Scourse versus John: a rather Scilly spat

Faithful readers of this blog will recall that back in October, Quaternary Newsletter published my short paper on the Isles of Scilly, in which I proposed that the glaciation of the archipelago was rather more extensive than previously postulated.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328413421_Evidence_for_extensive_ice_cover_on_the_Isles_of_Scilly 

Anyway, shortly after publication the Editor of the journal informed me that she had received a detailed comment from Prof James Scourse, and suggested that I might wish to respond.  So I did just that, displaying great self-restraint, and the discussion between James and me is now published in Quaternary Newsletter 147 (Feb 2019).

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/331465702_Glaciation_of_the_Isles_of_Scilly_Discussion

I won't enter into a detailed analysis of his point-by-point assault on my competence and my integrity -- apart from saying that I was very disappointed by the tone of his comments.  Readers can form their own view of the proceedings!  We are actually agreed on most things, and James seems to be particularly infuriated by my failure to use the "right" lithostratigraphic labels for certain of the sediments which I describe.   I make no apologies for that.  They are HIS labels, not mine, and I am not convinced that some of them are all that useful for describing a suite of glacigenic deposits which display considerable lateral variations in texture and degrees of modification -- as one would expect in any ice-marginal environment. 

I also stand by everything contained in the original paper.  I am still convinced that the WHOLE of the archipelago has been overwhelmed by glacier ice at some stage in the past.  I am convinced that erratics contained in the raised beaches and other identified coastal sediments have nothing to do with ice-rafting.  I am unmoved by James's conviction that "there is no evidence" for the glaciation of parts of the coasts of Devon and Cornwall.  There is plenty of evidence --it's just that he and I choose to interpret it in different ways.   And I am convinced that the Late Devensian ice which pressed onto the northern and western coasts of the islands was also more extensive than suggested by James Scourse and others.

Ironically, at the end of James's point-by-point attempt to discredit me as an observer and interpreter of Quaternary sediments, he agrees -- somewhat grudgingly -- that I am probably correct!

John did not visit the islands of Annet and Samson but argues that future investigations of these islands “may suggest that a lobe of ice pushed in from the west”. Recent observations from the west coast of Samson (D. Mawer, pers. comm., 2017), supported by photographic evidence, are convincing to me in indicating an exposure of Hell Bay Gravel here. If this is correct it would indeed represent a change in the ice limit on Scilly. This locality, and the sections described by John, require independent assessment and thorough description. It is likely that some details of the Late Devensian ice limit on Scilly will be redrawn as new sections and new observations come to light. 

So -- a lot of insulting bluster about nothing very much, and I look forward to further research which will help us to decide exactly where the Late Devensian ice limit was located.  It looks as if I am not far out with my ice limit proposal for the isle of Samson.  Next, evidence is needed from Annet, which, I suspect, was overridden by ice.  But access isn't that easy, and because it is a nature reserve used by nesting sea-birds, fieldwork visits probably have to be concentrated into the autumn and winter seasons.

See also:

Smedley, R.K., Scourse, J.D., Small, D., Hiemstra, J.F., Duller, G.A.T., Bateman, M.D., Burke, M.J., Chiverrell, R.C., Clark, C., Davies, S.M., Fabel, D., Gheorghiu, D.M., McCarroll, D., Medialdea, A.M., Xu, S. (2017). New age constraints for the limit of the British-Irish Ice Sheet on the Isles of Scilly. Journal of Quaternary Science, 32, 48-62. doi: 10.1002/jqs.2922

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jqs.2922/epdf

Map showing the dated sites on the north coasts of Scilly, all within the putative Late Devensian ice limit.  As I have mentioned before, I am amazed that such experienced Quaternary scientists did not collect any control samples or undertake any dating work outside this limit -- which was and is hypothetical.  If they had, they may have found something interesting........ such as a more extensive ice cover.

