Robert Newall: the unsung hero of the bluestone saga?

Some of Newall's fieldwalking finds from the Salisbury and Stonehenge area.  Now in the Salisbury Museum collection. This is a still from one of Adrian Green's YouTube videos showcasing the museum collections.

Robert S. Newall was born in England in 1884.   His first archaeological activities were undertaken as a teenager at Camp Hill, South Newton. Became interested in ethnography during a world tour in 1909, travelling and collecting stone artefacts mostly in Australia.  After the First World War he devoted himself primarily to the archaeology of Wiltshire.  He excavated at Stonehenge with Colonel Hawley between 1919 and 1926 (Newall 1929a, 1929b, 1956) and rediscovered and excavated the Aubrey holes at the site. After 1950 he wrote many editions of the Official HMSO Stonehenge Guide, with reprints into the 1970's.  He had a long association with Salisbury Museum, becoming a Trustee in 1937 and Vice-President in 1971.  He died in 1978.

So at the time of HH Thomas's famous talk to the Society of Antiquaries in 1921 and the publication of his influential paper in 1923, Newall was heavily involved in the work being done at Stonehenge by Hawley.  Although he was only permanently on-site in 1919, and intermittently present after that, he must have been a part of everything discovered and everything discussed.

Not much was achieved in 1919.  In his report of the first year (in Antiquaries Journal 1921) Hawley says:  "Preparations were begun in September 1919, but were much retarded owing to difficulties of transport and the delay in erecting two huts and the assembling of the large equipment necessary. It was not until the end of the year that work was actually begun."

Four igneous erratics (three rhyolites and one diabase) were discovered in the 1924 excavations, and the finds were reported in the Antiquaries Journal for 1926. Hawley said that his report was  "..... on behalf of Mr. Newall and myself",  suggesting that Newall played an important role in what was done and what was said by way of interpretation. But we might imagine Hawley being heavily influenced by HH Thomas's assertion that glacial ice could not possibly have had a part to play in the presence of the 4 erratics; and we might imagine Newall being rather more open-minded than his boss!  But the weight of opinion might have pushed Newall into being reluctant to express his opinions.......... 

I don't have copies of the various Official HMSO handbooks from the 1950's -- but it would be interesting to know what Newall said about the origins of the bluestones. Of course, at the same time Richard Atkinson was a key member of the archaeology establishment -- and we know what an advocate he was of the human transport myth.  Atkinson must have had a strong input into the "official story":

From Wikipedia:  Atkinson directed excavations at Stonehenge for the Ministry of Works between 1950 and 1964. During this period he helped to bring theories about the origins and construction of Stonehenge to a wider audience: for example, through the BBC television programme, Buried Treasure (1954), which, among other things, sought to demonstrate, using teams of schoolboys, how the stones might have been transported by water or over land. He also produced a theory on the creation of Stonehenge.

Robert Newall was heavily involved in the recording of Hawley's finds, and in creating an archive of drawings, plans, sections and field notes.  Much of this material is lodged in Salisbury Museum, together with correspondence and a draft copy of an unpublished work called "Stonehenge Extracts."  the original is in the museum at Avebury.  It would be really interesting to know what this contains.  In a 1934 letter, Newall said that because there were so many finds at Stonehenge, and because there was nowhere else to store them safely, he kept many of them in his home.  This explains why "Newall's boulder" came to be in his possession............

After decades of silence, when he was busy with Stonehenge guide-books and Salisbury Museum matters,  in 1969-71 Newall was in touch with Geoffrey Kellaway, and told him about the finding of the four small glacial erratics in Hawley's excavations in the early 1920's.  Newall explained that his "glacial" interpretation was overridden by Hawley.  In 1971 Kellaway published his important "Nature" article, in which he mentioned Newall and the boulder;  but he was pilloried by the archaeology establishment -- and effectively brow-beaten into submission and silence.  But then in 1989 he was in contact with Olwen Williams-Thorpe and the rest of the OU team which investigated the bluestones. In their big 1991 article (unfortunately still behind a paywall) they mention that in Kellaway's letter containing details of "Newall's boulder" he suggested that there had been official "suppression" of Newall's views on glaciation and glacial erratics.    In 1997 James Scourse, in his much-cited book chapter called "Transport of the Stonehenge Bluestones: Testing the Glacial Hypothesis", pretended that the evidence of the boulder and its striations was so insecure that it could effectively be ignored.

Because the object of interest here was so clearly a small glacial erratic, with all of the diagnostic signs on its surface, why was it not shown to a geologist with glacial expertise, for an opinion?  We may never know the answer to that question -- and now we do not know where the stone is, or the slide numbered RSN18 - ENQ2305 that was cut from it. They are both apparently lost.  Time for a serious hunt!

Over the past 20 years there have been various mentions in the literature of the "ignimbrite" boulder and Newall's links with Kellaway, and always the assumption has been that there has been too much hearsay and too little evidence for anybody to take the glacial transport hypothesis seriously.  It's only now, with the various lines of reseaqrch being smartly drawn together by Tim Daw, that we see the evidence as rock solid.

As they might have said to Newall when he was a young man in Australia before WW1, "good on yer, mate!"

This EH photo shows Hawley's 1919 team at Stonehenge.  Newall must be in it -- which one is he?  I haven't been able to find any other photos of him......

Some of the bluestone fragments in Salisbury Museum -- from YouTube video No 7, introduced by Adrian Green.  Were some of these collected by Newall?  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6208ywAr2E

PS.  I have now rooted out a copy of the third edition (1959) of the official Stonehenge Guide Book, written by Newall. (The first edition is dated 1953.)   Having read through it, my opinion of the man is considerably diminished!  He defers to HH Thomas on virtually everything concerning the bluestones, and does not deviate by an inch from the official line that the bluestones were all "brought from Wales" by Neolithic tribesmen, possibly utilising some stones -- if not all -- that had previously been used in another stone setting.  It does not occur to him that the dressed bluestones at Stonehenge might well have been used in earlier settings on the same site.  He makes no mention at all of the small igneous stones found in the 1919-24 Hawley digs, and even explains away other "useless fragments" of sandstone and other rocks found in association with the Cursus with these words:  "......when used by the right people in the right way (they) become what may justly be termed historical documents."  Oh dear -- sloppy science and wishful thinking -- and evidence of a man forced by the power of the establishment to follow the party line and sell the agreed marketing message.  Forget the Queen's platinum jubilee --- this is also a celebration of 70 years of Stonehenge propaganda and rigid control of "the message"..........

By the way, in 1959 the admission charge to Stonehenge was one shilling, and sixpence for children.

Sample OU2 was not from Newall’s Boulder

In my post on the Newall boulder on 6 June, I stated that prior to the publication of their big 1991 report on the provenances of the Stonehenge bluestones, the OU team involving Olwen Williams-Thorpe and many others examined a sample supposedly from Newall’s boulder and found it to be a blue-grey rhyolite similar to many other samples collected in Stonehenge digs through the years. I thought therefore that the provenance of the boulder was pretty well established……..

But I was wrong.

