Eternal Idol

The headlines – new to me, at least – seemed quite dramatic. Bluestone arrival 500 years earlier than previously thought! Possible new henge at far end of Avenue! Masons’ yard doubles size of Stonehenge!

It must have been an exciting year of digging. The masons’ yard area, so thickly covered in sarsen chippings, seems to be in stark contrast to the ‘Stonehenge layer’ within the henge that’s predominantly bluestone chippings, rather than sarsen. To me, that seems to lend credence to MPP’s inference that the bluestones arrived early and the Aubrey holes were dug to hold them. And, 500 years later, naturally the sarsens would have been prepared outside the henge until they were ready for erection. Judging by the size of the yard, an estimated 600sqm, there would have been room for quite a few stones to be worked on simultaneously.

I was a little disappointed that MPP didn’t seem very interested in the Mesolithic. He suggested that you’ll find Mesolithic remains almost anywhere you dig in Stonehenge, and he wasn’t keen to discuss their significance.

However, he was more forthcoming about the periglacial soil disturbance in the Avenue. It seems a big jump from finding natural ridges to infer features that defined the location for the Avenue. Yet the photographs did seem to show impressive looking grooves and ridges in the chalk.

So, as the word ‘periglacial’ seemed significant here, I asked if that meant that glaciers might have been close enough to drop bluestones relatively near. MPP said immediately that he depended on an expert at Sheffield for his information, and his expert said that the latest knowledge suggested that it was extremely unlikely that the bluestones would have been carried anywhere nearer Stonehenge than the shores of the Bristol Channel. Indeed, he said it was unlikely that the ice came within 50 miles of Stonehenge “unless there was some earlier glaciation we don’t know about”. He went on to say that there was no use made of bluestone in monuments near to the closest area of glaciation. He singled out Stanton Drew, which I can confirm is full of a range of different reddish stones. He said that it was highly suggestive that bluestone wasn’t used there, and it was obvious that he was not too impressed by the glaciation theory. But even the southern shores of the Bristol Channel would make transport of the bluestones to their final resting place much easier.

Glaciations aside, it looks as though our view of Stonehenge has to change quite a bit. The chronology looks very different, with Phase 1 now including a bluestone ring in the Aubrey Holes, and the potential for greater precision in the dating of Phase 3. And the potential new henge at the far end of the Avenue is particularly intriguing. That almost begins to sounds like an analogue of the Sanctuary at the end of the West Kennet Avenue. I suppose that its position meant that it was easily robbed of any stones that might have stood there.

I’m looking forward to the new dates, EH permitting. And it should be an interesting year of excavation in 2009!

On the matter of glaciations, it’s interesting that MPP is at least talking to somebody from the Sheffield Univ Geography Dept (probably Chris Clark) and seeking advice. The BRITICE project to which he refers dates to the Last Glaciation — maximum ice extent around 20,000 years ago. Nobody, as far as I know, says that the ice at this time covered Salisbury Plain.

If MPP said it was unlikely that the ice came within 50 miles of Stonehenge “unless there was some earlier glaciation we don’t know about” he was being a bit disingenuous. We DO know about earlier glaciations (at least two of them) which were more extensive. Been in correspondence with Dr Phil Gibbard of Cambridge about these. Certainly the ice reached Oxfordshire, Avon, Devon and Somerset. The best map I can put together at present (based on all the glacial sites I know about) is this one:
http://www.brianjohn.f2s.com/bluestones60a.html
The ice limit needs to be pushed further inland to take account of newer evidence.
More extreme is this map, based on Alun Hubbard’s modelling:
http://www.brianjohn.f2s.com/bluestone65.html

Whichever of these maps is closer to the truth, maybe MPP needs to have a look at them. I will draw them to his attention! Maybe we can all get a bit closer together here — as Alex says, collecting stones from somewhere to the west of Stonehenge is a great deal easier than collecting them from West Wales!!

I made a throwaway remark about the Sanctuary in my last append and, as soon as I’d submitted it, I realized that it could be worth looking into the parallels more closely.

There are significant similarities between Avebury and Stonehenge which may be obvious to everyone else, but are new to me.
1. Both started with a ditch and bank around 3000BC, though the Avebury date range is quite wide.
2. That was followed up soon after with the bluestone circle at Stonehenge, and the north/south circles at Avebury.
3. Both sites appear to have had timber circles in the centre, date uncertain in both cases
4. Then around 2500BC (possibly earlier at Avebury, with more uncertainty) they both acquired their massive sarsen circles.
5. Then, after the completion of the sarsen circles, the builders constructed avenues. Again, uncertainty over dates, but the sequence seems clear.
6. The West Kennet Avenue, and the Stonehenge Avenue apparently both connected to another circular stone monument (supposition in the case of Stonehenge.) Pre-existing certainly in the case of the Sanctuary, TBD in the case of the Avon ring.
7. Both avenues are the same length, about 3km, and both connect circular sites at each end, one on relatively high ground, the other relatively low.

There are enough parallels here (though some still to be confirmed) to make me think that there is some standard model being invoked in the design and development of the two sites. Similar religion, similar cosmology, similar symbolism.

All of which makes the difference between the nature of the stones at the two sites very interesting. Smooth and engineered at Stonehenge, natural at Avebury (and given Terry Meaden’s views on goddess faces to be seen in them, naturalistic) with the supposed phallic male and female lozenge shapes.

But we could now have two corresponding rings, one at each site, with vanished stones. This is Bad Archaeology, but one could speculate that the Sanctuary stones were straight and regular, perhaps like the wooden posts that preceded them, while the putative ring at the Avon could have been natural, using smaller versions of the Heel and Cuckoo Stones.

That would have completed a symmetrical pattern that seems to make sense. On the high ground (Sanctuary/Stonehenge) the stones are smooth, and salute the male Sky God. They are connected by avenues to the rings on the low ground (Avebury, Avon Avenue henge) where the stones are natural and are dedicated to the female Goddess. Obviously, that does not preclude the inclusion of other symbolism, like Goddess imagery at Stonehenge’s stone 16.

I’ve speculated enough. But while my initial cursory research shows at least the inner ring at the Sanctuary to have rectangular-shaped holes, it’s not conclusive evidence by any means. I shall continue to look for more evidence. And I shall visit the Avon footbridge to see if I can find what its foundation sarsens look like.

Thank you for reporting on this Alex. I don’t know about you, but I feel a bit disappointed that so much remains up in the air and the Mesolithic is seemingly just disregarded.

