Erratic boulder trains and fans

Super-erratic from Scandinavia, now found on the coast of Estonia.  Weight -- approx 2,500 tonnes.

The Thunder Stone is a vast erratic of Rapakivi Granite used as the plinth for a famous statue of Peter the Great in St Petersburg.  It was found in marshy ground not far from the shore of the Gulf of Finland, and was moved to its designated place entirely by "people power" over the course of two years.  It was reputed to weigh 1500 tonnes. This granite outcrops in a number of places in southern Finland.  (Thanks to Tony for bringing this to my attention.) 

On this map from RF Flint (1957) the Rapakivi granite outcrops are numbered 3 and 5.  The "Thunder Stone" was picked up maybe 60-70 km from its source, having been transported by ice in a SE direction.

Here are some maps of erratic trains and fans from around the world.  Widely differing scales.   Note that erratic trails or trains are relatively thin but are simplified on maps by drawing a line between source and end destination.  This is misleading, since erratic travel is normally NOT direct, since ice movement directions are shifting all the time.  More realistically, a zig-zag movement should be portrayed.   The maps showing "indicator fans" are also unrealistic, since they simply show the widest possible dispersal of rocks picked up by a glacier from a singe provenance or source. This to some degree demonstrates shifting ice movement directions.  Another factor to be taken into account is that many erratic boulders have been moved incrementally over the course of several different glaciations.

Note that some erratic blocks in Scandinavia and North America have been moved over 1,000 km.  That having been said, the great majority of erratic boulders (and "super-erratics") are derived from locations less than 10 km away from the places where they are now found.

Fracture opening up on Rödlöga Storskär in the Stockholm Archipelago. Probably this coincides with a pre-existing joint in the bedrock.   If the Last Glaciation had gone on for a little longer, a giant erratic weighing 100,000 tonnes would have been dragged away southwards.

Boulder trains in Tierra del Fuego

I did some posts a few years ago on erratic entrainment and transport, and on the Darwin Boulder Train in Patagonia. The key text at the time was this one:

Evenson, E.B., Burkhart, P.A., Gosse, J.C., Baker, G.S., Jackofsky, D., Meglioli, A., Dalziel, I., Kraus, S., Alley, R.B., Berti, C., 2009. Enigmatic boulder trains, supraglacial rock avalanches, and the origin of “Darwin's boulders,” Tierra del Fuego. GSA Today 19, 4–10. http://dx.doi.org/10.1130/GSATG72A.1.
If you put "Darwin Boulder Train" into the search box you will be able to see the relevant posts.

I omitted at the time to mention this very interesting article by Darvill, Bentley and Stokes:

Christopher M Darvill, Michael Bentley, and Chris R. Stokes, 2014. Geomorphology and weathering characteristics of erratic boulder trains on Tierra del Fuego, southernmost South America: Implications for dating of glacial deposits

Geomorphology 228, pp 382-397

DOI:
10.1016/j.geomorph.2014.09.017

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/266321104_Geomorphology_and_weathering_characteristics_of_erratic_boulder_trains_on_Tierra_del_Fuego_southernmost_South_America_Implications_for_dating_of_glacial_deposits[accessed Jul 20 2020].

Abstract

Erratic boulder trains (EBTs) are a useful glacial geomorphological feature because they reveal former ice flow trajectories and can be targeted for cosmogenic nuclide exposure dating. However, understanding how they are transported and deposited is important because this has implications for palaeoglaciological reconstructions and the pre-exposure and/or erosion of the boulders. In this study, we review previous work on EBTs, which indicates that they may form subglacially or supraglacially but that large angular boulders transported long distances generally reflect supraglacial transport. We then report detailed observations of EBTs from Tierra del Fuego, southernmost South America, where their characteristics provide a useful framework for the interpretation of previously published cosmogenic nuclide exposure dates. We present the first comprehensive map of the EBTs and analyse their spatial distribution, size, and physical appearance. Results suggest that they were produced by one or more supraglacial rock avalanches in the Cordillera Darwin and were then transported supraglacially for 100 s of kilometres before being deposited. Rock surface weathering analysis shows no significant difference in the weathering characteristics of a sequence of EBTs, previously hypothesized to be of significantly different age (i.e., different glacial cycles). We interpret this to indicate that the EBTs are much closer in age than previous work has implied. This emphasises the importance of understanding EBT formation when using them for cosmogenic nuclide exposure dating.

