar, modelled quite closely on the Ferriby Bronze Age boat -- which must have been built at least a thousand years later than any boats that might have carried bluestones from Pembrokeshire to the other side of the Bristol Channel.

Although the boatbuilders tried to be as authentic as possible in the boatbuilding methods used for this "lashed planking" vessel, there were all sorts of ways in which modern methods were substituted for ancient ones.  For a start, the planks were smooth and the cuts were as accurate as modern methods would allow -- within a millimetre or so.  The main planks running the full length of the boat (42 feet long)  were not made with rough oak or yew, but with three laminations of Douglas fir glued with epoxy resin.  Laminated strips were also cut on jigs and then glued up and used for the main frames.  Plywood formers were used, and modern fixes had to be used to achieve the bow and stern curves.  The overlapping joints between touching planks were cut with modern saws.   All of the holes for the lashings that held the planks together were made with modern drills.  The lashings were made from artificial fibres.   Screws were used to hold things together while glueing was in process, and then removed when the glue had set. Caulking was done with a natural moss, but it was inserted with a modern "caulking iron."  Many other technical details are given in the article, but the conclusion is inescapable that Holgar was vastly more sophisticated and more seaworthy than anything that could have been made in the Bronze Age, let alone the Neolithic.........  And if anybody tries to tell you that the Holgar project demonstrated that a boat like this could have carried one bluestone or lots of them, it did nothing of the sort.  It simply showed that this particular "imitation" boat, built with the use of a wide range of modern materials and methods, was capable of carrying a single bluestone monolith weighing about a tonne.

The loading of the bluestone onto the boat was done quite smartly, involving a strange ramp-like structure made of logs lashed together and positioned between the tide marks at Gwbert in the Teifi Estuary.  The idea was that the stone would be put into position on a cradle on the beach at low water, lifted up with the aid of a "rolling log" on top of the structure, and then let down onto the bottom of the Holgar when it was manoevred into position on a rising tide.  Then the  ropes would all be released, and the boat with the stone on board would be allowed to float free.  In reality, on the day when the stone was supposed to be loaded, there was a Force 6 gale blowing, and a certain degree of technical interference was needed before the stone was properly positioned on the boat. The author of the article does not go into detail on that, but let's assume that the use of a JCB might have been deemed unsporting........

Then we come to the voyage, which was flagged up at the time as demonstrating that a bluestone could be carried by a Neolithic boat all the way from the North Pembrokeshire coast to Stonehenge.    In reality, the Pembrokeshire coast was not tackled at all.  The boat with its bluestone on board was taken by road to Loughor  and then paddled most of the way from there to Burry Port -- with safety boats in attendance and with a tow being provided when the 12 paddlers found that they could make no headway against the tide.  Then the boat went back onto the lorry again for the journey to Barry, where it restarted its voyage to Cardiff Bay.  There was a further weather delay, and the boat was lifted out of the water for assorted repairs and for the replacement of caulking. The voyage was then resumed, and the crossing was made to Portishead on the other side of the Severn Estuary. Once again there was a tow, across the central part of the channel, so as to avoid any interference with commercial shipping..........  The paddlers then took the boat to Avonmouth and up the river on a flood tide to the Clifton Suspension Bridge and on into Bristol Harbour.  The final leg of the journey took the boat upriver, struggling against a powerful river in flood, as far as Keynsham.  There the journey was abandoned, and the Holgar let the river carry it back to Bristol Harbour.

All in all, this was an interesting piece of experimental archaeology.  But there were so many modern technical fixes in the boatbuilding, and interventions (relating to weather and tides) during the "bluestone voyage" itself, that in my mind, just as in the "Millennium Stone" fiasco, the conclusion has to be that sea transport of large bluestones, even in the Bronze Age, would have been well nigh impossible.


Postscript

Here is a description of the building of the other "Ferriby replica" -- called "Morgawr" and built by a large team in Falmouth.  Here the methods used were more authentic, but not totally so -- and there were episodes during which the temptation to use modern technology proved too much............