Isles of Scilly Glaciation map is corrected

I'm grateful to the Editor of Quaternary Newsletter for reproducing the correct version of the map on Fig 11 of my paper published in QN146.  In the journal it was inexplicably chopped in half -- so now it is correct and on the record!

Figure 11. Modified glacial limits for the Devensian glaciation of the Isles of Scilly, based largely upon evidence presented in this paper. The red line represents the limit of the Hell Bay Gravels, taken by Scourse (1991) and others to represent the maximum extent of Devensian ice. The black line shows a revised Devensian limit, incorporating ice incursion from the west into the southern islands.

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

ERRATUM “EVIDENCE FOR EXTENSIVE ICE COVER ON THE ISLES OF SCILLY” (BRIAN JOHN (2018), QN 146, 3-27)

The editor extends apologies for the final assembly error in QN 146 within which Figure 11 of the article by John (2018), on page 24 of QN 146, was truncated. The correct version of the author’s figure is shown below. Please also note for the black-and-white print version that the ‘red’ line is that uppermost and leftmost line on the page, whilst the black line is the line with more curves below that.

Quaternary Newsletter Vol. 147 February 2019

See also:
https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2018/10/isles-of-scilly-new-paper-now-published.html


https://www.researchgate.net/publication/ 328413421_Evidence_for_extensive_ice_cover_on_the_Isles_of_Scilly/figures?lo=1

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/331465702_Glaciation_of_the_Isles_of_Scilly_Discussion

Happy St David's Day!

Daffodils at the bottom of the garden -- and the river remarkably low for the time of year.......

Another whale in another forest

Interesting media coverage today for a rotting carcass of a humpback whale which has been found on the Atlantic shore near the mouth of the Amazon River.  Apparently it lies about 15m inland from the shoreline, and the speculation is that the animal was very dead when it arrived, and that it was washed inland during an unusually high tide, with considerable waves washing into the forest.  

Bloggers will recall this post:

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2018/09/the-whale-in-forest.html

in which I speculated about the origins of a blue whale found in among the debris of the submerged forest on the Pembrokeshire coast.

At a time of rising sea-level, around 7,000 years ago, there must have been many examples of dead marine mammals being washed onto the shore and tangled up among the broken tree stumps and fallen branches resulting from the overwhelming and destruction of the forest.

Yet another quarry hunters' hypothesis bites the dust

Broken blocks and slabs of spotted dolerite on the southern flank of the Carn Goedog tor.  Sharp-edged fractures predominate, as you would expect in an area much affected by frost-shattering.  The shapes of these stones are quite different from the shapes of the five "Carn Goedog bluestones" at Stonehenge.

The five named spotted dolerite bluestones at Stonehenge did NOT come from a bluestone quarry.

Here is another post on the little matter of the Carn Goedog "bluestone megalith quarry" which is greatly loved by Parker Pearson, Rob Ixer, Richard Bevins and a whole host of others.

First: the latest article, which has reverberated round the world in a welter of gushing praise:

Megalith quarries for Stonehenge's bluestones
Mike Parker Pearson, Josh Pollard, Colin Richards, Kate Welham, Chris Casswell, Charles French, Duncan Schlee, Dave Shaw, Ellen Simmons, Adam Stanford, Richard Bevins and Rob Ixer.

Antiquity, Volume 93, Issue 367
February 2019 , pp. 45-62

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/megalith-quarries-for-stonehenges-bluestones/AAF715CC586231FFFCC18ACB871C9F5E

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/megalith-quarries-for-stonehenges-bluestones/AAF715CC586231FFFCC18ACB871C9F5E/core-reader

Do these people ever do any joined-up thinking? I have been undertaking some more fieldwork at Carn Goedog, followed by some simple desk research.

I asked myself a simple question: Could the Stonehenge spotted dolerite bluestones named in the article have been quarried at Carn Goedog during the Neolithic?