The main emphasis in the article is cosmogenic dating, but it is also suggested that erratic transport distances are quite modest in Patagonia, and that the main erratic trains are made of rockfall debris and boulders dumped onto glacier ice in the catchment areas and then transported supraglacially.  The cosmogenic dates support the idea that the erratic boulder trains of the studied ice lobe are relatively young, and this is supported by the appearance of the erratics themselves -- they are often very large, but relatively angular, with limited abrasion traces.  (If they had been transported subglacially, a higher degree of abrasion and rounding off of edges would be expected.)  However, there were exceptions, and the authors conclude that some of the erratics with anomalous ages have probably been recycled from the erratic trains and glacial deposits laid down in earlier glaciations.

There is an interesting but brief discussion on boulder size versus distance travelled, since the assumption is that large supraglacial erratics can travel for tens of kilometres without being dramatically modified, but that that scenario does not apply to erratics carried on a glacier bed.  Glacier modelling suggests that erratic breakage and comminution are key processes on the glacier bed, and the authors test this by citing ten other studies of erratic boulder trains from across the world.  Their graph (Figure 2) is not particularly helpful, partly because it is seriously lacking in data.  But all credit to the authors for trying to sort this out.  They say:

o

"..........our synthesis of previously published data suggests an apparent trend between transport distance, boulder size, and the proposed transport pathway (Fig. 2), with those moved greater distances (e.g. N~10 km) more likely to have been transported supraglacially. The relationship with boulder size is unsurprising given the association between transport pathway and boulder erosion (Boulton, 1978), but is important in the context of er- ratic dispersal more generally. For example, the principles of ‘half-dis- tance’ transport (Salonen, 1986) and concentration peaks (DiLabio, 1981, 1990; Boulton, 1996) may better relate to subglacial EBTs, where- as supraglacial EBTs are also controlled by the maximum transport distance and the preservation potential of the boulders."

Clearly this work has considerable implications for our considerations of the "bluestone erratic train" stretching from Preseli to Salisbury Plain.  Most of the bluestones at Stonehenge are abraded and weathered boulders -- as one might expect of material carried within or beneath a glacier.  But the monoliths that are shaped more like pillars are more difficult to explain.  Did they travel as pillars without being broken, or are they remnants of larger slabs or pillars? Most of the pillar bluestones have been shaped in the Stonehenge landscape by the people who found them and used them -- was that fashioning cosmetic, or quite dramatic in scale?  There is certainly enough bluestone "debitage" to suggest quite extensive working.   I have already done many posts on this topic.

This paper by Darvill et al is an interesting contribution, but there are abundant erratic boulder trains all over the world that they have not considered and which might allow interesting insights.  Also, the authors do not consider englacial transport mechanisms.

Ice does sometimes move by shearing, and debris does get lifted from the glacier bed towards the ice surface when it flows across basal ice that is blocked by transverse obstacles. Even without shearing, in areas of compressive flow within a glacier, erratic blocks and smaller debris must be lifted off the glacier bed and carried up into the body of the glacier for transport downstream.  Abrasion on a glacier bed is favoured by basal melting, which renews the "tool load" on the bed.  But the process of entrainment is a complex one, and even without regelation (the addition of ice layers on a glacier bed) if large plucked blocks of bedrock are not entrained of lifted off the bed, the basal debris load would become so thick that further erosion would become impossible.  And in every glaciated area we find deep bedrock hollows which are "clean" in the sense that the rock that once occupied them has been removed and quite literally lifted away.