This boat was rather leaky and cumbersome, by the sound of it.   I think the conclusion must be that the Ferriby boats were probably used for sculling about in shallow coastal waters and maybe on rivers and lakes and in marshy areas, where the boats could be grounded quite easily for baling out and for repairs.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1095-9270.12058

Video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22chM3wYrk0

Waun Mawn is a Scheduled Ancient Monument

Photos from 2006 (DAT/ Cadw) and from 2018 showing the recumbent stone supposedly associated with a "slight earth mound."

Thanks to Dave for drawing this to my attention.

https://archwilio.org.uk/arch/query/page.php?watprn=DAT1567

Groom, P.  2006  Erosion Control Works at Waun Maun Standing Stones SAM Pe124

I had assumed that Waun Mawn was not a Scheduled Ancient Monument, but it appears that it is!  The number is SAM Pe124.  That means that Cadw must have had some involvement in the consent and monitoring process for the digs on the site in 2017 and 2018.  I shall try to find out what the consent process was (and is) and ask them what they thought of the state of the site when the diggers departed.......

I am also intrigued that some remedial works were undertaken by Cadw in conjunction with the National Park back in 2006 -- involving the laying down of black fabric in "erosion hollows" and infilling with stones and soil and turf taken from a little distance away.  The details of the work are given in the PDF mentioned above.  

Its clear from the Cadw documentation that  Dyfed Archaeological Trust was not very attracted by the idea that there are the remains of a stone circle here.  The only point of potential archaeological interest is the mention of  "a slight mound" in conjunction with their stone 3 (which I have labelled as "stone 1" in my earlier posts).

I have walked across this site many times without seeing any mound at all, and all we can see on close examination is a slight rise in the turf surface on one flank of the stone.  The surface is maybe 10 cm higher than the surface a couple of metres away, and this scale of variation or undulation is insignificant in an area where the ground surface undulates everywhere.  Where there are big erratics lying on the ground surface (or even fallen standing stones) the ground is protected to some degree from ongoing erosion, so I think this is not a matter worth commenting further on.  Neither Cadw nor Dyfed Archaeological Trust personnel thought the matter worth commenting on either.

Ceibwr and Witches Cauldron -- unconsolidated clifftop till

Dessicated Irish Sea till on the clifftop near Ceibwr.  This is a massive till with a clay-rich matrix -- presumably made from dredged sea floor deposits from Cardigan Bay.   Here the till is at least 2m thick.  

On the clifftops between Ceibwr and Witches Cauldron, on the coast between Newport and St Dogmaels, there are many exposures of till, sometimes with a gravelly matrix and sometimes clay-rich as in the classic Irish Sea till found at Gwbert and Newport.  These exposures are found at an altitude of 75m; further to the SW they occur on clifftops that are 150m high -- so we can be sure that the ice that came in from the north and north-west during the last glacial episode surmounted these cliffs along the whole of the North Pembrokeshire coastline.    We knew that already, but confirmations are always good........

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

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2015/12/ceibwr-three-meltwater-channel.html

Another exposure of matrix-supported till -- the matrix is mostly silt and sand, maybe derived from older sandloess and other coastal deposits.  The reddish iron-staining  may be post-depositional, or maybe inherited from the colour of the over-ridden deposits.    Above the till is a slope deposit  which is organic-rich and with occasional signs of stratification; some layers contain small fragments of shale breccia, and oitheres appear to be made of colluvium.

Stony till (lower 50 cms) made for the most part of brecciated bedrock fragments, overlain by c 50 cms of brecciated slope deposits made of local shales and sandstones.

Another patch of coarse till adjacent to the coast path.  Beneath the till there are slope deposits that appear to have been churned in a permafrost environment.

A patch of stony till packed with erratics, in an inaccessible clifftop location near Witches Cauldron.  Here the till is c 1m thick.

The stratigraphic relationships between the till and other deposits are exactly the same as in other North Pembrokeshire exposures.  There are brecciated slope deposits (head) beneath the till in places, where the coastal slope is adequate for the downslope mobilisation of weathered and frost-shattered bedrock.  There are thin brecciated materials above the till as well, grading upwards in colluvium, sandloess and modern soil.

There is no reason to doubt that all of these deposits date from the Devensian glacial episode and from the Holocene.

However, there are also older materials to be found hereabouts, as I shall explain in another post.

The bluestone quarries -- the best hoax since Piltdown Man?