I have done some more detective work. In 1989 the OU team (which included Rob Ixer) examined as many bluestone fragments as they could find, including one that they referred to as RSN18 - ENQ2305. They admitted that they did not know where it had come from, and there was no mention in their text of Newall’s boulder. They renamed it OU2 and the analysis showed it to be a typical blue-grey rhyolite from the north slopes of Mynydd Preseli. However, they listed the sampled rock fragment as having dimensions 10 cm x 7 cm x 3.4 cm and a weight of 244 gm. The Newall boulder with which we are concerned does not have those dimensions and it is certainly not a blue-grey rhyolite. It is, according to Harrison, a dark blue / blackish flinty welded tuff. The boulder dimensions are c 22 cm x 15 cm x 10m cm, and I guess its weight as being around 10 kg. The OU team did not examine the smaller cut IGS boulder sample either, since that has dimensions c 8 cm x 4 cm x 6 cm — ie considerably smaller than OU2. We know that the IGS staff examined at least five samples / thin sections from the Newall collection, since there is a reference in correspondence to a sample numbered ENQ2301. We also know that the record keeping was somewhat chaotic, and in one letter to Kellaway, Newall referred to his notes and labels being eaten by mice while the samples were stored in his attic……..

There is another label marked "36/1978" on the flank of the boulder, showing where a further sample was taken, two years after the boulder came into the possession of the Museum.  The cut marks are quite clear.  We have not seen any record of that sample being analysed.

I think that the sample examined by the OU team came from one of the other smaller samples (of a quite different rock type) that has now found its way into the Salisbury Museum collection.

So we can reject that 1991 reference as unreliable, and concentrate on the examinations of the boulder by RK Harrison, Geoffrey Kellaway, R Sanderson and BR Young. They all handled the boulder, took samples from it, knew its provenance in the Hawley Stonehenge dig, and discussed among themselves and with Newall where it might have come from. I have on the file some very interesting correspondence. So the Stonehenge provenance is, as they say, rock solid…….. and far more reliable than the provenances of many of the other fragments collected from Stonehenge digs. That is all that matters.

PS.  I have noticed that the text painted onto the rock says RSN18.  But the bit that says ENQ2301 is on a sticky label.  Shall we guess that when Newall handed over his samples to Salisbury Museum in 1976, with many of the labels missing because the mouse in the attic had eaten them, new labels had to be written out and appended to assorted lumps of rock?  And shall we guess that somebody inadvertently put the wrong label onto the Newall Boulder?  

The Newall Boulder: the human transport hypothesis is as dodgy as ever

The bullet-shaped Newall Boulder now held in Salisbury Museum.  The faces have varying degrees of "freshness".  At the top of this photo we can see the damage done by geological sampling.

I should, of course, have been asked to review this paper prior to publication, but nowadays researchers effectively get to choose their own reviewers and to ban those who are deemed likely to be unfriendly........  Anyway, here is the peer review I would have written, if I had been asked.

Declaration of interest:  I have personally examined the "Newall Boulder" in Salisbury Museum, and have already expressed reservations about a previous report co-authored by Ixer, Bevins and Pearce (see note at the end of this review). 

Peer review

Richard Bevins, Rob Ixer, Nick Pearce, James Scourse, Tim Daw. 2023.
Lithological description and provenancing of a collection of bluestones from excavations at Stonehenge by William Hawley in 1924 with implications for the human versus ice transport debate of the monument's bluestone megaliths. Geoarchaeology 2023: 1-15
DOI:10.1002/gea.21971
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/share/author/YUUAUVRWBNTZTPSQVBGM?target=10.1002/gea.21971

This paper seeks to demonstrate that a small sub-angular boulder found in a Stonehenge excavation was knocked off the tip of a rhyolite monolith that no longer exists, having earlier been excavated from a known site in West Wales prior to human transport to Stonehenge for use in a bluestone setting.  The claim that natural processes were not at any stage involved in the entrainment, transport and emplacement of the boulder is an extraordinary one, which can only be supported by extraordinary and powerful evidence.  Has that irresistible evidence now been provided?  In the view of this reviewer, the answer is "No".

At the beginning of the paper the authors suggest that there are eleven known "bluestone lithologies" which must have been associated with specific numbered orthostats.  The labelling of these lithological groups is confusing, to put it mildly, and the authors fail to acknowledge that each group probably  involves stones from several different provenances.  Further, during the excavations at Stonehenge at least 46 "exotic" rock types have been turned up in excavations, many of them having no links at all with any of the known "bluestone orthostats".  To ignore them is to defy logic. Angular fragments, abraded pebbles and cobbles found in the sediments, which may be crucial for the interpretation of what happened at Stonehenge, are simply dismissed by the authors. This fact alone undermines many of the claims made here about the human transport of the bluestones.  If the bluestones were selected for their "special" qualities or indeed quarried from sacred sites, do the authors really believe that monoliths and smaller stones were extracted deliberately from 46 different places?

In their literature review relating the the glacial transport / human transport controversy, the authors should have made reference to the modern work relating to very extensive glaciation by the Irish Sea Glacier, and the modelling work suggesting that the glacial transport of the Stonehenge bluestones was "not impossible" (Hubbard et al, 2009).

In their examination of the 18 "Newall stones" from the Hawley excavations at Stonehenge, the authors make somewhat heavy weather of the suggestions that some, at least, might have come from North Wales.  My understanding is that the suggestions of North Wales / Lake District origins for the small boulder referred to as RSN18, by Harrison and other BGS geologists, were very tentative.  But they were all quite convinced that the boulder (referred to as a strongly welded acid vitric tuff or ignimbrite) was different, geologically, from any of the known rhyolites (at that time) from Mynydd Preseli.  I agree with that. The Newall Boulder rock is darker in colour, rougher and more "flinty" than the rhyolite of Rhosyfelin. 

The authors' investigations of the petrography of the thin sections from the Newall Boulder are interesting but inconclusive.  The authors claim that "petrographically the RS18 fragment matches rhyolitic tuff from Craig Rhos-y-felin", in turn claimed as the "dominant source of the Stonehenge rhyolitic debitage" and as the site of a Neolithic bluestone quarry.  This is not supported by the evidence presented.  The photomicrographs comparing the texture and lithology of RS18 and Craig Rhos-y-felin rhyolite show similarities, but not perfect matches, and there remains a strong possibility that RS18 has come from elsewhere on an extensive rhyolite outcrop, or even from another outcrop entirely unrelated to Craig Rhos-y-felin. Attempts by the authors to demonstrate that the foliations in the Newall boulder and on the rock face at Rhos-y-felin indicate that the one was derived from the other are unconvincing, since we are not told how many other outcrops of foliated rhyolite there may be in West Wales. The whitish weathering crust, also cited as an indicator of a Rhos-y-felin origin, is also unconvincing, since whitish weathering crusts are present on many other West Wales rhyolite outcrops.

The reported pXRF work on the Newall boulder, also reported in section 2 of the paper, is similarly inconclusive. The bivariate plots shown in Figure 6 were -- as is normal in papers of this type -- created specifically in order to demonstrate affinities,  but this does not mean that the demonstrated relationships are unique or significant.  The overlaps between the fields for the Newall samples and the Rhos-y-felin samples may be no more marked, for example, that the relationships between the Newall samples and the plots for Carn Alw,  Ty Canol Wood, or Maiden Castle, which the authors may have, but have chosen not to show us.