From what I have discovered it seems periglaciation is the result of freeze thaw and frost heave (although I am not really up to describing what the latter is) and not necessarily glaciation. I don’ t know, but surely it was not limited only to the area which became the Avenue?

It seems that as far as Stonehenge is concerned what appears as a step forward actually takes you further into the mire of mystery.

I can help on this one. Periglaciation is a broad term that applies to the terrain beyond an ice edge, where there may or may not be permafrost or frozen ground. There are many periglacial processes, many of which are associated with the seasonal summer thaw of the surface layers. Parallel ridges in the chalk caused by periglaciation? Sounds a bit strange to me. Were the ridges running downslope or across the slope? Did MPP give any more details?

It’s logical to assume that Salisbury Plain was affected by permafrost for many thousands of years during the Ice Age.

John, I was a bit puzzled by MPP’s use of the term ‘periglacial’. It seems to be a loose term that can be used for anything from simply a cold environment, through tundra conditions, to the edge of the glacier itself. But as you say. the periglacial conditions would have affected the whole area, and not just the Avenue. Of course, we only saw though the narrow window of a single trench, but the linear features looked significant. I don’t remember MPP saying SRP found similar features in their other trenches.

Like you, I was disappointed in the lack of appreciation of the Mesolithic. We now appreciate Stonehenge as part of a wider landscape. Maybe it’s time to start viewing it in the context of a much greater TIMEscape, too. It’s a bit like cherishing a modern Aston Martin (Ferrari, etc, to choice) without understanding anything of the cultural and design influences from the long history of the marque.

Bryan, thanks for your further information. I did wonder at the time if MPP had genuinely got the latest thinking on the subject, but I wasn’t going to challenge the great man in open forum – I was just interested to hear him talk on the subject.

When I visited the websites you offered, I found this: ” … the human transport theory is 90% improbable, and the glacial transport theory is 50% improbable.” I’m probably being too tiresomely pedantic here, but it’s 100% PROBABLE that the bluestones actually arrived. So you need to invoke a third agency to make up the numbers. Much as I’d like to call on Merlin at this point, I think that we can use your analysis in a slightly different way. Suppose we proposed three theories: 1. Human agency, all the way from Preseli Hills, 2. Glacial transport, all the way to within a few miles of the Stonehenge area, and 3. A combination of the two, with human agency providing transport from some uncertain glacial dumping point in the west.

I think that might change the numbers quite a bit. I’d be interested to hear your assessments, but (channging IMprobabilities to probabilities) my guess would be 1: 50%, 2: 10%, 3: 40%. But the probabilities will change depending on knowledge of the likely flows.

Those numbers reflect my partial acceptance of your thesis that glaciation may well have played a part, but my disbelief that the stones were dropped conveniently in one place. The erratic train model is obviously a component of option 3. And I’ll admit up front that my numerical assessments are influenced by some ‘spiritual’ component of Neolithic peoples’ approach to the bluestones – some extra quality within them (or the place they came from) that we can only guess at. And an acceptance that the journey to Preseli and back itself may have been an essential part of the stones’ presentation, like a pilgrimage to Mecca or Santiago de Compostela.

This was my amateur shot in the dark. I’d be very interested in your refinement of the model and the numbers?

Alex/Brian

The periglaciation does seem a surprising appliance of science. I can imagine it would be applicable to the chalk when it is uncovered, but would there have been any indication of the “channels” in Neolithic times given soil development? There seems to be no surface evidence at all now?

Is there a survey of this site detailing where each stone came from (i.e broadly). There appear to be bluestones unique to but from different locations in Wales and not just Preselli, as well as the Altar Stone.

And if so, would the glacier have dropped them all in the same place? The idea here is if they were deposited in different locations then the desire and effort involved in getting them to Stonehenge would be increased, perhaps even approaching the difficulty of dragging them from Wales?

As for the bluestone and Boles Barrow, there must be some question about when the bluestone was built into the barrow? The assumption seems to be that the barrow was blocked a long time before the bluestones arrived at Stonehenge, but is that proven? Without knowing its context, can the possibility it was added later rather than sooner in the barrow’s history be ruled out – indeed if it was ever there?

http://www.themodernantiquarian.com/site/1980/boles_barrow.html
http://www.britarch.ac.uk/ba/ba47/ba47lets.html

Dennis, I hope that you will forgive my ignorance about the subject. Here are just some thoughts.

I read in your article that MMP stated that cattle came from as far as Wales and west England. My question is: were statistics made about where this cattle came from? Sometimes, what is not present can be as relevant as what is found. Most of Britain is situated east of Stonehenge. It would be logic to find proportionally more cattle from the east than from the west. I do have the impression that many findings, if not most, point in a westerly direction (or from the immediate neighbourhood). The bluestones are another important clue. I will not enter the discussion whether those stone were transported by humans or by glaciations. Fact is that they seemed to be important enough to the builders of Stonehenge. So, where is the evidence that the people from the region east of Stonehenge (southeast England) participated in its building?

An other question is whether the relation between the chalk or marl in the soil, Stonehenge and agriculture has been discussed. The use of marl to improve the fertility of the land is very ancient. Pliny the Elder mentioned the fact that the ‘Gauls’ had the habit to spread marl over their land and that “this lasted for nearly 80 years”. Silbury hill seemed to have been covered by chalk, making the hill a splendid white monument with more than one significance. What about the pits found in the neighbourhood? Are they comparable with deneholes? What about the quality of local chalk? Is it suitable to be used as marl?

I also have the impression that Stonehenge IIIb was build according to a well prepared plan and in one go, although the construction itself took generations. But after all, our cathedrals needed also a few hundred years before they were finished. I had the thought that the menhirs could have been initially some sort of tombstones. When a body is cremated, most of it disappears as smoke into the air. Gods live in the sky. The link is easy: by being cremated, the deceased is sent as smoke, a last breath, to the Gods. But a fraction remains on earth: the ashes. Ashes represent the earthly part of a human. These ashes would then be buried, a (huge) stone erected (earlier, maybe a wooden post) upon the location symbolising the reach from earth toward the sky. Plants and crops have their roots in the earth, rain and sunlight make them grow to the sky. Mankind moves in between: Germans named the place Midgard. When Stonehenge was build, this ancient belief was pulled open. The monument itself became liberated from its oldest intention. It is a sort of abstraction of the earth-heaven link. I make the parallel with the Egyptian pyramids. It is more and more clear that they represent a similar link between heaven and earth. The deceased farao had to be transported to the realm of the Gods where he would plea for better conditions for mankind. Maybe is Stonehenge something similar in purpose: making a connection with heaven so that living conditions on earth would improve. In that perspective, its location upon chalk would be no coincidence. Marl does improve the fertility of the ground. If bluestones were thought to be healing stones, then they would be perfectly in line with the previous reasoning. Marl heals acid soil. The combination of both could only reinforce their respective power. This might be the reason why bluestones were used at Stonehenge.