Rhosyfelin.  Does anybody else see a loading platform and a revetment here?  No?  Neither do I.

Carn Goedog.  Does anybody else see a stone-filled ditch, a platform and a pillar extraction point when they look closely?  No?  Neither do I.

Rhosyfelin.  Does anybody else see the "exact extraction point" from which a bluestone monolith pillar has been extracted?  No?  Neither do I.

Carn Goedog.  Does anybody else see evidence of a Neolithic quarry from which bluestone monoliths have been extracted?  No?  Neither do I.

Rhosyfelin.  Does anybody else see a quarrying forecourt and working surface here?  

No?  Neither do I.

((I have another 20 or 30 photos showing natural features interpreted as having "engineering significance"  -- you'll find them in other posts on this blog.   I have resisted the temptation to put them all in here, since you would simply get bored..........))

The Art of the Scientific Hoax

I have done various posts on hoaxes before, including the following:

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2018/04/the-bluestone-quarries-great.html

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2010/03/two-great-hoaxes-piltdown-skull-and.html
https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2010/02/did-hh-thomas-cook-books.html
https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2013/03/is-bluestone-myth-based-on-scientific.html

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2010/03/herbert-thomas-and-charles-dawson.html

Anyway, having observed the antics of various archaeologists (and geologists) over the last eight years, I am now completely convinced that the claimed “discovery” of Neolithic bluestone quarries in Wales is the most imaginative and professional hoax since Charles Dawson “discovered” Piltdown Man in 1912. (1)  What is possibly most impressive about it is that it has been built up systematically now over a period of eight years without any of the conspirators spilling the beans.........

Charles Dawson (sitting) at the site of his "earth-shattering" discovery........

It's a pity that scientific hoaxes have gone out of fashion, since they cause much embarrassment to the experts who are fooled by them and much innocent amusement for everybody else. Mind you, they don't do much for the reputations of the perpetrators -- although, if you are lucky, like Charles Dawson, you might be dead before you get rumbled.

As followers of this blog will know, year after year I have conducted — in all seriousness — a forensic examination of all of the evidence placed into the public domain by the archaeologists who claim that there are bluestone monolith quarries at Rhosyfelin and Carn Goedog in the Preseli uplands of Pembrokeshire; and time and again I find that the evidence just does not withstand even superficial scrutiny (2). So I'm sure that the archaeologists, led by Professor Mike Parker Pearson of University College London, have pulled a fast one and have joyfully fooled the media, the public and a large part of the archaeological establishment.

For a scientific hoax to be successful, it requires three preconditions:

1. A gullible public predisposed to believe in “new discoveries” — in this case, stories about the great skills of our prehistoric ancestors and the meaning of Stonehenge.

2. A colourful and swashbuckling lead character who has a respectable past and a strong media presence.

3. A body of “evidence” cited in support of the hoax which cannot be checked or replicated by anybody else.

All three preconditions are amply fulfilled in this case. In these days of alternative facts and false news, almost anything will grab the attention of the public.  The mere use of the word "Stonehenge" in a press release guarantees wide media coverage.  MPP is a popular figure who has been called the “Indiana Jones” of British archaeology, with a reputation for an endless stream of controversial theories. As far as I am aware, there was no independent scrutiny or peer review of the dig sites at Rhosyfelin and Carn Goedog while MPP and his team were at work between 2011 and 2016.   And the excavations have now been filled in, so that nobody can go back to them to check the cited “evidence”.  Wonderful!  That's a perfect scenario for a successful hoax……….

There has been extensive media coverage of the “bluestone quarries” since 2011, and this has ensured a considerable flow of research funding to finance eight digging seasons at the “quarrying” sites and elsewhere, as the archaeologists claim to be hunting for “proto-Stonehenge” in the North Pembrokeshire landscape.  Interestingly enough, the breathless and uncritical coverage has come not just in the tabloid press but also in popular archaeological and historical magazines.  Even science journals which -- presumably -- have some respect for the scientific method, have been swept along in the torrent of fake news coming from the digging team and their university press offices.