Slickenside features on one face of the boulder, which must coincide with a fault plane.  

On page 9 the authors accuse Kellaway of mistakenly interpreting slickenside lineations as glacial striations.  Kellaway was a good geologist, and I do not believe he could have made such a stupid mistake.  The striations which he interpreted as having a glacial origin are much more subtle and discontinuous, and can be seen only during a minute examination of the boulder surface. This matter is discussed again on page 10, where there is a serious misrepresentation of the characteristics of glacial striae.  Striae are NOT typically continuous over a large proportion of a facet surface.  The clast shown in Figure 9 may be an ideal text-book illustration, but the great majority of striated clasts which I have encountered during a lifetime of working with glacial sediments are not like this at all; many of them show just one or two surface scratches, which may or may not be sub-parallel or cross-cutting.  The Newall Boulder, which I have examined, has a few very subtle scratches that may be striae, and they are quite distinct from the slickenside features shown in Figure 10.

It is disingenuous of the authors to pretend that because slickenside features are present on the Newall Boulder and at Craig Rhos-y-felin, this demonstrates a source for the boulder.  Slickenside features including slickencrysts are common across West Wales, in all faulted lithologies and of all ages.

On page 12 the authors refer to the "consistency of lithologies" in the Newall bluestone assemblage as an indication of "human selection of the material" rather than "a random process of entrainment in glacial till".   The entrainment of debris in glacial deposits is not a random process.  The authors do not explain why or how human beings should have selected around 46 different lithologies (mostly from the west)  for incorporation into Stonehenge sediments.  Were they disinterested in lithologies from the north, east and south?   They claim that "several of the bluestone lithologies have been sourced to specific outcrops in North Pembrokeshire, namely Craig Rhos-y-felin, Carn Goedog, Cerrigmarchogion and Carn Ddu Fach."  That is a misleading statement; these sources have been suggested, but never adequately proved, and indeed in the papers referenced the authors themselves accept that there are NO definitive sources that are beyond dispute.  The fact that many of the bluestones come from a limited geographical area is NOT suggestive of the human selection of the bluestones; on the contrary, since so many different rock types are represented in the Stonehenge assemblage of bluestone clasts, the supposition must be that glacial transport was responsible for stone transport on a substantial scale.  It is vanishingly unlikely that small fragments and cobbles in the debitage (many of them quite unrelated to bluestone orthostats) were selected and then carried to Stonehenge by human beings.

The authors argue on p 11 that the "snub nose" shape of the Newall Boulder is typical of outcrops at Craig Rhos-y-felin.  I know the site, and I do not accept that. They also suggest that the boulder is probably the broken tip of a destroyed orthostat (maybe stone 32d) at Stonehenge.  On the contrary, the boulder's "bullet shape" is suggestive of glacial transport, with abraded edges and discernible facets.   They also suggest that the "fresh" surface of the boulder shows where it was broken from the complete orthostat.  However, the fresh surface of the boulder is of very limited extent, and does not coincide with a sizeable cross-cutting fracture scar.  Examination of the boulder shows that Kellaway was most likely correct in assuming that part of the exposure of dark blue "fresh rock" was the result of limited damage (probably man-made) inflicted on a boulder only slightly larger and heavier than the one we see today.  Also, it borders on the absurd to suggest that a flimsy and fractured rhyolite orthostat with dimensions no greater than 2m x 40 cm x 30 cm would have been quarried from Rhosyfelin, transported to Stonehenge, and incorporated into a bluestone setting without falling apart in the process.  Indeed, the unsuitability of Rhosyfelin rhyolite for use as standing stones has now been accepted by Bevins, Ixer and other authors who some years ago flagged up the site as "the Pompeii of Neolithic quarries."  The evidence against quarrying at this site was presented in detail in two peer-reviewed papers by John, Elis-Gruffydd and Downes which have been completely ignored by the authors of the present paper.

Finally, on the matter of glaciation and glacial erratic transport, the authors summarise the evidence relating to erratic trains and glacier extent in the Bristol Channel arena which has been presented by selected researchers.  They ignore the work of other researchers, and in doing so they fail to address the glaciological conundrum of how the ice of the Irish Sea Ice Stream can have reached the shelf edge in the Celtic Sea without also overwhelming the inner reaches of the Bristol Channel and the Somerset Lowlands.  They also fail to mention the modelling work which has shown that glacier extent at the time of the Greatest British Glaciation might well have involved an ice edge on or near Salisbury Plain.  They fail to mention the presence of very old glacial sediments in the Somerset Levels, near Bath and on the coasts of Devon and Cornwall, and the presence of high-level erratics on the coasts of the South-west of England which cannot be explained other than by an extensive glaciation. They claim (falsely) that there are no "bluestone erratics" in the vicinity of Stonehenge, while ignoring the fact that most of the Stonehenge bluestones are not beautiful pillars as portrayed in the textbooks but classic glacial erratics (boulders and slabs) with distinguishable facets, abraded edges and thick weathering crusts.  The evidence of Stonehenge glaciation is staring the authors in the face, without apparently being noticed.

The authors claim that Clark et al (2022) and Gibbard et al (2022) summarise the most recent evidence of Devensian and earlier ice limits in Britain, and that there have been no significant changes in proposed ice edge positions.  But those two authors would be the first to admit that there are large inconsistencies in parts of the evidence base, and some of the "accepted" ice limits in parts of the Bristol Channel /Celtic Sea arena do not actually make much sense.......... 

(https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2022/09/pre-devensian-landforms-mis-6-late.html)

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/368426571_Was_there_a_Late_Devensian_ice-free_corridor_in_Pembrokeshire.      

It is clear that we are still some way from the telling of the full story.

An attempt by Gibbard and Clark to represent the ice edges for three glacial episodes.  In places these lines are matched by good "ground truthing", and in places they are highly speculative.  The Wolstonian ice edge shown for mid-Wales makes no sense at all....... 

However strong the evidence of glaciation and glacial transport may or may not be, it is far stronger than the evidence for human bluestone transport.  No evidence for human bluestone haulage from West Wales to Stonehenge has ever been found by the present authors or by anybody else, and the authors should have the good grace to admit this.  Indeed, there is no good evidence for substantial stone haulage with respect to any of the great megalithic monuments of the British Isles.

The contention that the Newall Boulder is not a glacially transported clast is unsupported by the evidence presented in this paper, as is the contention that it is a knock-off from a mysterious unknown Rhosyfelin rhyolite orthostat.  

Without considerable revision, this paper is not of sufficient quality for  publication in a serious scientific journal.

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Declaration of interest: the following items are relevant:
https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2022/09/the-newall-boulder-with-thee-samples.html
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/361939331_A_glacially-transported_clast_at_Stonehenge
https://the-past.com/feature/victorian-gifts-new-insights-into-the-stonehenge-bluestones/

More on "Newall's boulder"

Newall's boulder, now stored in Salisbury Museum

Thanks to Adrian Green of Salisbury Museum, we now know that the boulder (rather a small one) is in the Salisbury Museum collection, together with the lump that was cut off the side of it.  The thin section which was looked at by the IGS Chief Petrologist KK Harrison and described for Geoffrey Kellaway is apparently in the British Geological Survey collection at Keyworth.  I have never seen the thin section published, but we will no doubt see it eventually, since our old pals Ixer and Bevins are currently working on the Salisbury sample and maybe on their own thin sections in order to work out what the provenance may be.