The vertically placed stones represent the very old reach, prayer to the heavens. The lintels upon them represent a limit. We can consider them as some sort of decadence. It is a sign of human power. Look what human now can do. I make the connection with St. Paul’s cathedral in Rome. This monumental church was build when the church was very much under threat. Older churches, especially the Roman style ones, were far more sober. St Paul’s is the opposite: it was meant to be a symbol of the triumphant church. A power which was in reality fading. Gothic buildings have vertical lines: closer to you my God. They were build as a reaction to the (attested) fact that people attended less and less church. That is why they had to be grand and full of light. Horizontal lines were avoided in Gothic churches. However, renaissance buildings (like St Paul’s) are full of horizontal lines: they symbolize earthly matters. Contemporary persons like Rene Descartes had shown the way to a more earthly way of thinking. Biblical, vertical thinking became more and more old fashioned. In a similar way, Stonehenge was the St. Paul’s of the time: the old beliefs were fading, so the monument was build as a reaction to this development.

But the lintels give away what really was going on: the belief of the people in the omnipotence of the Gods was fading. People had become more and more aware that they themselves were responsible for their fate, and that the Gods had actually little to do with it. Not so much later, the ancient Greeks questioned in a similar way the real role of their Gods in their life. In their mythology, the Gods had become less and less interested in what mankind did or did not. In the oldest myths, the Gods still help people. Prometheus brought fire to mankind for instance. But Zeus, the upper God, was not ‘amused’. The message in the myth is rather clear: Gods are to be feared, not admired. This change of attitude toward the Gods, from admiration to fear, could have happened just before Stonehenge was build. The local priest-kings didn’t like this change in mentality. So, they ordered the construction. But just like St. Paul’s cathedral, they never realized that the shape and structure of Stonehenge revealed the true mentality of the time: mankind was now in power. The lintels are uniquely human. No God ever constructed such a shape. It is as if the dead no longer needed to go to the realm of the Gods: the upside down U-shape of the trilithons redirect them back to earth. The way up is blocked. According to this reasoning, no ashes would be found under those stones. There was no longer need to do so.
Michael

I don’t want to repeat myself, I don’t want to subject Brian to cross-examination and I don’t want to detract from his very clear points about the bluestones and where they originally came from. However, I think John has made a very interesting point here and it’s crystallised something I’ve been thinking about for a while.

We all accept that human action brought the stones to Stonehenge, the only question being, as John pointed out before – how far? I’ve no idea of the spread of the stones or where they’d have lain if they’d been moved by glacial action, but I can’t help thinking that the potential difficulty in moving the whole lot might actually have been greater than we imagine, which might in turn increase their value or the value our ancestors placed on them.

It’s a very simplistic way of looking at things, I know, but IF we accept that humans brought them from south-west Wales, even bearing in mind what Brian had to say about this ‘trial run’ back in 2000, then at least this enterprise has the virtue of being relatively straightforward, given what we surmise of the route and the ability of our ancestors to build rafts or boats capable of carrying them across the waterways in question.

However, if all these various stones were scattered, I know not where, across the west country, then it seems to me that the feat of transporting them to Stonehenge might have been even more impressive than transporting them from a single putative quarry in Wales. This isn’t to take issue with everything Brian has to say, but it suggests to me that these stones had a value over and above that of mere building material and that our ancestors felt it more than worthwhile putting in a very considerable effort to bring them to Stonehenge.

I believe Brian’s account of the difficulties of transporting a single stone a short distance in Wales, so at the same time, I wonder at the immense difficulties involved in transporting a spread out bunch of erratics from all over the west country. It just seems to me that they must have been viewed as far more than building material.

I agree with Dennis that the value of the bluestones must be far greater than simply building material. As I pointed out above, the journey to fetch the stones (wherever they were to be found) must have had considerable spiritual value as a sort of pilgrimage. The actual labour of fetching the stones may well have had its own intrinsic value, as in some of the repetitive digging and re-filling of ditches, or re-erection of wooden posts (seen elsewhere in Wessex) seems to have had ritual value – it’s the community action that is the raison d’etre, rather than the outcome of the labour.

As for that labour of moving the bluestones, the 100% certainty is that those Neolithic people DID move the stones considerable distances. And with all due respect to those modern characters who tried to emulate them, the prehistoric people must have done the incredible work with a burning sense of motivation, and uncumbered by Health and Safety regulations and the other inconveniences of modern life like fences and high-friction roads. These were people who spent their whole life working with stone (as the stone wall builders of the Lake District do) and massive tree trunks, and they’d have had an instinctive feel and centuries of experience to draw upon. To compare modern efforts with theirs is hardly appropriate, and demeans the past.

But all of the foregoing doesn’t mean that glaciation wasn’t involved. It just means that we mustn’t discount the incredible skill, motivation, strength and efforts of the Stonehenge builders.

BTW, all this bluestone discussion (we love it, don’t we?) stemmed from the SRP findings of simple linear chalk disturbance, ascribed by MPP to ‘periglacial action’. That’s the assessment we were given but it would be good to get hold of the photos, and let Brian and his colleagues make their asessment too. I did actually see these features when I visited the site in the summer, and they didn’t look particularly regular to me, and I quite happily accepted the explanation that they were from natural causes. But I’m not a glaciologist or a soil mechanics expert.

Good news as far as photographs are concerned because there’ll be some later tonight, hopefully, when my son’s resized them and put the appropriate copyright notices on them – from a gentleman named Peter Goodhugh.

Otherwise, I think Alex is spot-on with his assessment of our ancestors’ achievements, because their motivation must have been a world away from the one we currently inhabit.

Finally, for now, I’m extremely grateful to Michael for taking the time and trouble to put his thoughts into print. It strikes me that reading the comments here is a bit like reading a newspaper other than the one to which one becomes accustomed, because they make us think in a different way.

I’m very pleased that Brian has written in at such length and in such detail, because he’s presented many trains of thought and scenarios that I doubt I’d have envisaged otherwise. Likewise, as my main aim is to try to think along the same lines as our ancestors, I’m fascinated by everything that Michael has to say because it’s just so different from anything that I believe would have occurred to me had I not read his comments.