https://www.manchester.ac.uk/discover/news/stonehenge-bluestone-quarries-confirmed-140-miles-away-in-wales/
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2016/06/05/original-stonehenge-was-dismantled-in-wales-and-moved-to-wiltshi/
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-6018799/Ancient-WELSHMEN-helped-build-Stonehenge-5-000-years-ago-using-vast-bluestones.html
https://www.archaeology.org/issues/208-1603/trenches/4162-trenches-wales-stonehenge-bluestones
https://www.pourlascience.fr/sd/archeologie/lorigine-de-certaines-pierres-de-stonehenge-identifiee-au-pays-de-galle-12225.php

But clues as to what was going on were picked up at an early stage. The archaeologists who started digging at Rhosyfelin in 2011 announced before they broke the turf that they were investigating a quarry — which raised a few eyebrows. (Scientists do not normally announce their results before their research has started…..) At all stages of the dig, when I examined the open excavations in the company of other geologists and geomorphologists, we became more and more certain that all of the claimed “quarrying” or engineering features were entirely natural. Three of us published two peer-reviewed papers in 2015 containing our findings, but the archaeologists refused to acknowledge the existence of the papers, and even now, three years later, they will not admit that there is a dispute going on (3).  This is not just bad manners; it is scientific malpractice.

It gets worse.  After eight years of digging, not a single field report has been published. There have only been two reviewed journal articles, the first described by a senior academic as “one of the worst papers I have ever read” and the second one equally suspect (4).  The radiocarbon dating evidence from the two excavation sites does nothing to support the idea of quarrying, and has indeed been claimed to comprehensively falsify the quarrying hypothesis (5). No earth scientists have been systematically involved on-site in the annual excavations, which means that no serious questions have been asked when features have been interpreted as man-made. There have been no “control digs” at similar sites which migh demonstrate that the “quarrying" features are distinct or unique. And finally, not one of the many sites examined thus far for traces of “proto-Stonehenge” has proved to have anything to do with the iconic monument on Salisbury Plain (6). At every setback, the archaeologists have refused to back off,  have simply made their story more elaborate, and announced their next anticipated big discovery………..

So do the archaeologists still have any credibility? No.  Has the hoax finally run out of steam? Yes.

Here is a suggestion to the six senior members of the “bluestone quarries” project.  You've been rumbled.  Come clean, and admit that you have been enjoying a jolly prank with a serious intent in the background — namely to demonstrate how easy it is to promote a hypothesis that is underpinned by zero evidence.  Job done.  You should now, with smiles on your faces,  remind the public and the media that they should not necessarily believe things simply because they are repeated over and again, with apparent conviction, by senior academics.

POSTSCRIPT

Having thought more about this, I'll add a fourth precondition needed for a successful scientific hoax:

4. The ability to suppress or "drown out" anything inconvenient that might show up the hoax for what it is.

This can be achieved by doing deals with big business or grant-giving bodies which see that there would be large negative impacts for them should the hoax be exposed.  They will help you to promote the hoax and to suppress independent scientific research and conclusions.  You can also "drown out" inconvenient expressions of concern by using your contacts to repeat the hoax in print as often as possible and to develop it bit by bit in a way that can be represented as "hypothesis confirmation."   And of course you can vilify your opponents behind the scenes and use your establishment contacts to ensure that anything they write has little chance of being published.   This is all very jolly as long as you are not concerned about scientific ethics.



NOTES

(1)
 Charles Dawson’s “Piltdown Man” hoax, perpetrated in 1912, is one of the most famous scientific hoaxes of all time. Dawson (with the aid of other persons unknown) fabricated bits of two human skulls and claimed that he had discovered, near the village of Piltdown, the “missing link” between apes and human beings. There were concerns about his “discoveries” but the hoax was not proven until 1953, many years after Dawson’s death in 1916.