This is an idealised diagram showing how ice flow in a glacier may carry ice (and debris) upwards towards the surface (compressing flow) or downwards towards the bed (extending flow).  We do not need to invoke actual shearing -- but it may occur.  This is for an idealised small glacier with a steep gradient.  Stretch it out to an ice stream more than 200 km long with a very gradual gradient or a flattish surface long profile (as in the case of the Irish Sea Ice Stream) and things become more complex and more subtle, with topography and the nature of pre-existing bottom sediments becoming more important.  But the same principles apply -- where there are obstacles or upslopes, there will be compressive flow, carrying erratic boulders and finer debris up into the body of the glacier and maybe even up onto the ice surface.  But if the area concerned happens to be above the equilibrium line (ie in the accumulation zone) the debris will immediately be buried by accumulating snow and firn, and incorporated into the body of the glacier.  

Ice that flows in constrained troughs (think Sognefjord and Nordvestfjord) flows UP reverse slopes as it approaches downglacier thresholds or if erosive power is lost because of diffluence.  As studies of intensively-glaciated terrain continue in Antarctica and Greenland, it is clear that ice erodes deeply and transports or evacuates erratics and debris UPSLOPE for considerable distances in closed troughs and in many other situations.  It is unrealistic to assume that the millions of tonnes of debris removed are all transported on the glacier bed.

Long profiles of glacier troughs, showing the depth of the trough floor beneath msl.  Above, Sognefjord, and below Hardangerfjord -- both in Norway.  Note that the floor of Hardangerfhord rises irregularly, because diffluence occurred across many cols and through distributive troughs in relatively low-lying coastal terrain  In Sognefojord supplemental inputs of ice from tributary glaciers enabled the Sognefjord Glacier to keep on "digging" until it was near the edge of the uplands -- at which point there was large-scale diffluence, and the glacier bed rose by 

about 1000m in just a few km.

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2017/01/on-uphill-transport-of-debris-by.html

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2020/01/strandflats-skerries-archipelagos-and.html

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2017/01/more-on-closed-subglacial-troughs.html

The debate continues........

The ability to knowledgeably question

The forgotten art of scrutiny.......  Thanks to Tony for posting this pic on Facebook.  The perfect illustration for this post!

Twenty-five years ago, Carl Sagan referred to a “slide back into superstition” of the religious variety and also a general "celebration of ignorance," such that well-supported scientific theories carry the same weight or less than explanations made up on the spot by authorities whom people have lost the ability to “knowledgeably question.”

The other day, I added this as a postscript to another post:

I like Sagan's reference to people who "have lost the ability to knowledgeably question" the so-called authorities who tell them things or sell them ideas. That is indeed a social epidemic, and a very dangerous one. I see the results almost every day, on blogs and in Facebook groups which I follow intermittently -- whenever a spectacular headline appears in the press following a press release relating to Stonehenge, we see a flood of comments showing that people are completely fooled by the snake oil salesmen, with hardly anybody going back to the recently published article itself and subjecting it to critical scrutiny. Why don't they do that? The reasons are many and varied -- but it's clear that people are intimidated by articles that have graphs and tables in them and by writing that is often far more complex than it needs to be.  And yes, one has to conclude that most members of the public no longer have the instinct or the ability to examine a text and work out for themeselves that what they are reading is complete tosh.

I have been looking at Wikipedia lately, and have been horrified by the extent to which the "volunteers" who manage the site are fooled into thinking that wildly speculative archaeological theories are actually factually based and "true" -- and by the blithe acceptance of press releases and newspaper articles as "supporting publications".  I know that Wikipedia depends upon its readers and volunteers for scrutinising the things that powerful vested interests place there, on the record --  but it seems to me that more and more fantasies are appearing on Wikipedia, to be accepted by gullible readers as "the truth."  So where are those who should be doing the "knowledgeable questioning"?

Maybe this is not something treated as a priority in modern universities?  

When this lack of scrutiny is coupled with the "celebration of ignorance" which we see in the mainstream media and in popular culture, we have a problem.    Another quote from Sagan:

The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance”

The wicked Dr Kurdling to Master Molesworth after delivering six of the best:  ".....that will teach you not to alter the ignorance of a lifetime!"