The cut made on Newall's boulder when the sample was taken for geological analysis.

On checking back in the big 1991 paper by Olwen Williams-Thorpe and her colleagues, I see that they also analysed sample RSN18- ENQ2305 and gave it the number OU2.  The lump of rock that they examined weighed 244 grammes and measured 10 x 7 x 3.4 cms.  They refer to it as a grey weathered rhyolite, but they clearly had no information about the excavator or the sample find location.  They did not know about the connection withy either Newall or Hawley.

In table 14 (b) of that study, the OU team report on the chemical analysis of sample OU2, as below:

Thorpe et al noted that OU2 (ie the Newall boulder) was similar (but not identical) in chemical composition to many other rhyolite samples from Stonehenge (including samples from the Aubrey Holes), pointing to a similar source;  they said these samples could not have come from the rhyolites around Roch, but they were "consistent with a derivation from Carnalw."   They referred to OU2, and most other studied samples, as lavas but not as ignimbrites.

When Ixer and Bevins worked on the North Pembrokeshire rhyolites they initially defined five rhyolite types, numbered A-E, but in their 2011 on the rhyolites of Rhosyfelin they argued that types A-C were from a common source and that the bulk of the rhyolite debitage at Stonehenge could be traced to Rhosyfelin as the source. That is a speculation, and in my mind it is not adequately supported by the evidence.  They must have looked at sample RSN18 (OU2) in their studies, but I don't believe they have referred to it in previous papers.  Let's see what emerges...........

One thing we can say is that the hint about the rhyolites (including Newall's boulder) having come from the Carnalw area might not be all that reliable. In another paper (2013) Bevins and Ixer looked at the Carnalw connection and suggested that "not a single rhyolite fragment from the Stonehenge orthostats or debitage from anywhere in the Stonehenge Landscape can be attributed to Carn Alw."  That, as I have said before, is a pretty sweeping statement, since they still do not know where many of the rhyolite samples from Stonehenge have actually come from -- and they certainly do not know all about the whole of the Stonehenge Landscape.  But as we all know, the pet rock boys do love a bit of extravagance..........

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2013/04/new-bevins-ixer-paper-on-certain.html

So which rhyolite group does sample RSN18 actually belong to?  No doubt all will be revealed....... 

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-rhyolitic-debitage-around-stonehenge.html

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2014/09/stonehenge-did-rhyolite-fragments-come.html

BEVINS, R.E., N.G. PEARCE & R.A. IXER. 2011. Stonehenge rhyolitic bluestone sources and the application of zircon chemistry as a new tool for provenancing rhyolitic lithics.   Journal of Archaeological Science 38: 605–22

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/285593380_Craig_Rhos-y-felin_A_Welsh_bluestone_megalith_quarry_for_Stonehenge

50: 21–32.https://www.researchgate.net/publication/307551709_Craig_Rhos-y-felin_is_NOT_shown_to_be_a_Welsh_bluestone_megalith_quarry_for_Stonehenge

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/307551709_Craig_Rhos-y-felin_is_NOT_shown_to_be_a_Welsh_bluestone_megalith_quarry_for_Stonehenge

I think at this stage we can probably assume that the "Newall boulder" is not from North Wales, but (on the basis of shared chemical characteristics) it is most likely to be from one of the rhyolite sources in North Pembrokeshire, as originally suggested by Thorpe et al in 1991. (I wouldn't mind betting that Ixer and Bevins will in due course declare that the Newall boulder has come from their famous and fantastical "quarry" at Rhosyfelin..............but we will need to see the colour of the evidence before we pass judgment on that one.)

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

PS.  Please note that this post contains information that has been overtaken by events!  The OU2 sample clearly had nothing to do with the Newall boulder RSN18 -- the correction is in this post, dated 19 June 2022:

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2022/06/sample-ou2-was-not-from-newalls-boulder.html

The lost boulder and the mice in the attic.......

 

It's a pretty extraordinary story and many might be inclined not to believe it......... but it is all rather entertaining......

In 1924 William Hawley and his diggers found a small boulder in his Stonehenge dig (and three others as well) in a layer of "rubbish" and chalk rubble 64 cm beneath the present ground surface.  It was clearly not a "knock-off" from one of the bluestone monoliths, and was made of a rock type that nobody recognized. Some bits of it had been knocked off by a Stonehenge axe-maker, but he (presumably it was a "he") had given up in disgust when, having picked it up somewhere nearby,  he discovered that the stone did not fracture conchoidally.  He had thrown it away onto a pile of accumulating chalk rubble around the time that the monoliths were being erected.  There it had remained for 5,000 years or so.

Because it was not classifiable as an authentic implement, or even a crude "rough out", Hawley wanted to throw it away again -- but one of his colleagues, Robert Newall, suspected that it might be important, and because there was a shortage of storage space at Stonehenge he took it to his home in Lower Woodford and stored it in his attic, together with lots of other samples.  There it remained for 46 years......

Around 1970 geologist Geoffrey Kallaway found a reference to the boulder in Hawley's report on the 1924 dig, and asked Newall if he knew of its whereabouts.  Newall confirmed that he had it, and passed it over (with 15 other erratic fragments) for detailed geological examination by Kellaway and his colleagues in the IGS.  They took various samples, knocked a few more bits off the boulder, and discussed at length what its significance might be.  But no major publication followed, and although Kellaway thought the boulder might be a glacial erratic (because it was striated) the consensus was that glacier ice could not possibly have reached Stonehenge, and the boulder was handed back to Newall.   It went back into the attic.

But Newall was feeling his age,  and decided to clear his attic.  He passed over the boulder and many of his other Stonehenge samples to Salisbury Museum in 1976.  As they tried to sort out the material there was an entertaining exchange of letters between Capt Banks and staff and Mr Newall, who had to admit that many of his notes relating to the samples had been eaten by mice!  The larger fragments of rock had no identification labels at all.    So when the material was finally added to the museum collection there was some confusion over what was what.  Luckily the "Newall Boulder" (RSN-18) was distinctive enough not to get confused with anything else, and it was given the acquisition number 1978.16.  Newall died in the same year.  Then the boulder was put into a cupboard and forgotten about once again.........

All the correspondence held in the Kellaway Archive in the University of Bath, and two IGS photographs, confirm the provenence of the erratic ignimbrite boulder.  Thanks to the help of Lizzie Richmond, I have copies of all the IGS and other letters and documents on the file.

It's interesting that among the professional geologists there seems to have been a consensus that the boulder had come not from North Pembrokeshire but from Snowdonia -- most likely the Capel Curig area.

So since its discovery almost a century ago, this boulder has been stored away, out of sight and out of mind, for more than 90 years.  All the attention, over the years, has been lavished on the "Boles Barrow Bluestone", whose provenance and post-discovery history is a matter of vast disagreement -- but this little boulder could turn out to be MUCH more important.