(2)
https://www.academia.edu/19788792/Quaternary_Events_at_Craig_Rhosyfelin_Pembrokeshire

https://www.academia.edu/19788912/Observations_on_the_supposed_Neolithic_Bluestone_Quarry_at_Craig_Rhosyfelin_Pembrokeshire

“The Stonehenge Bluestones”, 2018, Greencroft Books, 256 pp. ISBN: 978-0905559-94-0
http://www.brianjohn.co.uk/the-new-book.html

(3)
Parker Pearson, M., Pollard, J., Richards, C. and Welham, K., 2017. The origins of Stonehenge: on the track of the bluestones. Archaeology International, 20, pp.52–57. DOI: http://doi.org/10.5334/ai.353
(4)
 Mike Parker Pearson, Richard Bevins, Rob Ixer, Joshua Pollard, Colin Richards, Kate Welham, Ben Chan, Kevan Edinborough, Derek Hamilton, Richard Macphail, Duncan Schlee, Jean-Luc Schwenninger, Ellen Simmons and Martin Smith (2015). Craig Rhos-y-felin: a Welsh bluestone megalith quarry for Stonehenge. Antiquity, 89 (348) (Dec 2015), pp 1331-1352.

"Craig Rhos-y-felin: a Welsh bluestone megalith quarry for Stonehenge", by Mike Parker Pearson, Richard Bevins, Rob Ixer, Joshua Pollard, Colin Richards, Kate Welham, Ben Chan, Kevan Edinborough, Derek Hamilton, Richard Macphail, Duncan Schlee, Jean-Luc Schwenninger, Ellen Simmons, Martin Smith
Antiquity, Volume 89, Issue 348, December 2015
https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/421631/1/Megalith_quarries_Antiquity_REVISED.pdf

(5)

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2018/05/another-book-review.html

(6)

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2018/10/stonehenge-and-pembrokeshire-not-before.html

CA continues its quaint quarrying promotion campaign

The so-called bluestone quarries "in focus",  according to Current Archaeology.  I thought that magnifying glasses were supposed to be used for close scrutiny, and for bringing clarity?  Instead, what we get is sychophantic and shallow journalism, no scrutiny, and most definitely no enlightenment......

Thanks to Tony and David for drawing my attention to this one:

"Moving Monoliths: new revelations from the Preseli bluestone quarries". Current Archaeology, No 345, Dec 2018, pp 52 -- 55.

New?  This is all very surprising, since there has been no new work at either Carn Goedog or Rhosyfelin, and the last publication to mention the sites was almost a year ago:

Parker Pearson, M., Pollard, J., Richards, C. and Welham, K., 2017. The origins of Stonehenge: on the track of the bluestones. Archaeology International, 20, pp.52–57. DOI: http://doi.org/10.5334/ai.353

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2018/04/carn-goedog-no-excavation-reports-no.html

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.co.uk/2017/10/another-geology-paper-and-case-of.html

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/parker-pearson-et-al-on-carn-goedog.html

It is a sad state of affairs when a journal insists on flagging up "new revelations" when there is really nothing of any interest out there. Having now had a chance of looking at the article, it's clear that whoever wrote it has been conned.  He or she simply regurgitates material that is at least three years old, which has no more substance to it now than it did in 2015.  The author refers to all sorts of things that are supposedly "remarkable", including the "remarkable precision" of the Bevins / Ixer provenancing of individual stones to "specific rock faces."   That is wrong, as the author must know if he/she had bothered to read the literature properly. Then there is reference to "clear traces of Neolithic quarrying" -- with no mention of the fact that this is hotly disputed, with others (including myself) seeing no such traces.  The radiocarbon dating evidence, which by any independent analysis falsifies the quarrying hypothesis at Rhosyfelin, is portrayed as giving precise dates for quarrying activity.  "New revelations about how the stones were extracted and transported from the quarry sites are still emerging....."  Sorry, but there are no new revelations.  False news and sloppy journalism.

On and on it goes, with the author faithfully repeating whatever he / she has been told by MPP and his team.  It's all here -- the usual stuff about platforms, loading bays, trackways, dry stone walls and so forth........  As I have said before on this blog, this sort of stuff is typical of MPP and his team; we --  the gullible readers -- have no opportunity to see measured sections or site descriptions or to scrutinise this old-fashioned thing called  EVIDENCE.  What we get instead is a string of unsupported assertions and fantasies.  As I have said before, when I examined both of these sites I could see no evidence in support of any of these features, and had to conclude that they were all products of a desperate hunt for something of significance.  We don't even get to see the stratigraphic context of a "new" radiocarbon dated sample.  We are just expected to accept that it is important.