Newport rockfall removal

In November 2019 I reported on a massive fresh rockfall in the cliffs at the northern end of Traeth Mawr, Newport.   I went back there the other day while we were out for a walk on the beach, and it has almost all gone!   That must all be the result of wave action around HWM -- quite impressive, given that it has not been a particularly stormy winter.  Seven months of wave action, and virtually all of the finer material is gone -- and the larger boulders too have been rearranged and dispersed......

On the new photo below, I have marked in the approx shape of the debris cone as it was when fresh.

Addendum:  19 September 2020.  This is the rockfall site today (a clearer photo).  The remaining debris on the beach seems to have found some sort of equilibrium.....

Sagan, Scrutiny and Baloney

Carl Sagan,  defender of critical thinking

I sometimes get a hard time on certain Facebook group pages because I refuse to believe what senior archaeologists like Parker Pearson, Gaffney or Darvill  tell me -- or tell us, corporately -- in their "learned" articles.  "How dare I criticise them?" they protest. "They are archaeologists who know what they are talking about, and you are novice who knows nothing about their specialisms....."  I try to tell them that it matters not a jot who they are or how famous they may be, or whether I know a lot or a little about archaeology.  The article is the thing.  If it's rubbish, it's rubbish, and if that is not pointed out, then the rubbish is perpetrated and magnified and accepted as "the truth."

I had forgotten how wise Carl Sagan was on the subject of bad research and unsound conclusions.  I came across this video:



There is also a web article, here:

http://www.openculture.com/2018/03/carl-sagans-baloney-detection-kit.html?fbclid=IwAR2oFyiZwA1vOAsUh6XLVqpIxG_r5nEwSEAa_aRNM6xzmJS9Zuf99pHOyes


Extract:

In the essay, a chapter from his 1995 book The Demon-Haunted World, Sagan proposes a rigorous but comprehensible “baloney detection kit” to separate sense from nonsense.

** Wherever possible there must be independent confirmation of the “facts.”

** Encourage substantive debate on the evidence by knowledgeable proponents of all points of view.

** Arguments from authority carry little weight — “authorities” have made mistakes in the past. They will do so again in the future. Perhaps a better way to say it is that in science there are no authorities; at most, there are experts.

** Spin more than one hypothesis. If there’s something to be explained, think of all the different ways in which it could be explained. Then think of tests by which you might systematically disprove each of the alternatives.

** Try not to get overly attached to a hypothesis just because it’s yours. It’s only a way station in the pursuit of knowledge. Ask yourself why you like the idea. Compare it fairly with the alternatives. See if you can find reasons for rejecting it. If you don’t, others will.

** If whatever it is you’re explaining has some measure, some numerical quantity attached to it, you’ll be much better able to discriminate among competing hypotheses. What is vague and qualitative is open to many explanations.

** If there’s a chain of argument, every link in the chain must work (including the premise) — not just most of them.

** Occam’s Razor. This convenient rule-of-thumb urges us when faced with two hypotheses that explain the data equally well to choose the simpler. Always ask whether the hypothesis can be, at least in principle, falsified…. You must be able to check assertions out. Inveterate skeptics must be given the chance to follow your reasoning, to duplicate your experiments and see if they get the same result.

Calling his recommendations “tools for skeptical thinking,” he lays out a means of compensating for the strong emotional pulls that “promise something like old-time religion" and recognizing "a fallacious or fraudulent argument.” At the top of the post, in a video produced by Big Think, you can hear science writer and educator Michael Shermer explain the “baloney detection kit” that he himself adapted from Sagan, and just above, read Sagan’s own version, abridged into a short list (read it in full at Brain Pickings).

Like many a science communicator after him, Sagan was very much concerned with the influence of superstitious religious beliefs. He also foresaw a time in the near future much like our own. Elsewhere in The Demon-Haunted World, Sagan writes of “America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time…. when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few.” The loss of control over media and education renders people “unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true.”

This state involves, he says a “slide… back into superstition” of the religious variety and also a general "celebration of ignorance," such that well-supported scientific theories carry the same weight or less than explanations made up on the spot by authorities whom people have lost the ability to “knowledgeably question.” It’s a scary scenario that may not have completely come to pass... just yet, but Sagan knew as well or better than anyone of his time how to address such a potential social epidemic.