Whether I agree with all Michael’s thoughts is neither here nor there, because his ideas and observations have made me think, and they’ve made me think along different lines, weighing up different possibilities to see if they make any kind of sense. There’s too much to review here and in any case, we can all do this for ourselves, but I really liked what he had to say about the proportion of cattle bones that we would expect to have come from the east, while I particularly liked what he had to say about Midgard – thank you for this, Michael.

Stone the crows — I go off to see a film (golden oldie called “On the Black Hill”) and come back to find about 50 points needing attention. I feel a bit outnumbered here!

Boles Barrow. I know Chris Green was very cynical about the provenance, but I think I’m right in saying that Atkinson was happy with it, as was Burl, Castleden, Anthony Johnson and most others, including the authors of the big “Science and Stonehenge” tome. I’m pretty convinced of its provenance too — and can see no reason why it should have been built into the barrow later than the original time of construction. That means it’s far older than the first stone setting at Stonehenge — no problem if it was collected from an erratic train that had already been in place many thousands of years earlier.

Thanks for this, Brian, but don’t feel outnumbered – a lot of people are interested in what you’ve got to say and as far as I can see, you keep delivering the goods admirably!

Brian please just keep the information coming for as long as you can. I really appreciate you have taken the time to explain your ideas fully and I am certain that I am not alone in that.

My problem with Boles Barrow is that it seemed to offer a lot but on investigation it is far from proven the bluestone was part of the barrow.

Overall my view (i.e theoretical bias) is I do not think that dragging stones 150 miles plus was really the chosen option. It is a theory that seems to have a lot to do with “dumbing down” the Neolithic – as was Atkinson’s wont?

My feeling is that far more use was made of the sea and rivers but then having been introduced to glaciers by EI this also seemed to fit into the “make it less physical ” category. However, on consideration, I found I was again back to physical effort! Glaciers were likely to produce several locations for the stones and that seems to be nearly as difficult a task as one well trodden long route?

Thanks Dennis — well, it’s fun and passes away these dark winter days. In response to Alex and others, re probabilities etc, one of the things that does concern me is that those of you who believe in the human transport theory concentrate on hypothetical things the whole time — eg they COULD have done this, or they MIGHT have done that, because we think that certain similar things were done elsewhere. So because all of this is in the realm of theory, nothing is provable or disprovable. That’s typical of a theory that is proposed ahead of its time — ie before adequate evidence is produced to underpin it. That’s the route to dodgy science, in which working hypotheses become ruling hypotheses.

What I’m trying to do is not ask what MIGHT have happened, but what DID happen — as supported by evidence collected in the field. Having done that, you can move on the the speculative bit afterwords. So what DID happen? Well, the Irish Sea Glacier crossed West Wales, flowed up the Bristol Channel and into the coastlands of Avon, Devon and Cornwall on AT LEAST one occasion. No doubt about any of that, and I don’t think anybody seriously disputes it. The evidence is in the literature. What else do we know about? The assemblage of stones at Stonehenge consists of at least 20 different rock types, from at least 20 different provenances in West and South Wales. Again, that is not disputed. What else? Well, the foreign stones at Stonehenge are of all shapes and sizes, some tall and thin, others slab-like, and others short and stumpy. Some, found only in cobbles, packing stones or fragments or flakes, were too small to be used as monoliths. As Judd, Kellaway, Thorpe and others have said down through the years, such a motley collection of stones has to be an erratic assemblage.

Can we therefore accept that the ice reached the terrain to the west of Stonehenge, and that if it behaved as a normal glacier does, it was carrying a lot of stones from West and South Wales?

Does anybody dispute any of that? And if not, can we use it as a basis for moving on to the next stage in the process of seeking agreement?

Dennis — you say
” ….if all these various stones were scattered, I know not where, across the west country, then it seems to me that the feat of transporting them to Stonehenge might have been even more impressive than transporting them from a single putative quarry in Wales. This isn’t to take issue with everything Brian has to say, but it suggests to me that these stones had a value over and above that of mere building material and that our ancestors felt it more than worthwhile putting in a very considerable effort to bring them to Stonehenge.”

Fair enough — but as I’ve said before, if the erratics were in a train or line, then collecting them would have been very easy indeed. Would that have increased their mystical appeal and value? I take the rather unromantic and empirical view that they were probably looked on simply as handy building materials which could be gathered up with minimal effort. Then, once the monument was built — either in part or whole — THAT was the moment at which it took on some mystical or religious significance, with hazy memories of the work of earlier generations and speculations as to what their motives might have been.

I tend to think this as being true of ALL the megalithic structures in Britain. First, they were built, and later the attracted significance. Sacrilege? Ah, probably….. but this is an interesting chicken and egg conundrum!

Brian, as I indicated above, I’m partially convinced by your case for glaciation – and then you say things which make me question your whole case again!

You claim that you’re only interested in what DID happen – yet you make a big jump from some still uncertain glaciations that MIGHT have come somewhere near Stonehenge, and assert that they MUST have left a convenient train of erratics – an assertion that MIGHT be possible, but seems very far from proven. The erratic theory seems no more than a hypothesis to me, the same problem for which you’re criticizing the human agency theory.

Please remember that I’m not dismissing the glaciation theory. But, for me, you’ve failed to make a totally convincing case, which is why I was trying to get a balance of probabilities. Maybe even to invoke the ‘wisdom of crowds’.

One of the difficulties that I have with your claim that collecting the stones “… would have been very easy indeed” is that a motley collection of stones (in your view) picked up at random over a long period of time from many different areas of South Wales would be distributed over a very large area of southern England, simply by the randomness of the processes and time scales involved. And then they’d be left on the ground for, what, tens of thousands of years? And after being half-buried, then they’d likely be covered by dense woodland or scrub for much of the area. You say they ran out of stone, so there can only have been up to 80 or so significant stones to be found in hundreds of square miles. That’s a major needle-in-a haystack job, even if it’s 80 needles.

Again, I’m not saying that it couldn’t be done. But in the absence of incontrovertible evidence about either erratic trains, human agency or whatever, I think we have to take a view of probabilities. And in my view the probability of glacial transport (combined with human agency for the last part of the journey) is no more than 40%. That’s what I put in an earlier post in this thread, but I really would like to hear your asessments, and those of others. The more contributions, the more insights and knowledge that can be brought to bear, the clearer the picture that will emerge.