What is most entertaining in this article is the use of several photographs from the two digs at Rhosyfelin and Carn Goedog, purporting to demonstrate the existence of the "engineering features" which are lovingly referred to in the captions.  That was not a smart idea.  I defy any reader of the magazine to say, with hand on heart, that they can see anything in the images other than a jumble of rocks and sediments, arranged by nature without any human intervention at all.

Much is made of the discovery of something that might be a Neolithic end-scraper --  but the supposition that this might have had something to do with quarrying is nonsensical.  The reference to "a large, level platform" at Carn Goedog is frankly ridiculous -- on the photos it is neither large nor level, and when I examined in it reality, when the excavation pit was still open, I simply saw a jumble of large rocks with many different sloping surfaces which could never have facilitated the sliding and removal of pillars or anything else.

The latter part of the article consists of a string of yet more speculations and fantasies, bringing in proto-Stonehenge and Bluestonehenge for good measure.  Those are best forgotten about -- the evidence -- such as it is -- is years out of date.  On the final page of the article, there is a summary of what MPP et al wrote in the 2017 article:

Just beyond the edge of the platform we found an 11 m-long, 3 m-wide ditch. Dug to a depth of 0.4 m, its upcast was deposited on the side away from the outcrop and the ditch was then filled with large stones, creating a permanent barrier across which no monolith could be transported. The latest radiocarbon date on charcoal from this ditch indicates that it was filled-in around or after 3020–2880 BC. ..................      In summary, Carn Goedog’s main period of monolith extraction was slightly later than at Craig Rhos-y-felin, in the two or three centuries before 3000 BC. The same method was used of lowering monoliths onto a level platform, in this case built largely of large flat slabs with sediment in between them, sitting on top of the Neolithic ground surface. Unlike Craig Rhos-y-felin, no hollow way was formed by the hauling-away of monoliths, presumably because the hard ground and tough grass cover on this elevated hillside were not eroded by moving stones over the surface. The construction of a stone-filled ditch (the date of which coincides with Stage 1 at Stonehenge) as a barrier to cut off access to bluestone pillars from the outcrop, is intriguing. It may have served to prevent removal of any more of these important stones.

It's saddening to see that yet again CA is allowing itself to be a free promotional vehicle for something that just does not make any sense.  Just think about it for a moment -- why on earth would the  Carn Goedog quarrymen (just for fun, let's assume they actually existed) want to dig an 11m long ditch and fill it with big stones, just to stop people taking any more monoliths away from Carn Goedog?  When I looked, I saw no ditch, no spoil heap and no "fill" of large stones.  We are just told that they existed, and are expected to believe.  There is no evidence that the spotted dolerite from here (or anywhere else) was revered or special in any way, and if anybody had wanted to collect spotted dolerite monoliths they could have taken them from anywhere on other parts of the tor, or from the abundant assemblage of elongated erratic stones littering the local landscape.  This really is the storytelling obsession take to the extremes of absurdity.

I have seen a number of "junk science" articles in Current Archaeology before -- but I think this one really does take the biscuit.

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

NOTE

Given the fact that Mike Parker Pearson announced, about a year ago, that it was his intention to discover a giant stone circle -- proto-Stonehenge -- at Waun Mawn in September 2018, I am 100% convinced that the editor of CA set aside space in the December 2018 issue of the mag for a huge "breaking news" article.  When it transpired in September that there was nothing of any great importance at Waun Mawn, the editor was forced to fill the vacuum with this hotch-potch of old news, dressed up as something new and exciting.  Others might agree with me that it is more exciting to sit in front of a blank wall, watching paint as it dries......

Confucius he say:  be careful what you wish for.

Was Stonehenge an art installation?

Following our discussion on whether Stonehenge was a folly -- and whether I was serious in suggesting that in a BBC interview -- here is another interesting twist.

There is due to be a conference next February between artists and archaeologists (I think it would be more useful if they were to have one between scientists and archaeologists, but that's another matter......)