The Newall boulder -- how not to analyse a glacial erratic

The Newall Boulder with the thee samples placed in their correct positions. 

(Acknowledgement:  BGS photograph)

"When you are in a deep hole and can't get out, for God's sake stop digging!"  One would have thought that piece of sound advice would be heeded by geologists Ixer, Bevins and Pearce --  but no -- they are determined to keep on shovelling away, assisted this time by museum director David Dawson and blogger Tim Daw.  Actually Tim is not listed as a co-author of the latest piece, but he provides enthusiastic back-up support in the blogosphere..........

This is the latest article:

https://the-past.com/feature/victorian-gifts-new-insights-into-the-stonehenge-bluestones/

Victorian gifts: new insights into the Stonehenge bluestones
Rob Ixer, Richard Bevins, Nick Pearce, and David Dawson explain more.
CURRENT ARCHAEOLOGY, AUGUST 29, 2022, 5 pp

Actually, the picture of geologists digging a hole is not particularly apt in this instance, because what we have is yet another study of ancient slides and samples found in  museums, as a substitute for fieldwork.  As a result, the arguments about the geology of the bluestones get even more tangled than they were before, with the geologists making yet more claims that are unsupported by their own evidence.

It's a strange article, published in a popular glossy magazine without peer review.  So it doesn't make any attempt to be a "scientific article" -- it is simply intended to promote an opinion, or a set of opinions.  The hypothesis of bluestone quarries is mentioned in the very first sentence, presented as a fact -- so we all know where the article is heading. The first part of the article is about the discovery (in the Wiltshire Museum) of slides made from William Cunnington's 1876-1881 Stonehenge collections.  There is a strange mention of sarsens being "quarried locally" -- the authors mean "collected locally", but they just love the idea of quarrying.  Let that pass.  Then they get onto rock names and have a go at me:  "The plethora of rock names in existence has been abused by some to suggest that the range of bluestone rock types is far wider than it really is, a misdirection made in order to promote the belief that they are random erratics rather than having been quarried and transported by humans."  This is a bit rich, coming from researchers who have constantly added new groups to the list of Stonehenge rock types (and changed their own terminology) over the past decade, so that we now have various tuffs or rhyolites, various unspotted dolerites and various spotted dolerites, andesites, dacites and sandstones, with assorted fragments that seem to be unique, from provenances unknown.  With every article they write they demonstrate greater bluestone variability, while claiming the opposite.  Some of the sandstones are called bluestones, and one (made of greenstone) is referred to as a "non-bluestone".  When, I wonder , does a non-bluestone become a "true bluestone"?   All very strange.......... and very unscientific.

And don't get me going on stump 32c, which has been referred to in paper after paper as a Rhosyfelin foliated rhyolite (and sometimes as an altered volcanic ash) and is now referred to as the source of  "much of the andesite group A debitage".  Confused?  So you should be.  And I make no apologies far gently asking the geologists to sort out their own nomenclature shambles before telling the rest of us what to think about anything.

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2022/02/the-cunnington-slides-and-some-andesite.html

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2021/08/the-absurdity-of-quarrying-hypothesis.html

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2022/06/dacites-and-fictional-orthostat.html

Back to the latest article.  One section deals with the Altar Stone.  The authors suggest that thin section "Wilts 277" (which has been enthusiastically discussed on this blog and in many other contexts) came directly from a lump knocked off the bottom of the Altar Stone in 1844 by "Mr Brown of Amesbury".  The key sample of the Altar Stone is now held in the Salisbury Museum, with (museum label 2010K 240.  That's interesting, but of course the new find does nothing to bring the discovery of the real source of the Altar Stone any closer.  It is still a mystery.

The lump of dark coloured sandstone found in Salisbury Museum and now claimed to be the source of thin section 277.

Now to the part of the article in which the authors really are out dancing with the fairies.  It's entitled "Cunnington and Kellaway" and it deals with the "Newall boulder" labelled RSN18 ENQ 2305 which is held in Salisbury Museum and which I examined in June in the company of Tony Hinchliffe.  Ixer et al refer to the boulder as "a broken joint block" -- a completely weird term, since virtually any pebble, cobble, boulder or lump of natural rock found anywhere in the world could be given the same label, on the basis that rocks tend to fracture or break along joints.  

Anyway, Ixer and his colleagues home in on the supposed striations on the stone and on Kellaway's suggestion that it is a glacial erratic that might have come from North Wales.  They state baldly:  "We have recently reunited and examined the joint block and all its offcuts and associated thin sections, and the rhyolitic tuff shows all the key characteristics needed to assign it to Rhyolite Group C from Craig Rhos-y-Felin."  They provide no evidence to support that assertion.  However, they do mention the confusion over the OU analysis of a sample that may, or may not, have come from the boulder.  I have discussed this elsewhere:

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2022/06/sample-ou2-was-not-from-newalls-boulder.html

Then they say:

".......very recent analysis by pXRF on all pieces of the joint block plus two other visually similar rhyolitic tuffs from the same Newell collection (RSN9 ENQ 2295 and RSN10 ENQ 2296) clearly show that these fragments are compositionally Rhyolite Group C, confirming the petrographic identifications."

However many samples have been taken and analysed, and even if they all belong to "Rhyolite Group C", this does NOT demonstrate that the boulder was a quarried lump of rock that came from Rhosyfelin.    There are substantial differences, in hand samples, between the Newall Boulder and the foliated rhyolites from Rhosyfelin, as we can see below:

Close-up of the fresh face of the Newall Boulder, referred to by by Newall and Kellaway as an “ignimbritic rhyolite” and by Harrison as a "dark blue / blackish flinty welded tuff" with intersecting fractures.

Close-up of a sample from Rhosyfelin, a light blue-grey foliated rhyolite which breaks into 

thin slabs or plates.

Harrison's description (1971):
RSN 18 ignimbritic tuff-lava
“This large, dark blue-grey, hard, flinty (? partly worked artifact) shows a white weathered crust up to 5 mm thick. The thin section shows a complex structure of very finely banded welded tuff (compressed foliated shards cemented by fine silica) with composite quartz grains and strings of dusty leucoxene, separated by patches of much finer grained, finely fluxioned glassy lava with patches of granular quartz, This specimen appears to represent a complex of originally viscous glassy lava and welded vitric tuff, all presumably of rhyolitic composition.”

That does not sound to me like a description that would fit Rhosyfelin. 

This is the evidence used by the authors of the article to demonstrate that the Newall Boulder samples match those from Rhosyfelin.  It's a geochemical plot of ppm of selected minerals on A and B axes, for a large number of "Craig Rhosyfelin" analyses (well over a hundred)  compared with analyses for three Newall samples numbered RSN18, RSN9 and RSN10.  We have no idea whether the Rhosyfelin X-ray analyses were all conducted on rock faces at Rhosyfelin, or whether some (or even most) of the analyses were conducted on samples found at Stonehenge but deemed to have come from Rhosyfelin.  The "field" covered by the Rhosyfelin samples is a very big one, and plots from many other Stonehenge rhyolites and dolerites would fall within it if they had been added.  So the diagram itself, impressive as it might appear, tells us nothing whatsoever about the source of the Newall boulder.