Quote: At least five bluestone pillars (Stones 33, 37, 49, 65 & 67) were taken from Carn Goedog, and probably many more (Bevins et al. 2013). The multiple and large recesses in the rock face are further evidence that pillar removal was extensive at this outcrop, even though quarrying in the early modern period has obscured evidence of pillar removal in the western part of the outcrop.

So let's check out those five "pillars" (only one is a pillar, and three might be called slabs, but let that pass for a moment) on Simon Banton's splendid web site.

http://www.stonesofstonehenge.org.uk/search/label/Stone%20067

33 -- well worn short and stumpy pillar. Rectangular section. Standing. Signs of some shaping? Spotted dolerite with whitish spots. A axis 1.68m above ground. Weight 0.51 tonnes above ground.

37 -- smallish well-rounded boulder, slightly slab-shaped and set on end. Standing. One of the strangest shapes of all the stones. Spotted dolerite with moderate spots. A axis 1.27m. Weight above ground 0.81 tonnes.

49 -- small irregular slab with quite sharp edges. Standing. Upright. Broken angled fracture at one end. Also a facet / missing chunk off one edge. Spotted dolerite with pinkish spots. A axis 1.90m, B 1.60m. C 1.80m. D1.63m.

65 — irregular elongated boulder with well-rounded edges. Recumbent. Some signs of facets? Typical glacial erratic. Axis A 0.28m. B 0.15m. Very small indeed.

67 — slightly tapering elongated pillar. Recumbent. Well rounded edges — signs of facets on the broadest end. The other end is embedded in the ground.) Axis A 0.41m. Weight 1.59 tonnes?

Now these five bluestones "taken from Carn Goedog" may indeed be made of the right sort of spotted dolerite and they might indeed have come from the Carn Goedog dolerite sill, but just look at their shapes and dimensions.  Apart from number 33, as fine a mottley collection of battered slabs and boulders as you are ever likely to see. There is no way that these were extracted fresh (with the use of wedges and levers) from a Neolithic quarry at Carn Goedog -- they are so heavily weathered and abraded, with (for the most part) rounded or well-rounded edges and corners, and even with facets quite clearly seen in the photos, that they have to be glacial erratics. They have been lying around for very much more than 5,000 years.  Forget about weights and dimensions for the moment (these are unreliable anyway) -- but there is nothing about them that suggests quarrying.  If one examines the detached blocks in the "quarry" area examined by the Parker Pearson team at Carn Goedog, there are sharp corners and relatively unabraded surfaces -- quite unlike stones 33, 37, 49, 65 and 67 at Stonehenge.

Why was this fundamental problem not pointed out to Parker Pearson by the two geologists involved in this work?  Or maybe it was, and they all thought they could get away with yet another con trick.......

I rest my case.  Another nail in the quarry hunters' coffin.


Geology references:

"Geochemistry, Sources and Transport of the Stonehenge Bluestones", O. Williams-Thorpe & R. S. Thorpe (Proceedings of the British Academy, 77, pp 133-161, 1991)

BEVINS, R.E., R.A. IXER & N.G. PEARCE. 2013. Carn Goedog is the likely major source of Stonehenge doleritic bluestones: evidence based on compatible element geochemistry and principal components analysis. Journal of Archaeological Science 42: 179–93.

Glacial features on Carn Goedog

Photo taken from Carn Alw, looking towards the hillside tor of Carn Goedog -- in the middle distance.

I spent a whole afternoon up at Carn Goedog yesterday, enjoying perfect summer weather -- in February.   That's not the way it should be, but it was truly wonderful up there.

I'm working on a new paper about Carn Goedog,  which will not please the megalithic quarrymen, but somebody has to do it........

More in due course on the geology and the archaeology (well, there isn't really any archaeology to talk of at Carn Goedog, but you know what I mean.)  But I made some careful observations on the geomorphology of the tor.