Excuse my tackling of glaciation as a lay man.

A huge ice sheet (1000m thick) erodes Preselli and carries the rocks off towards England. Here they end up near Glastonbury as a train of debris.

My logic dictates if the glacier only reached as far as Glastonbury and retreated, then Preselli debris must have been been picked up early in the life of the glacier or followed what was sea water ice containing no debris (think of it as a first in, first out scenario) to be deposited there.

The ice flows projected on Brian’s site suggests ice was picking up rocks well to the east of Preselli. Indeed, much of Wales was being transported south and west. Although this may be later in date, glaciers are not the speediest of things, so it would seem rocks to the east clearly had an advantage spatially over rocks further west when it came to being deposited in England.

I can understand that flows may not have mixed, but generally the debris carried in separate but parallel flows and would leave debris in the form an irregular line running from the south-west to north-east (with trains from east to west).

If so, the builders of Stonehenge would not have been spoilt for choice.

Do I get a job Brian?

Rgds
John

This isn’t an original observation, but the discussion about the bluestones is beginning to remind me of the story of the three blind men and the elephant. One touches the creature’s side and states that it’s a whale, another touches the trunk and concludes that it’s a snake, while the other touches an ear and describes the elephant as being like a giant bat.

I’ll freely admit, as I have done before, that I had always gone along with the human transport “all the way from Wales” theory, so with the best will in the world, it’s difficult getting away from this mindset. However, all Brian’s comments and information have cast doubt on this, which is perhaps how it should be.

In his Advancement of Learning (1605), Francis Bacon wrote “If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.”

Given all the information that Brian’s supplied, I’m now nowhere near as certain as I was about human transportation of stones all the way from Wales, but even with the notion of a glacial deposit ‘somewhere in the West Country’, it still seems like a vast undertaking to bring all the stones to Stonehenge, especially when I bear in mind what Brian had to say about the difficulties of transporting a single bluestone.

I very much agree with Alex in his observation about things being completely different back in Neolithic times, as far as motivation and passion were concerned, and perhaps means also, all of which brings me back to the idea that our ancestors must have perceived the stones to have had some kind of value over and above that of building material. Then I have to bear in mind what Brian’s said about the varying quality of the stones and it’s at this point that I run out of ideas, or rather I find myself at a loss to understand why such a variety of stones should be so valuable to our ancestors.

Still, as Brian says, trying to work it all out is fun, it certainly passes the dark winter days and I suppose it’s presumptuous to assume that such a mystery could be cleared up in just a few weeks of discussion. I’ll be writing about other aspects of Stonehenge i.e. the Mesolithic pits, when I’ve got time, but meanwhile, I’m personally very happy indeed to continue to ponder every last thing that comes in on the subject of the bluestones.

I don’t think it was warm enough for elephants:)

In fact, that is a very good analogy as we are blindfolded by the fog of time but very much by modern preconceptions.

The source of the stones (both bluestones and sarsens) is an aside. Having got to the site by whatever means, they still had to be handled and constructed into something symbolic to those people.

That alone was no mean feat (as the Bluestone Project and other modern attempts to move and raise just a single stone has shown).

PS in my previous post I did get west and east mixed up (again) it should read ” Indeed, much of Wales was being transported south and east” (not west).

Brian, I went back to Mike Pitts’s “Stonehenge” to see what he had to say about the bluestones. After dismissing the Boles Barrow and other evidence (in his view) he says this: ” … a good 20 years ago, Christopher Green analysed river gravels in Wiltshire and Hampshire and found a ‘complete absence of glacially derived material’. The gravels were all of rocks in the local areas from which the rivers still draw their water. If there aren’t even gravel-sized ‘erratics’, what chance of their being erratic megaliths? As Green said, his data ‘shows conclusively that the “Anglian” ice never invaded the basins of these rivers … ice cannot therefore be invoked to explain the presence of large and medium sized Welsh rocks … on the Wiltshire chalk.”

In his Notes, he goes on to say “the Anglian glaciation is the only one remotely in the running for having reached Stonehenge.” He then goes on to quote geologist J D Scourse for a wide-ranging review of the glacial hypothesis that comes down “convincingly against it”, as does geologist Bill Cummins.

Now obviously these names mean nothing to me, and I suspect that you’d say that the assertion about the Anglian glaciation is now out of date. I’d be very interested in your views on the evidence from the river gravels; to the layman, it seems highly significant. It seems at the very least that the glaciers didn’t come anywhere near Stonehenge, and your claim that collecting the stones “….would have been very easy indeed” needs to be re-evaluated.

Ah, now we come to the last line of defence of the archaeology establishment — “our experts tell us that glaciation was impossible.” So say our old friends Jim Scourse and Chris Green! Of course I respect their views, but I have always wondered why they were wheeled out to contribute those chapters in the big Stonehenge volume. I think their brief was this: “Go forth, dear friends, and destroy the glaciation thesis!” And they did that to the best of their ability. Neither of them is a glaciologist, and if I had seen the drafts of their chapters prior to publication I would have expressed serious reservations — as other glaciologists have done. Far too much putting up of Aunt Sallys just in order to knock them down.

Time for ballroom dancing class! Will come back to this in another post………

Alex says:
“……….you make a big jump from some still uncertain glaciations that MIGHT have come somewhere near Stonehenge, and assert that they MUST have left a convenient train of erratics – an assertion that MIGHT be possible, but seems very far from proven. The erratic theory seems no more than a hypothesis to me, the same problem for which you’re criticizing the human agency theory.”

Did I ever say that an erratic train MUST have been left somewhere to the west of Stonehenge? I hope not. I’ve always argued that this is possible, if not probable, but nothing in life is totally certain unless we have solid evidence in support. Some geologists argue that a motley collection of stones (monoliths, packing stones, fragments, cobbles) at Stonehenge from 20 or more different sources is all the evidence we need — and I have sympathy with that view. The erratics may have been moved and rearranged by human beings, but there they are, for all to see…..

OK, the glaciation hypothesis is still a hypothesis, but in my humble opinion it has far more evidence underpinning it than the human transport theory does. The ice did cross Pembrokeshire and did reach Street/ Glastonbury, Bath and the Mendips — the glacial deposits recorded in the literature are evidence. The big question then becomes one of “how much further to the east did it get, and what traces did it leave behind?”