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

In my mind, this chimes in perfectly with the points made by Barclay and Brophy about archaeology, research and "interpretative inflation"........  For superstition, read "British Neolithic Mythos".

PS.      I like the reference to people who "have lost the ability to knowledgeably question" the so-called authorities who tell them things or sell them ideas.  That is indeed a social epidemic, and a very dangerous one.  I see the results almost every day, on blogs and in Facebook groups which I follow intermittently -- whenever a spectacular headline appears in the press following a press release relating to Stonehenge, we see a flood of comments showing that people are completely fooled by the snake oil salesmen, with hardly anybody going back to the recently published article itself and subjecting it to critical scrutiny.  Why don't they do that?  The reasons are many and varied -- but it's clear that people are intimidated by articles that have graphs and tables in them and by writing that is often far more complex than it needs to be.  And yes, one has to conclude that most members of the public no longer have the instinct or the ability to examine a text and work out for themeselves that what they are reading is complete tosh.

Clatford Bottom and the sarsens

The widely-favoured theory of sarsen stone formation, by Goudie and others.  This is 

the "periglacial" theory involving the downslope migration of blocks of silcrete.  

The arrow with the words "the ice melts" should really have been labelled "the ground 

ice melts."  Or should it.....??

This is an interesting article from Peter Worsley of Reading University.  Peter and I were contemporaries and met frequently back in the 1960s and 1970s at geomorphology conferences and other events.  I have great respect for his careful work, and it's good to see an article about sarsen sones which is free of wild speculations and assumptions.......

Here is the link:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/P_Worsley/publication/336003003_Geology_of_the_Clatford_Bottom_catchment_and_its_sarsen_stones_on_the_Marlborough_Downs

Geology of the Clatford Bottom catchment and its sarsen stones on the Marlborough Downs

Peter Worsley
MERCIAN GEOLOGIST 2019 19 (4).p 242-252

Abstract:
The now vanished Palaeogene geology of the Marlborough Downs area can be plausibly reconstructed by extrapolation from the surviving rock record lying immediately to the east. The Lambeth Group succession dominated by the Reading Formation, formerly extended westwards over the Downs. Anastomosing river channels draining from NW to SE created linear belts of sand extending across a clay-rich floodplain and coastal plain. During the Palaeogene/Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) global warming event (c.55.5 Ma), groundwater silicification within the sand bodies led to concretion formation (sarsens). Denudational processes led to the sarsens and their Reading Formation host being incorporated into a complex residual deposit, the Clay-with- flints, over Chalk Group bedrock. Following dissection, the Clay-with- flints now occupies the higher chalk interfluves and spurs. During progressive late Cenozoicerosion over at least the last 3 Ma, the present-day relief and its dry valley systems developed under a fluctuating temperate/cold climatic regime. The dominant processes were dissolution of the chalk (this continues today) and fluvial incision, mainly during phases of permafrost development. Following exhumation, the sarsens were lowered as the chalk landscape evolved and later redistributed by solifluction process during repeated cold climate stages.

Most of the article is taken up with a discussion on the origins of the sarsens and the Sarsen stone concentrations of stone streams on valley bottoms -- worth reading since it is clear and concise, with good illustrations.  On the geomorphological context, there are two theories, one involving the breakup of the silcrete crust or cap, the formation of chalk dry valleys and the downslope movement of silcrete slabs and fragments under Ice Age (periglacial) conditions; and the other involving the creation of different types of sarsens depending on environmental conditions at the time of formation, with later resultant slabs and blocks being "let down" onto the landscape without much lateral movement or "migration."  This latter theory seems sensible to me,  since there is no particular reason why sarsen blocks should originally have been more abundant on interfluves.  Indeed, as Worsley explains, the "drainage line" theory might be more attractive since it might account for thicker silcrete crusts on drainage lines or in river valleys, and thinner silcretes on the interfluves -- so although the silcrete blocks might have been let down onto the current landscape by 100m or more, the lateral distribution of silcrete remnants (ie sarsen stones) might not have changed much over 50 million years or so.  