The spotted dolerite outcrops and associated "rock litter" at Carn Goedog are spread across a vast area -- around 60,000 sq m.  The tor is undoubtedly very old, and it has been denuded my many different processes over a vast amount of time -- we are talking of many millions of years.   The most obvious processes that have affected the tor during the last million years are frost-shattering and downslope slumping and collapse -- these processes are still operating, and because there are so many balanced and rocking stones on the north face of the tor one has to move about rather cautiously......  some of them might be referred to as "perched blocks".  But the most recent intensive phase of periglacial activity must have been during the 70,000 years or so of the Devensian cold phase.  (That's a long time, when set aside the mere 20,000 years or so since the cold phase ended.......)  During that time, I should not be surprised if the whole of the Carn Goedog area was buried or "blotted out" by vast snowbanks, maybe for many centuries at a time.  The shady north-facing slopes of mountain ridges  are perfect places for snow accumulation and survival.

What interests me increasingly is this question: to what extent was the tor affected by glacier ice during the Anglian, Devensian and maybe other glaciations as well?

Classic ice-moulded or scoured rock surface on the north flank of Carn Alw.  The ice action reponsible was almost certainly late Devensian.  If the moulding had been  from an earlier glacial episode, this face would by now have been covered with scree.

There are six or seven different locations on the north face of the Carn Goedog tor where we can see ice-moulded bedrock slabs.  These are always north-facing, indicating ice assault from the north.  That figures, since all of the other evidence from North Pembrokeshire points to ice movement involving the Irish Sea Glacier, from the N or NW.  I have shown some images of these undulating moulded and smoothed surfaces here:

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2015/05/ice-moulded-surfaces-carn-goedog.html

Above:  two locations where undulating ice-moulded slabs can still be seen on the northern flank of the Carn Goedog tor.

The highest of the slabs is very close to the summit of the tor, at about 950 ft (290 m), and this suggests that the whole of the tor was overtopped by ice at some stage.  That of course must have happened during the Anglian glaciation, when the ice may well have been 1,000m thick when it crossed Preseli and flowed off south-eastwards and eastwards towards the Bristol Channel and the Somerset coast.  That's when any erratics from this area must have been entrained and transported. So are the highest slabs on the tor around 250,000 years old?  We need some detailed weathering studies and cosmogenic dating to sort that out.......

But something more fascinating is that the bulk of the visible ice-moulded slabs on the north face of the tor are at or below an altitude of 800 ft (243 m).  It's quite possible that there are others above that altitude that have been buried or obliterated by rock collapse from the myriad of rocky ridges and "mini-summits" on the flank of the tor.  More detailed research may well be rewarding in this respect. But below this approx altitude of 250m it's possible that glacier ice impinging on the face of the tor has removed some boulder debris that might have masked old ice-moulded surfaces and even freshened up the surfaces themselves.

So can Devensian surfaces be differentiated from Anglian surfaces?  Again, cosmogenic dating may be required to sort it all out........

This is not the first time I have speculated about a change in the landscape and the nature of the deposits coinciding with the 250m contour.  I have suggested many times that the ice of the Devensian Irish Sea Glacier pressed against the Mynydd Preseli north face, and here are two  of my maps:

Two suggested ice limits for the Devensian Irish Sea Glacier.  The lower map -- which I now think is most likely to be reliable -- shows the Carnedd Meibion Owen ridge (and its tors) affected by Devensian ice -- but with no ice topping the main upland ridge.

It then starts to gert a bit messy when we bring the Preseli Ice Cap into the frame -- as suggested in earlier posts such as this one:

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2016/08/the-devensian-preseli-ice-cap.html

As Chris will remember from our rambling up on Banc Llwydlos back in 2016, there are apparently glacial deposits at around 340m -- but which ice body are they related to, and how do they relate to the marginal meltwater channel traces that we see right across the north Preseli landscape?  Work in progress...........

Computer generated modelling of the possible extent of an ephemeral Preseli Ice Cap during the Devensian.  (Thanks to Henry Patton and others.)