Alex says about any bluestones left by the ice in the Salisbury plain area:

“And then they’d be left on the ground for, what, tens of thousands of years? And after being half-buried, then they’d likely be covered by dense woodland or scrub for much of the area.”

This is a seriously good point, Alex — and I have mulled over it at length. If the most recent dating of glacial events is anywhere near the mark, we assume that any ice to have affected Salisbury Plain must have been around 400,000 years ago. That’s a very long time for boulders and smaller stones to be out in the open, covered with vegetation, exposed to changes of climate (glacial and periglacial episodes, interglacials, etc). How easy would it be to find them in a densely-wooded southern England after all those millennia? That’s really intriguing. On the one hand (on the human transport theory) we have the problem of Neolithic tribesmen collecting loads of stones from more than 20 locations in west and south Wales — a jungle of woodland and bogs, with steep slopes and river valleys.

It was, and still is, incredibly difficult terrain. On the other hand (on the glacial transport theory) we have the problem of stones scattered about — or in a train — but possibly badly weathered, buried in the ground, or covered with vegetation.

We seriously need work to be done on ground surface changes over long periods of time. Cosmogenic dating will help in this — I really hope somebody will get organized on that.

What makes this even more intriguing is that on Overton Down and elsewhere, we still have sarsen stones lying about on the surface — and they are still there, and still “collectable” after 60 million years of erosion and climate change!!

OK — back to Chris Green and his 50,000 pebbles. To save myself from typing this all out again, here is what I wrote in the book:

2. Why are there no erratic stones in the terrace gravels of the rivers bordering Salisbury Plain?
This was a key issue discussed by Dr Chris Green in particular, and he was unequivocal in his view that if glacier ice had impinged upon Salisbury Plain and the Wiltshire Downs, there should be abundant erratic pebbles in the terrace gravels of the River Avon and its tributaries. He claimed to have examined over 50,000 pebbles from 28 relevant sites, but that “not one pebble was found that could not have come from existing pre-Quaternary outcrops within the present-day catchments of the rivers.” This is in stark contrast to the river terrace gravels of the Thames catchment (which was, as widely accepted, glaciated from the north on at least one occasion) where erratics are abundant. This is an interesting dilemma, always assuming that Green has been accurate in all his stone identifications and that he has not missed erratic pebbles which were stained or rounded and thus incapable of easy identification. Personally, having looked at a fair number of river terraces myself, I am amazed that Green could ever have made such a presumptuous and definitive statement. Also, his work was concentrated around Salisbury (where the rivers Avon, Wylye and Nadder come together) and downstream from there. If the ice which transported the bluestones was cold-based and clean when it reached the Stonehenge area, that might be an explanation for the paucity — or even absence — of till or fluvio-glacial gravels and sands in the debris left behind after deglaciation. On the other hand, if the ice stopped short of the catchments of the rivers examined by Green, one would not expect erratic material to be present in river terrace gravels around Salisbury and further south along the banks of the River Avon. They might occur in the valleys of the west-flowing streams on the edge of the chalk escarpment, flowing into streams such as the Bristol Avon, Parrett and Brue. On balance, that is a more satisfactory explanation, and it is best to hold to it until further and more detailed work can be done on the Clay-with-Flints and in the river valleys on the higher parts of Salisbury Plain.

Thanks for those clarifications, Brian. It’s interesting and illuminating to get a different perspective on those discussions from eminent archaeologists.

In one of your earlier posts in this thread, you asked “Can we therefore accept that the ice reached the terrain to the west of Stonehenge, and that if it behaved as a normal glacier does, it was carrying a lot of stones from West and South Wales?” I, at least, am quite happy to accept that, though I don’t think there’s enough evidence yet to persuade me that the ice got CLOSE to Stonehenge.

But if enough stones were carried into Somerset, the Stonehenge people could perhaps raft them up the Bristol Avon to past Bradford on Avon, then drag them across the Vale of Pewsey until they reached the Wiltshire Avon (though I’ve no idea how feasible this was 5000 years ago.) As John said, sea and/or rivers would help the transportation a lot, even if there was portage involved in places.

The only thing missing is the debris from this huge glacier. This was not a local event and you would have thought that there would be more evidence than presented so far and not just from Preseli, but much of Wales.

Not sure that’s a problem, John. It’s a mistake to assume that glaciers always leave moraines behind. The Foothills Erratic train in N America — 580 kms long — has hardly any traces of moraine associated with it. Just occasional patches of till. Even in S Pembs (heavily glaciated) there are vast areas where I haven’t seen ANY trace of glaciation.. It’s all to do with ice characteristics and debris load. Kellaway suggested that there were 3 segments to the ice stream — one in the south carrying Scottish erratics and picking up local rocks and debris from Devon; one in the middle (in across Somerset) carrying Welsh material: and a third to the north of the Mendips carrying material from the Welsh Borders. I think he might be right — but we desperately need more fieldwork!

Sorry but I can’t help but see mountain glaciers with huge rocks deposited at the valley bottom – real rock churning glaciers. With the debris there is a proven case but without it (even if it is still to be found) the model is too reliant on favourable circumstances.

I have much the same feeling about the land route. The logistics of solely a land route are beyond my belief. It would have always involved the same enormous effort.

A sea route must be a better option. The challenge is floating the stones and mastering the currents, tides and waves. My feeling is that with practice, although dangerous, that challenge was not insurmountable.

Water transport seems to have held few terrors – even in the Mesolithic.

As the sea theory I found this site interesting:

http://www.michaelbradley.info/books/hotair/hotair1.html

Rgds
John

John — the trouble is that you are not the only one who sees valley glaciers and huge moraines when the word “glacier” is mentioned….. simply because we are all familiar with the Alps, etc. We should all learn much more about ice sheets and ice caps at school! They are the things that really do the work, and affect far larger portions of the Earth’s crust (including the UK).

The picture I have is like the one at the base of this page:
http://www.brianjohn.f2s.com/bluestone66.html

If we could all get that picture into our minds, then the discussions might get more realistic. The ideas which glaciologists and geomorphologists are familiar with are sadly alien to most archaeologists. Maybe they should broaden their horizons a bit…,,,,,,,.

John, I agree with you that water-borne transport would most likely have been the most practical solution for those intensely practical and capable Neolithic people. I hadn’t seen the Michael Bradley coracle material before but it’s interesting. My own feeling is that if the route was along the two Avon rivers (maybe the glacier option?), as I mentioned above, then the coracle would have been by far the best solution – it’s something I’d never considered before, and I’d assumed rafting. The coracle used in the way described would have been much better.