Worsley seems to prefer a composite theory, involving some lateral downslope migration especially at times of cold climate, since he argues that there is no reason to assume that the drainage pattern 55 million years ago looked anything like that of today.  I would argue that it might well have done, since structural lineations, fault lines, etc will have exerted an influence then as now.

Worsley has not got much time for the standard conviction, in archaeological circles, that the Marlborough Downs provided the "quarrying" or extraction locations for all of the big sarsens used at Stonehenge.  He concludes:  " Geological evidence in confirmation of this haulage hypothesis is conspicuous by its absence (John, 2018), although in 2019 the Natural England web site for Fyfield Down has no doubts! A pioneering heavy-mineral study (Howard, 1982) concluded that the Stonehenge sarsen materials differed from sarsen samples from the Marlborough Downs, namely Clatford Bottom and Piggledene. This conclusion has been supported by recent laser scanning data from Stonehenge, which indicate differing chemistries that in turn are likely to reflect source variability. Currently, a project by Nash and Ciborowski at the University of Brighton, using ICP-MS/AES (inductively coupled plasma: mass or atomic emission spectroscopy) analyses seeks to establish geochemical fingerprints of sarsens both at Stonehenge and at potential sources in southern England (including the Marlborough Downs). The jury is still out."

Definitions:

Silcrete:  A terrestrial, geochemical sediment that is formed by low-temperature, near-surface, physico-chemicalprocesses operating within the zone of weathering, in which silica has accumulated in, and/or replaced, a pre-existing soil, sediment, rock or weathering material. Silcretes contain more than 85% silica by weight, with some pure examples consisting of more than 95% silica (Sommer eld, 1983). The term was first introduced by Lamplugh (1902) to describe (in an Irish context) “sporadic masses of ‘grey wether’ type, indurated by a siliceous cement”. (Fr. silcrete)

Clay-with- flints Formation: A residual deposit formed from the dissolution, decalicification and cryoturbation of bedrock strata of the Chalk Group and Palaeogene formations. It is unbedded and heterogeneous, dominated by orange- brown and red-brown sandy clay with abundant nodules and rounded pebbles of flint. Locally it includes bodies of fine to medium grained sand, clayey silt, sandy clay, with beds of well-rounded pebbles and sarsen stones (modified from the BGS online Lexicon). (Fr. Argiles à silex)

Head:  Head is a uniquely British term (some call it archaic as is Drift!), for describing non-sorted and poorly stratified debris mantling hillslopes and partially infilling valley floors. It is the result of solifluction, the slow downslope flow of saturated unfrozen sediments over either dissipating seasonal frost or where the substrate is permafrost, the flow occurs within a thickening active layer. A synonym is gelifluctate. (Fr. depots de couverture) (Comment BSJ: Nowadays this material is generally referred to as slope breccia, stratified, unstratified or pseudo-stratified.)

Coombe deposits:  Compact gravel containing flints and clasts of chalk in a matrix of weathered finely divided chalk-rich and silty material. Frequently found beneath the floors of southern English chalkland dry valleys and where such valleys cut open onto low ground, they form low angle alluvial fans. They reflect a combination of solifluction and fluvial transport, the latter being meltwater deposits derived from either ground ice or snow. Can be crudely mixed or roughly stratified. (Fr. glisements de coombe)

There are interesting discussions relating to the origins of clay-with-flints and head in the Clatford Bottom area, and what impresses me is the sheer lithological variety encountered in exposures.  It is clearly difficult in many locations to decide what label to give to a particular deposit -- and within the "clay-with-flints" category there are brickearths, clay deposits, sandy and gravelly layers and deposits that are really rather similar to tills.  Geoffrey Kellaway made the mistake in 1977 of trying to label ALL of the clay-with-flints as remnants of the Plateau Drift, referring to them as the decalcified remains of a cover of glacial till.  He later revised this opinion, in 1991, but I still wonder whether there has been a very complacent labelling of the "clay-with-flints" as a low-lying blanket of weathered residues derived from overlying beds that have been eroded away over many millions of years.   I would not be at all surprised to find that some of the deposits lumped together under this one label prove to be very old true tills, the last remains of a patchy deposit now largely destroyed.   Has anybody seriously looked for erratics in the deposit?  There would not be many of them, since in tills we find that more than 90% of the stone content can be locally derived -- but the shapes and surface characteristics of many of the Stonehenge bluestones suggest that they are erratics, and they must have been collected from somewhere not too far away.......