But the evidence is accumulating:

1.  The Tafarn y Bwlch moraine -- altitude between 250m and 280m.

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2015/11/the-tararn-y-bwlch-moraine.html

2.  The morainic accumulation in the col to the west of Carn Goedog -- altitude  broadly similar.

3.  The ice smoothing on the northern face  of Carn Alw and on many other bedrock exposures at and below a similar altitude.

4.  Area of undulating terrain which looks like a moraine -- not far from Hafod Tydfil.  Similar altitude.

5.   Hummocky area between Carn Alw and Carn Goedog, crossed by  deep gullies and by the old drover's route.   Abundant boulders littering the surface.  Altitude c 250m.  Photo below.

My current thesis is therefore that  Carn Goedog and the rest of the north flank of Preseli has been affected at least twice by the Irish Sea Glacier.  During the first episode, around 250,000 years ago, ice flowed across the whole landscape, and even the Preseli summits were deeply submerged.  At that time, there was at least one episode of strong erosion, with the ice creating moulded surfaces on the north face of the tor and also entraining many loose slabs, boulders and elongated "pillars."   Much more recently, around 20,000 years ago, in Late Devensian times, there was a short-lived ice incursion again by the Irish Sea Glacier, during which the ice edge lay at an altitude of approx 250m on the north face of the upland ridge.  There may have been an interaction with a small ice cap centred on Preseli, but the details of this still need to be worked out.

The strange methods of the megalithic quarry-hunters

MPP and colleagues in the early stages of the Rhosyfelin dig. (Pic: Green Man Tours)
The big stone on which MPP is standing was announced (somewhat prematurely) to the world as an abandoned orthostat originally intended for transport to Stonehenge, from "the Pompeii of prehistoric stone quarries........"  By 2012 the myth machine was hard at work.

Satellite image of the hillside to the east of Carn Goedog tor.  This route, crossing the lowest col on the Preseli Ridge, has been used for millennia by travellers -- so nobody should be at all surprised if multiple traces of occupation are found.

I have dealt with this before, on a number of occasions, but once again it has come to the top of the pile of issues, in the light of the latest (2019) Antiquity article by Prof MPP and his merry gang.  The bizarre methods of the megalithic quarry-hunters might -- in another context -- cause amusement rather than concern, but we have seen in recent days how a piece of fundamentally flawed research can be "sold" to the media through a high-pressure PR campaign backed up by very carefully placed and orchestrated social media comments -- for example on Facebook and Twitter.  The media, as we have all noticed in many contexts, no longer has any concern for the truth, and lacks any instinct for checking the reliability of what they publish.  They seem to accept without question that if something comes with the name of a professor (or two, or three) attached, it is probably reliable........  Lack of scrutiny and time pressures mean that press releases are immediately regurgitated and even elaborated upon -- encouraging readers to accept as "the truth" things that have already been falsified in other media coverage weeks or months earlier!  Strange old world.........

There are three reasons why the strange "research" of the megalithic quarry-hunters should be dismissed out of hand by the science community:

1.  It is assumptive research, based entirely upon the assumption that its findings were predestined to be found correct.  On other words, the researchers have arrived on-site (at both Rhosyfelin and Carn Goedog) with a ruling hypothesis in their minds, and they have orchestrated all of their findings simply in order to "prove" it.  They have even retreated into a state of denial about the fact that the research is hotly disputed.

2.   Without apparently realising it, the researchers have attached "artificial significance" to the two sites investigated, simply because these are the sites they happen to have worked on. By the same token they have attached artificial significance to many of the features observed, assuming them to be "unique" or "significant" and apparently not asking themselves whether they are commonplace natural features not at all affected by the hand of man.

3.  They have not examined any control sites.  So again, the things that are labelled as engineering features cannot ever be demonstrated as being unique or significant, since it is never demonstrated that these features do NOT occur in other contexts.