But if the route was round the coast, then I incline towards the boat solution. In May this year, I contributed a longish post about the Bronze Age Ferriby boats (under the “Merlin has risen from the grave” article) with a proven payload of more than 4 tons. And that was just the boats they found. From the sophistication of the design, there had obviously been a long tradition of boat building.

The website (www.ferribyboats.co.uk) is very good, and this is lifted straight from their Propulsion and Performance page:
“A Ferriby boat in reconstruction with eighteen paddlers could do a good 6 knots in bursts which would be fast enough for the Humber crossing at full tide. She could carry passengers and cargo of 4.5 tons with ample freeboard. Total loaded weight of hull, crew and cargo would be about 11 tons.”

That’s a pretty capable boat, and more than able to transport the bluestones (average weight no more than 4 tons) round the coast, given reasonable conditions. The last leg, up the shallow part of the Avon, will have needed a raft or a coracle!

A crew of 18 (and fewer for the river coracle, probably) is a wonderfully economical way of transporting heavy stones. Why on earth would they have chosen to press-gang hundreds of people to drag stones any more than they absolutely had to?

I wondered if Dartmoor, just North of where I live, was formed by a glacier, but it appears that this beautiful, rugged landscape of weirdly-shaped ‘tors’ of granite was formed from erosion by weather and acid under the ground affecting the rocks. Water from melting rivers may have effected it too, but apparently Dartmoor was just south of the ice-sheet. I believe the granite tors were also volcanic in nature.
[Bear with me, I'm not as clever as all you men!]
I remembered walks in the Brecon Beacons and it seems these were moulded by glaciers, too. There is an ‘Usk glacier’ mentioned on the website, found when googling ‘brecon beacons glacier erosion’.
I grew up in North Devon, which I’m sure was affected by an ice sheet. Exmoor is much more rounded than Dartmoor, and so are the Brecon Beacons.
One would have expected bluestones to be deposited somewhere in the Exmoor area, and used in circles, etc., but I don’t recall seeing this reported.

Living on the edge of Dartmoor sounds idyllic, Angie. It’s a wonderful area stuffed with archaeology, and I envy you! One website I looked at said that although the glaciers probably didn’t reach Dartmoor, ice would have persisted all the year round in the coldest periods, and the landscape has been shaped by ice and snow. It has that feel about it, doesn’t it?

I’m familiar with the mountains of Snowdonia and the Lake District, through rock climbing, and the glacial landscape and features, so sharply defined, have always fascinated me. There, you can see clearly the drumlins, moraines and erratics left by the retreating glaciers – there’s no doubt that you’re in a dramatically glacial landscape, just like we were taught in school, and it’s defined my perceptions of what a glacier-shaped landscape should look like. So I’ve to work hard in readjusting my ideas about glaciers in southern England. No obvious glacial deposits, apparently no erratics left. As Brian said, I need to broaden my horizons. The gentle hills of southern England have a more dramatic history than it seems.

Brian

I am learning all the time (Stonehenge does lead you from one subject to another) and glaciation is added to the list of topics I need to have more understanding of.

Your argument neatly explains why the bluestone circle was not completed (http://www.stonehenge-avebury.net/stnhngebuild.html) and perhaps the origin of the Altar Stone (if it was from Pembrokeshire but not Brecon, which would have been a different ice flow?)

However, logic alone does not mean something happened. For me, glaciation at its most likely extreme (i.e. Glastonbury) even with a train of bluestones still leaves a lot of man handling. That is evidence you use to decry the source as Wales, but seem to accept to a lesser extent for an English source.

Please also see below

Alex

I will look at the Ferriby boats in more detail. I did read that after Merlin used his engines the stones were loaded onto boats, although I forget where (perhaps it was a quote ex Geoffrey of Monmouth – I will check)

Perhaps the engine involved moving the glacial debris ex Preseli onto the boats? Maybe the stones were nearer the beach i.e deposited by the glacier (Brian would that be possible?) than the Preseli hills.

Rgds
John

I missed your earlier comments about coracles and wonder if you have heard about the Cenarth (Cardigan, in Wales) Coracle Museum on the River Teifi?
I visited in June on my Welsh holiday, and was amazed at the exhibits they have from all over the world. The place is stuffed with fascinating information and photos, so the guy who runs it must be a real expert. I bet he could give advice on this subject. He’s called Martin Fowler. (I’ve just dug out the postcard I bought, of him holding a coracle on his back while standing by the falls.)

Try http://www.coracle-centre.co.uk

I put some info on the Megalithic Portal about a bronze age coracle burial [there were two] at Barns Farm, Dalgety, in Fife, which I only found out about by going to Cenarth and reading their display boards. (They don’t mention the actual site, but a bit of internet detective work……!)

Don’t miss it if you are in the area. The setting is really pretty too, beside Cenarth falls, and the river runs under a unique bridge.

Angie

Good to hear of your visit to Cenarth. I know Martin well! And it is a delightful spot. It’s interesting how discussions move sideways onto TECHNIQUES — it’s a man thing!! Other Stonehenge sites are the same — page after page of blogs about boats, rafts, sledges, ropes, oxen, sails, oars, slings, friction minimisation etc etc. I have tried to draw attention to the nature of the terrain and the nature of the sea as rather more important of any of those technical things.
All of these wonderful technical fixes are fine if you are trying to demonstrate the ingenuity of Neolithic tribesmen — but as far as I can see there is an ongoing attempt to show that these technigues (many of them demonstrable in the Bronze Age) were also in use in the Early Neolithic. There I think we have problems…… I don’t know of any evidence to show that the techniques for shifting big stones great distances were available around 5,500 years ago. (Using Boles Barrow as our dating point.)

Thinking of Dartmoor and Exmoor and how they might have looked during glacial episodes, there are plenty of examples worldwide of small isolated ice caps that only just survived and which never generated proper outlet glaciers. Hardangervidda in Norway used to have an ice cap. I studied two others many years ago in NW Iceland — one called Drangajokull and the other Glamajokull. Drangajokull is only just hanging on at the moment, and Glamajokull has already gone. Where it used to be there is a great expanse of broken bedrock, and hardly a trace of moraine or till anywhere.

Type in both of those on Google and click on the satellite image options. Zoom in and you’ll get a picture of what Dartmoor and Exmoor might have looked like…..

The problem remains Preseli to Stonehenge – how?