 

Exposure of clay-with-flints.  The appearance is not a million miles away from that of a true glacial till.......

Black dots:  locations of silcretes or sarsen stones across southern England.  Many of them are NOT located on the chalklands.... (from a talk by Katy Whitaker).

Bluestones and Interpretative Inflation

Waun Mawn and Craig Rhosyfelein -- two sites where mythification and interpretative inflation have been unrestrained.  The former is promoted as the site of "proto-Stonehenge" and the latter as the site of  a bluestone quarry and "a prehistoric Pompeii".......

It's interesting to reflect further on the significance of the recent article by Gordon Barclay and Kenneth Brophy, not just because of the manner in which Neolithic archaeology in the UK has become dominated by the "British Neolithic Mythos" or mythical narrative, but also because of the diminished respect for evidence and the truth that we see in many so-called "academic" or "scholarly" publications.  At the same time we see the decline of the scientific method, ubiquitous assumptive research, the assignment of false significance, the refusal to set up control studies, and the obsessive use of ruling hypotheses leading to the twisting and manipulation (and also the invention) of evidence.  Some studies have become so distorted that they should probably be classified as scientific hoaxes. 

So scientific malpractice is more and more common.  And it can be no coincidence that this trend has become noticeable while phenomenology has become popular in academic archaeology -- the invention of "the story" is the thing, and facts and evidence are deemed to be rather boring..........  So the truth ceases to matter very much, if at all.

In a world dominated by phenomenology and narrative creation, interpretative inflation becomes inevitable. The four stages of interpretative inflation, according to Barclay and Brophy:

1.  presentation of data with relatively restrained preliminary interpretation in the first part of the original academic paper;

2.  less tentatively, in the later part of the paper (and in the Abstract) more far- reaching interpretation, with less support offered;

3.  even more ambitious claims in media releases prepared by the universities, incorporating direct quotations from the authors;

4.  creation of attention-grabbing headlines and soundbites in the media by journalists working from the press releases,  further amplified through interviews with the lead authors, and affected by the media outlet’s own political angle.

(I might add a phase 2 (b), in which authors of original "learned" papers follow them up with unreferenced and "sexed up" versions of their research in popular glossy archaeology or history magazines.)

We can see this process of inflation at work in almost all of the bluestone-related papers published in recent years by the Bevins / Ixer / Parker Pearson cooperative,  as I have pointed out over and again in my analyses of their work.  We can see it most recently in the many articles cited by Barclay and Brophy relating to Stonehenge, Durrington Walls, teeth, bones and isotopes. (Again, purely by chance, Prof MPP is often involved......)  And we can see it with startling clarity in the recent paper by Vince Gaffney and others on the "Durrington Shafts" which will no doubt have the same fate as the spectacular "line of massive standing stones" supposedly discovered a few years ago. 

Should we be worried?  Well, yes we should -- because when academic standards are lowered and when all that matters is "impact" public cynicism about academia is bound to increase.

So when Sue Greaney give a podcast incorporating a fantastical narrative (and almost a liturgy) relating to a Neolithic burial ceremony, at one level it's a bit of radio entertainment, but at another level it's a demonstration that storytelling and marketing have become more "respectable" than scientific evidence and the truth.