These are three fundamental flaws in the work, which Dyfed, John and I have flagged up in our two peer-reviewed papers and which I have explored in my book.  But apparently the archaeological community is completely unconcerned.  The popular and "learned" papers by MPP and his colleagues continue to be accepted for publication, I suppose because they are deemed by editors and referees to be original and exciting -- I have seen no mention anywhere in the archaeology literature of any concerns about the methodology employed in the field.

Let's just look at these matters in a bit more detail.

Heavily abraded (and probably very old) fracture scars at the so-called "monolith extraction point" at Rhosyfelin.  No evidence has been cited by MPP and his team to demonstrate that a "bluestone monolith" was taken from here.

1.  Assumptive research.

From the very beginning, the research involving bluestone megalith sources and quarrying has been underpinned by an interconnected set of assumptions.  It was accepted (for reasons that are shrouded in mystery) that the glacial transport of bluestones from west Wales towards Salisbury Plain was an impossibility.  Therefore the stones must have been carried by human agency.  Therefore they must have been "special" of even magical.  Therefore the places that they came from must have been revered. And if they were revered, it must be possible to find them.  They must also have valued these places so highly that the stones must have been quarried, rather than just picked up, because quarrying would have been deemed an act of reverence -- with the sheer effort involved deemed to be a pleasure and a sacred duty.  The act of carrying of the stones would also have been invested with huge sacred significance -- enhancing the status of all those involved.  So it goes on -- and before we know where we are, there is a vast edifice of assumptions, speculations and fantasies piled up sky-high, blotting out the sun.
https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2018/07/assumptive-research.html   
https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2018/08/more-from-megalithic-quarrymen.html

One of the most deeply flawed of the assumptions made by the archaeologists is that some of the Stonehenge bluestones have been "spot provenanced" to "within a few square metres" at both Rhosyfelin and Carn Goedog.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  The geologists (Ixer and Bevins) must know that they have NO precise matches between samples from these two sites and the megaliths found at Stonehenge.  All they have is an approximate match between some fragments of "debitage" found at Stonehenge and some samples taken from the Rhosyfelin rock outcrops.  The foliated rhyolites with Jovian fabric found at Rhosyfelin also outcrop at multiple other locations that have not been sampled.  The geologists know this, but they too have been swept along on a wave of euphoria into "over-selling" their own work.  That will come back to haunt them.  By the same token, they have indications that maybe five of the spotted dolerite monoliths at Stonehenge might have come from the Carn Goedog area.  They cannot say that they have come from the tor -- and they have to accept that the dolerite sill which has a number of identified characteristics outcrops across a wide swathe of countryside between Cerrig Marchogion and Carn Alw -- a distance of more than 3 km.

http://brian-mountainman.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/rhosyfelin-some-geological-questions.html

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2019/01/the-rhosyfelin-monolith-extraction.html

In other words, the assumption that certain bluestone monoliths MUST have come from Rhosyfelin and Carn Goedog is not supported by the published geological research, and it is fatally flawed.

Another extremely worrying feature of the research at both sites is the tunnel vision of the archaeologists in using radiocarbon dates (of which there are many) to confirm the quarrying hypothesis.  As many have pointed out, the sheer range of dates from organic materials is such that all that can be said is that there has been intermittent use of these sites from the Mesolithic to the Middle Ages.  It has not been demonstrated that this "long occupation" scenario has anything to do with quarrying, and neither is there any clustering of dates in the "right places" and "at the right time" for any confirmation of Neolithic or Bronze Age quarrying activity.  In fact, so haphazard are the dates that Prof Danny McCarrol and myself have both come to the view that the dates falsify the quarrying
hypothesis: "Those dates have now been published in the journal Antiquity and in fact they lend absolutely no support whatsoever to the quarrying hypothesis; a fair appraisal would be that they actually falsify it conclusively. Unfortunately that is not the interpretation of the authors of what is, sadly, one of the worst papers I have ever read."

