What are megaliths made of?

[Boreades]

...presumably the Preseli-is-special must be a modern notion and would be a good example of making facts 'fit in' with the theory.

As discussed previously, it was invented in the 1920's by a Welsh geologist, purely as a hypothesis. Even his Welsh colleagues at the time thought it was bonkers. But with media hype it quickly became established as a "fact". And as mentioned in many other contexts, once a historian has put in print, it gets repeated, and repeated, and repeated, and .....

Ref; http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales ... es-1894944

When you start to dig a little bit you find that actually there is no evidence at all.

It is entirely a myth which was invented in 1922, immediately after the First World War. The myth received instant acceptance on the part of the British public because there was a desperate need for a feel-good factor after the war – national pride had been dented, the economy was in tatters and everybody needed a good news story.

[Boreades]

on the Portal here http://www.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?sid=28658 Our old sparring partner Brian John is involved so don't expect strict impartiality. You'll find the best account towards the bottom by another old sparring partner of ours, Andy B.

Some of the contributors appear to lack even a basic ability to read a map.

"It has been argued that humans transported the spotted dolerites from the high ground of Mynydd Preseli down to the coast at Milford Haven and then rafted them up the Bristol Channel and up the River Avon to the Stonehenge area.

The River Avon that flows to the Bristol Channel is not the River Avon that starts near Stonehenge. That one flows through Salisbury to the south coast at Christchurch. Has anyone proposed that they rafted them round Lands End and across Lyme Bay?

[TisILeclerc]

Why would they pick particular stones in the first place?

And why blue?

[Boreades]

Were they particular what stones they used?

Some might say that specific phases of Stonehenge used specific stones. But that doesn't prove it was by design, any more than the new wing to Château Boreades having bricks of a different colour to the originals. You can't get that kind of brick any more. So the builders had to make-do.

[TisILeclerc]

I'm quite sure they were particular.

After all you don't spend a thousand years or so sticking wooden posts then stones in the ground for fun. Do you?

And then putting them things up. Could you do it? I don't think anyone today could do it. This is serious stuff. Man.

Ho ho.

[Boreades]

The wooden posts stuck in the ground at Woodhenge are given a rather nice visualisation here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Tm8CVIANrw

The main problem (as I see it) is having any idea which post-holes belong in which phase of construction. Were all post-holes containing posts at the same time, or did it expand outwards in phases as their engineering skills improved? Or as the public demanded a bigger venue?

As in, the O2 Arena of its era.

[Boreades]

I don't know what it is about YouTube videos that attracts the profanities and ranters.

But, anyway, if you ignore the comments, this - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-K7q20VzwVs
is a useful demonstration of how very large stones can be moved quite simply by a small number of people. Brute force is not necessary, except perhaps in (or on) the minds of the trad.archeos. Apologies if you've seen it before.

[Boreades]

The Preseli-Deniers are at it again!

In a peer-reviewed paper published in the Archaeology in Wales journal, Dr Brian John, Dr Dyfed Elis-Gruffydd and John Downes say there are “no traces of human intervention in any of the features that have made the archaeologists so excited”.

The group does not accept the idea of a Neolithic quarry in the Preseli Hills and says the supposed signs of ‘quarrying’ by humans at Craig Rhos-y-Felin were entirely natural. They also believe that the archaeologists behind the report may have inadvertently created certain features during five years of “highly selective sediment removal”. This site has been described by lead archaeologist Prof Mike Parker Pearson as ‘the Pompeii of prehistoric stone quarries’ and has caused great excitement in archaeological circles,” says the report.

“The selection of this rocky crag near the village of Brynberian for excavation in 2011-2015 was triggered by the discovery by geologists Richard Bevins and Rob Ixer that some of the stone fragments in the soil at Stonehenge were quite precisely matched to an unusual type of foliated rhyolite found in the crag.

“This led the archaeologists to conclude that there must have been a Neolithic quarry here, worked for the specific purpose of cutting out monoliths for the bluestone settings at Stonehenge.

But Dr John is increasingly convinced that the rhyolite debris at Stonehenge comes from glacial erratics which were eroded from the Rhosyfelin rocky crag almost half a million years ago by the overriding Irish Sea Glacier and then transported eastwards by ice towards Salisbury Plain.

In his paper written with Dr Dyfed Elis-Gruffydd and John Downes, he says: “It is suggested, on the basis of careful examinations of this site, that certain of the “man made features” described have been created by the archaeologists themselves through a process of selective sediment and clast removal.

“An expectation or conviction that ‘engineering features’ would be found has perhaps led to the unconscious fashioning of archaeological artifices.

“While there appears to be no landform, rock mechanics or sedimentary evidence that this was a Neolithic quarry site devoted to the extraction of bluestone orthostats destined for use at Stonehenge, or for any other purpose, we would accept the possibility that there may have been temporary Mesolithic, Neolithic or later camp sites here over a very long period of time, as in many other sheltered and wooded locations in north Pembrokeshire.

Commenting on the research paper published last week, Dr Brian John added: “The new geological work at Rhosyfelin and Stonehenge is an interesting piece of ‘rock provenencing’ – but it tells us nothing at all about how monoliths or smaller rock fragments from West Wales found their way to Stonehenge.

“We are sure that the archaeologists have convinced themselves that the glacial transport of erratics was impossible. We are not sure where they got that idea from. “On the contrary, there is substantial evidence in favour of glacial transport and zero evidence in support of the human transport theory. We accept that there might have been a camp site at Rhosyfelin, used intermittently by hunters over several millennia. But there is no quarry.

“We think the archaeologists have been so keen on telling a good story here that they have ignored or misinterpreted the evidence in front of them. “That’s very careless. They now need to undertake a complete reassessment of the material they have collected.”

http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales ... s-10591475

[hvered]

The group does not accept the idea of a Neolithic quarry in the Preseli Hills and says the supposed signs of ‘quarrying’ by humans at Craig Rhos-y-Felin were entirely natural.

The dogmatic tone of "does not accept" is somewhat troubling. One might be swayed if 'entirely natural' were changed to 'seemingly natural'; the problem, for me, is that the author(s) avoid explaining how their conclusion was reached... it appears we have to take their word for it.

But Dr John is increasingly convinced that the rhyolite debris at Stonehenge comes from glacial erratics which were eroded from the Rhosyfelin rocky crag almost half a million years ago by the overriding Irish Sea Glacier and then transported eastwards by ice towards Salisbury Plain.

This is also somewhat troubling. Does Brian John really believe that the glacial erratics were neatly deposited on or around Salisbury Plain and nowhere else (since it seems the horseshoe stones are the only 'bluestones' outside Rhosyfelin)?

...there is substantial evidence in favour of glacial transport and zero evidence in support of the human transport theory.

This may well be the case but is there 'a glacier trail' to be followed here? Would one expect a few bluestones to have been dropped en route? He dismisses 'human transport theory' without considering the likelihood (near-certainty) that the terrain wasn't exactly as it is now; for instance, the extent of the Severn Estuary, or the (un-)naturalness of Salisbury Plain, are significant factors, whether for or against the argument.

The glacial erratics theory is not wrong necessarily but just as he more or less accuses archaeologists of being selective, he also seems to display a similar tendency.

[Boreades]

Would one expect a few bluestones to have been dropped en route?

Yes, but they would be difficult to find in the Severn Estuary or Avon Rivers.