Plots of "geochemical signatures" of groups of samples are useless without much more detailed information about sampling methods and locations.

All that having been said, I am actually not that bothered where the Newall boulder has come from.  If it really is a North Pembrokeshire rhyolite, that's fine by me.  I have no reason whatsoever to wish that it might have come from North Wales!

I have a much more serious issue with the cavalier and slapdash manner in which this boulder has been examined by Ixer and his colleagues.  They completely ignore my detailed analysis of it which was published on Researchgate in June of this year (updated on 15 July):

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/361939331_A_glacially-transported_clast_at_Stonehenge

They fail to mention that I identified and described the slickensiding features on one of the boulder faces, and that I distinguished between these and the faint striations on other parts of the surface.  They fail to mention the weathering characteristics of the boulder, or its glacial facets, or its edge abrasion features, or the pressure fractures that clearly have nothing whatsoever to do with human interference. They fail to mention the tufa deposits or other evidence that this boulder has had a long and complex history, and that it has clearly NOT been quarried at Rhosyfelin and carted off to Stonehenge for no apparent reason by our heroic ancestors.  As Kellaway said when he examined the boulder, why would anybody gather up a useless small stone of this size, carry it all the way to Stonehenge, knock a few bits off it, and then throw it away?  It just does not make any sense.

Ixer et al are clearly intent on proving that the Newall boulder is a quarried lump of foliated rhyolite from Rhosyfelin which has been carried to Stonehenge, or else that it is a lump knocked off a larger rhyolite orthostat.  The evidence on the surface of the boulder itself is all that is needed to disprove that hypothesis, and I begin to wonder whether they have really looked at it at all.

No marks out of ten.  They must do better,  by paying more attention to the literature and listening to the advice given to them by others.

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

PS. Prof Peter Kokelaar very kindly looked at my photos of the Newall Boulder and said this:

"Problem is that lavas commonly have various vesiculation bands that collapse and look vitroclastic and welded. I’d buy into the petrographer’s interpretation of welded igneous rock. One pic appears to contain a xenolith so that the streaky fabric perhaps on balance is welded pyroclastic, but then lavas contain xenoliths too.' 

".......... no question in my mind with the data available to me that the Newall stone can have originated in North Pembs. I’ve seen so much Ramsey erratic rock on Gower that Ramsey is a prime candidate, but there are numerous other Ordovician rhyolite sheet possibilities. Given that we know for certain Pembs supplied volcanic (and dolerite, and Skomer, and St Davids Head) erratics at least as far as Gower, it becomes an exceptional plea to have it come from Snowdonia."

Regarding the slickensiding:  "In my book the surface shows quartz-mineral ribbon/fibre growth slickensiding. Top right the transverse bands are growth increments, where movement is missing-part down to left. The ribbons have stepped ends down-left where missing counterpart broke away."

Another photo "shows layers of fibres with some changes of growth direction. Beneath capping vein (white patch), part the fibres on the left are NW-SE, then middle W-E, then NW-SE again. Evidently part of a fault zone..."

The Newall Boulder scatter plots etc

 

The Newall Boulder (BGS photo), bizarrely referred to as a "broken joint block" by Ixer et al.

With relation to the "Victorian Gifts" article by Ixer et al, which I discussed in an earlier post, I have been delving a bit deeper into the things they say about the Newall Boulder.

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2022/09/the-newall-boulder-with-thee-samples.html

https://the-past.com/feature/victorian-gifts-new-insights-into-the-stonehenge-bluestones/

I have been consulting with various geology professionals, and the main points raised are as follows:

1. The persistent description of the boulder as a "broken joint block" appears to be an attempt to promote the idea that it is a lump of quarried stone.  It is heavily weathered, faceted and abraded, and there is no way that it can be interpreted as a product of bedrock quarrying operations.

2.  There is a claim that the petrography of the boulder samples shows that it is derived from a supposed "quarry" at Rhosyfelin:  "We have recently reunited and examined the joint block and all its offcuts and associated thin sections, and the rhyolitic tuff shows all the key characteristics needed to assign it to Rhyolite Group C from Craig Rhos-y-Felin in north Pembrokeshire." But no detailed petrographic evidence is provided in support of this claim, and it cannot therefore to taken seriously.

3.  With regard to the OU sample analysis, the authors say:  "....geochemical data obtained from sample RSN18 ENQ 2305 by the Open University team in the early 1990s showed that it (alongside others of their debitage samples) belonged to Rhyolite Group C."   But without any reference to the extent of the terrain across which Rhyolite Group C rocks are outcropping, this provides no support for the contention that the sample came from a quarry at Craig Rhosyfelin.

4.  Here is another quotation:  ".....very recent analysis by pXRF on all pieces of the joint block plus two other visually similar rhyolitic tuffs from the same Newell collection (RSN9 ENQ 2295 and RSN10 ENQ 2296) clearly show that these fragments are compositionally Rhyolite Group C, confirming the petrographic identifications."  The geologists point out that scatter plots of this type are notoriously difficult to interpret in the absence of raw data.  On each published plot there are well over a hundred plotted points.   They supposedly show "analyses from Craig Rhosyfelin" -- but are they all from instrument readings actually obtained at Rhosyfelin, or do they include analyses of samples collected at Stonehenge and assumed to have come from Rhosyfelin?  The sheer quantity of points plotted suggests the latter.

5.  How large is the area across which the Rhosyfelin readings were taken?  If the area was 2 sq km, for example, then any sample falling within the "plotted field" cannot automatically be assumed to have come from the proposed quarrying site.

6.   Two of the geologists suggest that rhyolites and other volcanic rocks are very difficult to provenance, even if they have come from a single magma source.  They mention welding, fragmentation, incorporation of clasts and recrystallisation as factors. (Visually, the blue-black Newall Boulder rock looks very different from the light blue Rhosyfelin rhyolite.)  The authors of the "Current Archeology" article have not demonstrated satisfactorily that the Newall Boulder cannot have come from Pencaer or elsewhere on the North Pembrokeshire coast. Nor have they demonstrated that volcanics from other areas would not have plotted in similar positions on the diagrams.

7.  One correspondent who has worked with pXRF instruments suggests that in every study there are good readings and bad ones -- the latter caused by instrumental errors and problems with rock surface conditions (such as debris or wetness).  He would like an assurance that all "dubious" readings have been eliminated rather than incorporating them in the two published scatter plots.

8. With regard to the image of STILPNOMELANE used in the article, one correspondent asked whether it is a stock image, an image from a Rhosyfelin sample, or an image from a Newall Boulder sample.  The caption is so vague that the image adds nothing to the scientific argument.

It may well be that if and when a full study is published in a scientific journal, all of these points will be addressed.  Until then, the authors of the "Current Archaeology" article will have to accept that the jury is still out on the matter of what the boulder is made of, and where it came from.

At last -- a reasonably reliable press report........

 

Stonehenge, The Prehistoric Megalithic Structure on Salisbury Plain. (Photo by Sonia Bonet on Shutterstock) 

Thanks to StudyFinds for this report on my new paper. At last -- an article from somebody who has actually read the paper and who is prepared to report honestly on what it says.........