Some years ago I had a bit of a spat with  Bronwen Price about her fantastical interpretation of the Craig Rhosyfelin site on a popular Welsh tourism website called "Land of Legends".  On the site, many fascinating locations were included because of their mythological / literary associations.  The Craig Rhos-y-felin entry should not have been included at all, since there is no mythology attached to the site. (Or at least there wasn't until MPP started to create it.)  But for better or for worse, there it is, written by Bronwen Price of Literature Wales, who has an archaeology doctorate and who should therefore know what she is talking about.  But in almost every respect, this entry is at fault, portraying the assumptions and speculations of a few archaeologists as established fact.  

http://www.landoflegends.wales/theme/sacred-and-spiritual

With regard to the “site description”, these are some of the fundamental errors:

Some of the bluestones of Stonehenge were quarried here. There is no evidence to support this statement. Some small fragments of foliated rhyolite found in the soil at Stonehenge appear to have come from the Rhosyfelin area — that’s the best that can be said. They might have come from destroyed cutting or slicing tools. The use of the word “quarried” is entirely inappropriate.

First used for a local monument in about 3400 BC, they were moved to Salisbury Plain 500 years later where they stood in various settings before the giant inverted ‘U-shaped’ stones joined them in 2500 BC. There is no evidence for there ever being a “local monument” or photo-Stonehenge in the local area around 3400 BC or at any other date. That is a piece of unsupported speculation from Mike Parker-Pearson. There is no evidence that the stones were moved to Salisbury Plain by human agency c 2900 BC or at any other time. The smaller bluestones at Stonehenge were indeed moved about and used in various settings, but there is no proof that the sarsens were not used on the site until later. The expression “giant inverted U-shaped stones” is really rather strange — each of the trilithons consists of two uprights and a capstone.

This makes Stonehenge a truly Welsh site….. This is nonsense.

…..something supported by the Boscombe Bowmen: seven individuals re-buried in a mass grave near Stonehenge around 2300 BC. All were seemingly born and raised in south-west Wales, travelling to Wessex during their lifetime. This is wild speculation — I know of no evidence linking the Boscombe Bowmen to SW Wales. According to all the published analytical data, they are just as likely to have come from elsewhere in South Wales, Devon, Cornwall, or the Lake District or any other area of ancient rocks.

This connection and journeys from the west are recalled in folk legend - Geoffrey of Monmouth (c. 1100-1155) retells the ancient belief that Merlin brought Stonehenge from Ireland. The idea that Geoffrey of Monmouth was repeating some ancient “folk memory” has been around for a long time! But we now know that he invented many of his stories with political and PR considerations in mind — and he was indeed in the business of promoting Wales and its heroes. He was a fiction writer, and not an historian, and he invented the “ancient belief” himself.

The rock face retains the natural pillar formations which the stone-cutters exploited. This is incorrect. On the rock face there are many intersecting fractures, which explains why the most predominant shapes in the slope accumulations are slabs and blocks rather than elongated pillars. There were no “stone-cutters” at Rhosyfelin, in spite of what Mike Parker-Pearson may tell you. In the Neolithic there was no method which allowed the cutting of stone.

You can enjoy a picnic where they camped 5400 years ago. This at least is partly true! Radiocarbon dates show that there is a long history of intermittent occupation by hunting and gathering parties at Rhosyfelin, between the Mesolithic and the Middle Ages. None of the dates coincides with a supposed "quarrying phase". 

When all of this was pointed out to Bronwen Price and Literature Wales, they refused point blank to re-write this entry to more accurately represent the scientific consensus.  Stubborn mules and ostriches with heads in sand come to mind. 

 Neither Visit Wales nor Literature Wales should be in the business of inventing an "alternative truth" or promoting new myths based on dodgy science.  Nor should the archaeology departments of our universities, or the professional academies which supposedly exist to uphold standards.

PS

I have been involved in a jolly spat on a Facebook group page, in which I pointed out that certain contributors who were regurgitating the media praise for the latest Altar Stone paper should really read the paper rather than Daily Mail and Times headlines.  I said that what we were seeing, in the media coverage of that paper, was classic interpretative inflation, since the paper was actually a geology paper with no archaeology in it whatsoever.  Some of the comments were classic ones, submitted by people who were furious that I should seek to undermine the ignorance of a lifetime; they feel, as do many other gullible people, that what eminent archaeology professors say is bound to be correct.  All good fun, but the most interesting thing was that somebody mistakenly used the term "interpretative INFLAMMATION."  I really like that.  Inflammation, of course, means setting something on fire, or in a medical context a bodily reaction to harmful stimuli.  Spot on!