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2018/05/did-antiquity-authors-conclusively.html

2.  Artificial significance.

When Dyfed Elis-Gruffydd, John Downes and I started to look at Craig Rhosyfelin during the extended dig by MPP and his colleagues, we immediately realised that they were looking at multiple natural features and interpreting them as "engineering features" indicative of  quarrying activity -- because that is what they wanted to find.  In our QN paper we described the stratigraphy and Quaternary features of Rhosyfelin, as exposed in the dig, and concluded that this is an interesting site displaying perfectly normal and predictable traces of glacial, periglacial and glacio-fluvial processes.  In our "Archaeology in Wales" paper we enumerated the features attributed to quarrying, including things referred to as an extraction recess, a loading platform, a quarrying face, a quarried monolith, a revetment, a transporting trackway, hammer stones, and elongated "railway tracks" -- just to mention a few.  We examined all of them, and found no traces of human agency.  (That having been said, we were happy to accept the traces of occupation -- including a hearth and a camping site -- as perfectly valid.)  In our paper, we accused the archaeologists of over-enthusiasm in the allocation of "engineering labels" without convincing evidence -- but we also accused them of selective citation of evidence and also of the selective removal of inconvenient rock fragments and sediments in order to enhance the "quarrying"hypothesis.  We referred to the creation of archaeological artifices at Rhosyfelin, and we stand by that accusation.  We will go further, and say that exactly the same thing has happened at Carn Goedog, as illustrated in the paper just published.  For example, in recent press coverage the Carn Goedof "loading platform" is given great prominence and illustrations of it are endlessly reproduced.  But when you look at these illustrations you will see not the slightest trace of anything that looks like a platform......... some people, I fear, seem to inhabit a fantasy world........

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2017/09/the-artificial-significance-of.html
https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2015/12/bluestone-quarry-archaeologists-are.html
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/286775899_OBSERVATIONS_ON_THE_SUPPOSED_NEOLITHIC_BLUESTONE_QUARRY_AT_CRAIG_RHOSYFELIN_PEMBROKESHIRE

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

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2015/12/rhosyfelin-manufactured-evidence.html

Rhyolite crags in the Brynberian Valley.  There has been no "control dig" in the vicinity of this crag -- and the archaeologists cannot claim "uniqueness" for anything at Rhosyfelin.

3.  Control sites.

In some ways, the failure of the archaeologists to examine control sites is the most serious condemnation and invalidation of their research methods.  They have not conducted any control digs in the Afon Brynberian Valley beneath any of the other crags (of which there are several) in order to demonstrate that Craig Rhosyfelin is unique in any way.  They have not conducted any digs adjacent to any of the other spotted dolerite tors on Preseli (of which there are many) in order to demonstrate that the platform, "monolith extraction locations", soil layers, stone arrangements and other so-called "quarrying features" are in any way unique.  I have examined many of these tors over many years, and as far as I am concerned there is NOTHING unique at Carn Goedog which points to it being either a sacred location or a site for monolith quarrying.  There is nothing significant, either, in the presence of organic materials beneath, adjacent and on top of some of the stones uncovered during the dig.  This is after all a perfect temporary camp site which must have been used by local people over many thousands of years.  It lies very close to the lowest col or crossing point on the Preseli upland ridge, and in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries it lay on one of the most important drovers routes in West Wales.  It is virtually inevitable that there will be more traces of human occupation here than on any other of the Preseli tors up on the top of the ridge -- and this has nothing whatsoever to do with quarrying. The authors of the latest "Antiquity"paper seem to be blissfully unaware of any of this.

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2016/11/brynberian-gorge-paradise-for-neolithic.html
https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2018/08/more-from-megalithic-quarrymen-2.html

------------------

This is all profoundly depressing -- since I cannot for the life of me work out why the points made above have not been made by other archaeologists.  The conclusion must be that they are no more aware of scientific methodology than the authors who have written these weird papers on Rhosyfelin and Carn Goedog.