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

Boulder discovery suggests Stonehenge bluestones weren’t moved by humans

JUNE 11, 2024
by StudyFinds Staff 

EARTH NEWS,

HISTORICAL NEWS 

https://studyfinds.org/stonehenge-bluestones-newall-boulder-discovery/ 

© 2024 41 Pushups, LLC

For over a century, the question of how the famous bluestones of Stonehenge made their way from their source in Wales to the ancient monument in England has been a topic of heated debate. The bluestones are the smaller boulders that form the site’s inner circle and inner horseshoe. Most archaeologists have long believed that Neolithic people transported these massive stones, each weighing several tons, over 200 kilometers to the site. But a recently rediscovered boulder found during excavations at Stonehenge in 1924 may finally provide the key to solving this age-old mystery.

Geomorphologist Brian John argues that this small, unassuming stone, known as the Newall Boulder, shows clear signs of having been transported and shaped by glaciers. This suggests that ice, not humans, may have been responsible for moving Stonehenge’s giant megaliths. “The simplest explanation of the presence of the bluestones at Stonehenge is that they are glacial erratics from the west, emplaced by ice at some site still to be discovered, on or near Salisbury Plain, where they were later collected up and used by the builders of the stone monument,” John writes in his paper, published in the open-access E&G Quaternary Science Journal.

A much-discussed photograph of the Newall Boulder, annotated by the author. The shape and surface features are widely interpreted as indicators of sub-glacial transport, in spite of heavy damage by humans. (Credit: The Institute of Geological Sciences/British Geological Survey)

Methodology: Newall Boulder analysis

To unravel the Newall Boulder’s complex history at Stonehenge, John subjected it to detailed visual analysis, carefully examining its shape, facets, and surface features. The boulder, measuring about 22 x 15 x 10 cm, has a distinctive bullet-like shape with a pointed end and a blunt end. It sports at least five major facets and several smaller ones, with abraded surfaces and edges. Intriguingly, there are also fracture scars, faint scratches, and what appear to be crescentic gouges — all potential indicators of glacial transport and erosion.

A much-discussed photograph of the Newall Boulder, annotated by the author. The shape and surface features are widely interpreted as indicators of sub-glacial transport, in spite of heavy damage by humans. (Credit: The Institute of Geological Sciences/British Geological Survey)

John also examined evidence of human modification, including apparent percussion scars from when someone in prehistoric times seemed to have unsuccessfully tried to shape the boulder into a tool such as an axe. More recent damage from geological sampling was also evident. To establish the boulder’s provenance, John compared its petrology and geochemistry to potential source rocks in Wales, though a precise origin remains elusive.

Results

The cumulative evidence from the Newall Boulder’s shape and surface features makes a compelling case for glacial transport to Stonehenge. Its bullet-like morphology with a distinct “stoss” (upstream) and “lee” (downstream) end is classic for clasts that have been subglacially dragged, rolled and lodged in flowing ice. The facets, striations, and chatter marks are also highly consistent with the boulder having been scraped and crushed at the base of a glacier.

Curiously, the boulder has a weathering rind up to 5 millimeters thick on its upper surface, but fresh, unweathered facets on its flanks and underside. This suggests it once lay partially buried for an extended period, with its top exposed to the elements. Subsequent human modification left percussion scars on this weathered surface, hinting that Stonehenge’s builders found the boulder as a loose, pre-weathered erratic at the site – not as freshly quarried stone.

Six of the Stonehenge bluestones belonging to the bluestone circle, in the NE quadrant of the stone monument. They are overlooked by the larger sarsens of the outer circle. For scale, stone 47 is 1.45 m tall. For the most part the bluestones are not elegant pillars but heavily abraded and weathered erratic boulders and slabs. (Credit: Brian John)

‘Shortcomings’ Of Human Transport Theory

Despite the prevailing belief that Neolithic people transported the bluestones to Stonehenge, John highlights numerous studies showing why there are numerous problems with this theory. First and foremost, there is no evidence from any other British Neolithic site of megaliths being moved such vast distances. In fact, the builders of other monuments consistently used whatever large stones were locally available. If Stonehenge’s stones were specifically selected and brought from Wales, it’s odd that they come from at least 30 different rock sources — a geological diversity more consistent with the random “sampling” of glacial action than deliberate human choice.

The sheer variety of stone types at Stonehenge also argues against the idea of a special connection to Wales or the “sacredness” of the bluestones, as does the lack of any evidence that these particular rocks were prized or venerated in their homeland. If acquiring the bluestones was a major driver of Stonehenge’s construction, it’s puzzling that no Neolithic quarries, stone-moving equipment, or infrastructure have been found. Experimental archaeology has also highlighted the immense practical challenges of transporting multi-ton monoliths across the boggy, densely forested Neolithic landscape using only Stone Age technology.

Perhaps most damningly, there is no evidence of the kind of sophisticated stone-moving culture that should have existed if Neolithic Britons had undertaken such a massive feat of megalith transport. The skill, planning, and organization needed to move Stonehenge’s monoliths is curiously absent from the archaeological record before and after the monument’s construction. If the builders had such advanced capabilities, why did they not use them at other sites or pass them down to their descendants? The lack of any corroborating evidence for large-scale human stone transport suggests that this theory, while entrenched, rests on shaky foundations.

Discussion & Takeaways: Stonehenge bluestones a ‘gift’ from Mother Nature?

The implications of the Newall Boulder’s glacial origins are profound. If this diminutive “reject” found in the monument’s debitage is an ice-rafted erratic, then it’s probable that Stonehenge’s giant standing stones — many of which are also faceted, abraded boulders geologically out of place on Salisbury Plain — were likewise delivered by glaciers. Rather than being purposefully selected and heroically transported by Neolithic builders, they may simply have been fortuitously lying around the site, gifts left behind by ice age glaciers.

This “glacial theory” elegantly explains many puzzling aspects of Stonehenge’s megaliths, from their sheer diversity of rock types to the lack of any evidence for stone-moving infrastructure. It suggests that the monument’s location may have been chosen precisely because of the convenient scattering of giant boulders, not the other way around. And it would overturn the orthodox archaeological narrative of long-distance human transport in favor of a simpler story of our ancestors opportunistically making use of an “erratic quarry” created by nature.

Whether the bluestones were moved by human hands or by the irresistible momentum of glaciers, Stonehenge remains a testament to the ingenuity, adaptability, and sheer ambition of our Neolithic ancestors – and a source of enduring wonder for us today.

Newall's ignimbrite boulder (update)

 

I have come across a number of references to a strange boulder of Ordovician ignimbrite which was found during Col Hawley's excavations at Stonehenge in the 1920's, together with "other striated erratics." These were assumed to be metamorphic rocks of Welsh origin. Apparently some of the archaeologists at the time of excavation thought the stones were glacially derived, although Hawley would have none of it. According to legend, the stones were shaped by ice, faceted, and some had striations on them. James Scourse discusses this on pp 285 and 287 of his chapter in the "Science and Stonehenge" book, and tends to dismiss the evidence as unreliable. But I'm not so sure, and tend to be more trusting of the word of Newall and Kellaway....... not to mention the apparent agreement of Dale and Engleheart with reference to a glacial origin for this material.