Let's go back a bit:
https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2010/09/more-on-stonehenge-folly.html

This is from another post in 2010:

Been engaging in a good debate on the Modern Antiquarian Forum, and thought I might share this post:
I have tried not to enter the discussion on WHAT STONEHENGE WAS FOR, but it's appealing to think of it as a puzzle, or an enigma, or a riddle, or even a folly. Maybe the builders themselves didn't know what it was for -- and there was just a powerful ruling clan who wanted to build something wacky as part of its attempt to establish its power base and to try out building techniques? Maybe they were VERY clever and knew that once it was built or partly built, for thousands of years thereafter people would expend vast amounts of energy and brain power trying to work out what the hell was going on...... and in the process invest the builders with spiritual, mathematical, astronomical and organizational skills that they never actually had. Brilliant!

Well, follies are generally built by eccentric people as a means of self-glorification. They have to have the cash and labour resources to do the job, and some handy land available, but otherwise (apart from the planning system) there's nothing much to prevent them from giving expression to their fantasies. Another feature about follies is that they are often not finished, because cash runs out, or the locals get upset about all this self-aggrandizement, and refuse to cooperate by withdrawing their labour or in other forms of sabotage. Stonehenge fits the bill precisely!

Anyway, some people have problems with the idea that Stonehenge might not have had either a practical or a ritual purpose.  There is some quite suggestive evidence to support the idea that Stonehenge was a folly, built by a power-mad cheiftain for self-glorification or else for the purpose of confusing future generations........

To repeat -- more or less -- what I said the other day:

1. Nobody can agree what Stonehenge is actually FOR. So it's an enigma -- and the whole point of creating a folly is that it should be enigmatic. Whoever had the cunning plan to build it, it obviously worked.

2. The signs are that it was never properly designed.  All that messing around with stone settings etc. Things that tend not to get finished are generally more frivolous than things that have a very serious intent -- like palaces and cathedrals etc.

3.  I read into the structure that the resources were never there to finish it -- either manpower resources or stone availability -- and that there was no clear economic imperative.

4. There was nothing like it before or after. That means it was an aberration, or a one-off. That signals folly to me.

5. All societies have their eccentrics and their peacocks who just want to show off.  It would be strange if Salisbury Plain had no prehistoric follies on it. 

https://rcahmw.gov.uk/braving-the-dragons-press-release/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+HeritageOfWalesNews+%28RCAHMW+Heritage+of+Wales+News%29

In the context of the advance publicity for this artist/archaeologist symposium, Chris Catling has said

‘I think archaeologists are beginning to understand that the past cannot be interpreted solely in terms of practicalities: we will not fully enter the minds of our ancestors until we appreciate that the artistic impulse is evident in a Neolithic polished axe and an Iron Age hillfort, and that artists have in the past been the innovators, leading humans into new areas of experience’.

He is not exactly saying that "installations" like Stonehenge are not necessarily "functional" or utilitarian, and he is not exactly saying that the old enigmatic ruin might be a folly, but what he does seem to be suggesting is that our prehistoric ancestors had artistic instincts which were strong enough to influence the design of an Iron Age hill fort.  If a hill fort, why not a stone circle or a stone row, or even a cromlech?  

It's not very much of a leap from there to the suggestion that Stonehenge might itself be an art installation, designed to express something emotional, arising simply from the creative impulse......

We have of course already heard about the theory that Stonehenge was a "sounding box" or a place for giving musical performances -- if banging on big rocks with smaller bits of rock can be counted as music......

And how much distance is there creatively, between a work of art and a folly?

Southern Cardigan Bay coast -- Devensian stratigraphy

Exposure at the northern end of Whitesands Bay, with a lodgement Irish Sea till overlain by deposits suggestive of an ice wastage environment -- similar to the situation at Abermawr.

One of the more confusing sequences in Pembrokeshire -- from the Trwynhwrddyn Peninsula at the northern end of Whitesands Bay.  The two till layers were probably laid down in a single glacial episode very close to a wasting ice edge.

Parrog, Newport -- showing the classic sequence through the Devensian glacial cycle.

Gwbert, at the mouth of the Teifi estuary.  This was a classic exposure of Irish Sea till and interbedded sands and gravels -- but the exposure was completely destroyed during coastal defence works.

Llanina, near New Quay.  There is some debate in this area about tills derived from the Irish Sea Glacier and from the Welsh Ice Cap.  This is one of the enigmatic coastal sections -- still not adequately studied.