Newall kept the "boulder" and other material for almost half a century, and then passed it on to Geoffrey Kellaway around 1969-71. Kellaway took photos of the boulder and published them here in 1991: "The older Plio-Pleistocene glaciations of the region around Bath." In Kellaway, GA (ed) Hot Springs of Bath, pp 243-41. I have not seen this article or the photos, but Scourse describes the boulder in question as a "sub-angular to sub-rounded, faceted and bleached clast". Scourse also says that the signs of striae are not clear enough to be convincing.

Thorpe et al tried to trace this boulder, but could not find it. So what happened to this little Newall collection? Geoffrey Kellaway sadly died in 2013 -- is the boulder still in the possession of his family, or has it ended up somewhere else?

Anyway, thanks to Philip for scanning the two images from Kellaway's paper.  They are BGS photos, which means that he took them during the course of his official work.  I have no reason to doubt Kellaway's word on the "erratics" found by Hawley, or the existence of the "Newall boulder", or the authenticity of the photos.  The boulder recorded here wasn't very big, maybe c 25 cm x 12 cms and weighing in at c 10 kg.  

If Kellway says the boulder was an "ignimbritic tuff-lava" probably of Ordovician age and possibly originating in North Wales, I am prepared to accept that until somebody comes up with a more accurate piece of provenancing.  His comments about weathering are also quite sensible, as are those on the striations -- he says they "may be" of glacial origin.  The images are not clear enough to pick up detailed surface markings.

It would be disrespectful of a good scientist to simply dismiss this evidence out of hand, and unless anybody has a better explanation for its presence at Stonehenge, embedded in chalky rubble,  I think we are duty bound to accept it as evidence of glaciation at Stonehenge.

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

Click to expand.  RSN-18 is presumably Newall's sample number.

PS.  Thanks to Philip, here is the text relating to the boulder.  In spite of a somewhat convoluted discussion of its origins, it seems to be carefully thought out.  We can forget about the "Pliocene glaciation" which was one of Kellaway's pet theories and concentrate on the provenancing discussion and on the "context" of the erratic.  The fact that the stone was not found in "a secure archaeological context" will no doubt be used in some quarters as an argument for simply forgetting about it, or pretending that it is simply "adventitious."  I do not accept that for a moment.  It was certainly not carted to Stonehenge as a piece of roadstone.   All that we know from the context is that somebody foolishly thought the stone was of no interest, and threw it out.  That was a silly thing to do, since its presence at Stonehenge might actually be rather important.

Are there more Newall striated erratics?

Section C13 -- photo of the Atkinson dig in 1964.  This is where Hawley was excavating in 1924.  At bottom right corner, bluestone 34.  Next to it, stump 33f, and to its left, at an angle, stump 33e.

Because there is a specific mention of four small erratics coming to light in the 1924 Stonehenge dig, we tend to assume that the "Newall erratic" is one of those -- but I am not sure.  In his report on the 1924 digging season, Hawley says:  "From time to time pieces of foreign stone have been found with signs of working upon them, and this season four have come to light that merit description."  They were all found in the "upper layer", c 25" below the surface.  Kellaway (having spoken to Newall) also refers to "a few" erratic stones carrying striations, all of which had been examined by Engleheart and Dale, and all considered to have been glacially transported.  Tim Daw reproduces a photo from Hawley's report, suggesting that a stone at the extreme left (circled red) was the one described by Kellaway and examined by Harrison and others in the IGS. I don't think that's correct -- it looks much too elongated. That might be one of the others -- now assumed lost.  

We know that Hawley and Newall were only interested in pieces of bluestone -- and presumably bluestone boulders and packing stones -- if there were signs of working on them.  All the others were thrown away.  Julie Gardiner (in the big 1995 Stonehenge volume by Cleal et al) reports that only 10% of finds were kept by Hawley-- so 90% were thrown away.  That is a tragedy -- and who knows how different the "establishment story" of Stonehenge might have been if priorities had been different.  So only 3,675 pieces of bluestone survive in the collections at Salisbury Museum and elsewhere, we can assume that 33,000 other bluestone pieces are in the waste trenches that were used as a repository for everything "uninteresting".

The site excavated by Hawley in 1924 is now classified as site C13, cut into a segment of the bluestone circle and adjacent to sarsen No 8.  It was also excavated by Atkinson in 1964 -- but by then most of the bluestone bits had been removed and thrown away! But in any case, from the photo at the head of this post we can see that there is a lot going on here -- with bluestone fragments and boulders all over the place. 

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2016/07/volcanics-at-stonehenge-two-more-types.html

Stumps 33e and 33f (quite close to bluestone 34) are classified as altered volcanic ashes, belonging to Volcanic Group A in the Ixer / Bevins classification, although there has been some speculation that the stones might actually belong to Rhyolite Group A-C.  The problem is that these stumps have not been sampled, in spite of featuring strongly in two well-recorded digs. They are both crude flaky slabs, not pillars, and are "rubbish stones" that would not have been used if anything better had been available. Stump 33e in particular is an anomaly,  aligned in a direction that appears to make no sense -- almost perpendicular to the circumference of the bluestone circle.  Hawley was puzzled by it, and on p 239 of the 1995 Cleal et al volume on Stonehenge the authors appear similarly confused!!  

It's not known where the Newall boulder came from with respect to these stumps, but it cannot have been far away.  Is the boulder of the same -- or similar -- rock type as the stumps?  We shall see, in due course......... but on the basis of visual appearance alone, I would hazard a guess that the Newall boulder has nothing to do with the stumps.  The stumps are fragile and heavily fissured and foliated -- and the boulder is a single massive block with no signs of fracturing along lines of weakness. I'd guess that its provenance is quite different.

In conclusion,  we can be certain that there were other striated bluestones that were turned up and turfed out.  The question is this -- did Newall save any of these?  And if he did, where are they?

The site of Hawley's dig (C13) in 1924 (Fig 120, p 219 of Cleal et al, 1995.  Stones 33a, 33b, 33c and 33d are missing; stones 33e and 33f are present as broken and damaged stumps.  

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It should be noted that to the north of stone 33 (dolerite) there are three stumps (32 c, d and e ) that have been claimed (on visual grounds) to be linked to Rhosyfelin. Stump 32e cannot be linked to Rhosyfelin, because it is made of dolerite, but there is some focus on stones 32c and d -- with MPP claiming that his imaginary "extraction point" in his imaginary quarry could have provided the stranding stone now known as stone 42. That's a problem, since stone 42 is made of dolerite.  Perhaps he meant stone 44?  But that's dolerite too.  Or maybe 32d?  It''s all a bit of a muddle.  Parker Pearson claims that the stone extracted from his "extraction recess" had dimensions 40 cm x 45 cm -- but that is pure fantasy.   There is no way a stone with that sort of cross section could have come from the very small "gap" at Rhosyfelin that has featured so heavily in the media.....

Nonetheless, stump 32d is the one claimed by Ixer and Bevins as being a possible Rhosyfelin monolith............ hmmm, we shall see, since that one too is classified by Cleal et al (1995) as being made of spotted dolerite.  Yet another case of too much fantasy and too little science.

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2015/11/i-kid-you-not.html

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2019/12/the-stonehenge-bluestones-pontification.html