Glaciation is one possibility. At least part of the way – we can safely assume the bluestones did not arrive at Stonehenge solely through glaciation and it is certain they were not dropped in a circle. Boles Barrow is disappointing. I had hoped it was a modern find, but based on evidence that is 200 years old and with a collapsing burial chamber, it takes an awful lot on trust.

After that what tangible evidence is there? And without evidence of from a site other than Stonehenge, glaciation does not prove bluestones were found in situ anywhere else but Preseli. And man’s intervention means the bluestones cannot on their own prove anything about the glacier limits.

Whilst these doubts remain it must be reasonable to consider other possibilities. These range from using brute force and ignorance to the ability to provide a technical solution beyond our assumptions of what we believe was possible in the Neolithic.

Is the technical ability of the Neolithic really known? The failure of the Bluestone project (supposedly using the methods available in the Neolithic) and the fact Stonehenge exists constructed with numerous bluestones indicates these abilities have been underestimated probably by some way.

On this basis a sea route can at least be given some consideration. It may not be the great leap in faith that Brian considers it to be and as with glaciation, the proof may be out there.

John — why would you want to doubt the evidence relating to the Boles Barrow bluestone just because it is 200 years old or whatever? It has been discussed ad infinitum — not least by Chris Green — but it seems to me that the real reason for his scepticism is simply that the boulder is “inconvenient” and should not (according to one system of belief) be there in the first place. That’s bad science. I think I’ll prefer to accept the written record of the provenance of the boulder at face value.

Part of the problem in what you say, John, is that the word “bluestone” is in itself an obstacle to sensible debate. I know I use it myself, but anything foreign at Stonehenge is called “bluestone” whereas anything foreign anywhere else is not called bluestone, but gabbro, or sandstone, or diorite, or whatever. Can I assure you that if we refer to all of these inconvenient stones as bluestones, there are bluestone erratics all over SW England?!!

Brian

Is there a map showing the locations, density and type (and thereby possibly origin) of these erratics?

Simply I would like that map to show where erratics from the geographical area of the Presili hills (be it Carn Meini or Carngoedog) ended up. From what I understand it seems fair erratics originating from Presili are not to be found elsewhere apartt from Stonehenge and Boles Barrow?

As for Boles Barrow I think there must be must be some degree of doubt which cannot be ignored or used as proof without a caveat.

None of this means I accept or deny glaciation. I have no set theory as I have no field of expertise to use to determine one. I just consume the information freely available, think about it and seek clarification where possible. You are kind enough to provide both the information and clarification.

Rgds
John

Hi John

A number of people have asked me for a map — I’m working on it! In the meantime, have a look here:
http://www.brianjohn.f2s.com/enigma4.html

The nearest erratics from the Preseli area appear to be on the Vale of Glamorgan — and I wouldn’t mind betting that there are plenty on the floor of the Bristol Channel. That’s difficult to prove, of course. I’m on the case…..

Hi Folks

Having looked at the website link to brian’s book and noticed that four sites are in north Devon, not that far from my home village (Braunton), I wonder if it would be any help if I tried to photograph any of those ‘erratics’ when I get the opportunity?
I’m due to visit an elderly relative up there mid-week, and usually visit him monthly, so if I can get away on my own…….???
Let me know.

A belated thank you once to Alex for providing the notes, thank you to Peter for the photographs and to Mike Parker-Pearson for giving this informative presentation. Yet another big helping of information and images, without which we’d all be the poorer.

Angie — you are right in the thick of “erratic country” there! I remember seeing many erratics when I was a student — many years ago — both on the north and south sides of Croyde Bay. They are on the rock platform at the foot of the cliffs. I have a map of where some of them are — made by Prof Nick Stephens many years ago. I’ll try to post it onto my web site…..

There are many photos in the literature — but by all means take some more!

No sooner said than done — there is now a map of the Croyde area erratics on this page:
http://www.brianjohn.f2s.com/enigma4.html

Thanks for the map and details Brian. I’ve printed them out to take with me.
Unfortunately, I now live in south Devon, but travel back to Braunton approx monthly to visit an elderly uncle. (I still call it ‘home’, though I’ve lived in other parts of the SW, and settled here for 30 years!) Croyde was [is still] my favourite beach, esp. ‘Down End’, where I used to go belly-boarding.
‘Those were the days’ (before Malibu boards) when my older brother loaned me his long wooden board. Cut my eye on that one! Latterly it’s been a piece of polystyrene.
I shall play-it-by-ear during this week’s visit. If the weather is ok, and uncle doesn’t need my company 24/7, I’ll see if I can go and take a look at these erratics.
Can you believe that I’ve never been to Lundy?! Tried a couple of times, but tides were wrong for day-trips.

I’m increasingly intrigued by the “dolerites” recorded from the erratics on the shore platform at Croyde, Saunton etc and in deposits of till (at least, that’s what it appears to be!) at Fremington and the bouldery deposit at Trebetherick. There are few descriptions of the colour / texture / appearance of these dolerite stones and boulders. Naturally, one wonders whether they are related to the Pembrokeshire (and Stonehenge) dolerites….. and also whether they could have come from any local (Devon) outcrops of dolerite, or from some other distant source.

The comments about beaches reminded me of this site which now has more relevance to me than when I first saw it.

http://www.ianwest.org.uk/Sarsens-Erratics.html#headpage

Rgds
John

Yes, I know this site well — there is some fascinating stuff on it. I’ve tried to communicate with Ian on various occasions — but he tends not to reply!! By the way, there is some fascinating info coming from NTSteve on the OU Forum just now. Have a look here:

http://open2net/forum/showthread.php?t=5155

Steve refers to sarsen outcrops inside the military training areas not far from Stonehenge. Has anybody ever seen a map of these outcrops? Of course, this info increases the likelihood that the sarsens at Stonehenge were LOCAL and not carried all the way from Overton Down…….. why would the builders have bothered with transport over 20 miles or more, if there were enough sarsens locally to be going on with?

Ah, maybe the sarsens from Overton Down were healing stones too?!!

Ah, on this occasion, I can plead Not Guilty to charges of preconceptions or whatever it is about the sarsens. Again, I can’t remember where I wrote about it, but I’ve made numerous references before now to the lack of proof for the notion that the sarsens came from the Marlborough area. There may well be some out there, but I’ve personally not seen any evidence in the form of big holes in the ground from which outsize sarsens had been lifted.

However, even if the Stonehenge sarsens had been lying in a nice pile just half a mile away from the site where they were eventually put in place, it was still a mind-numbing achievement to drag them along, dress them and put them in place. With curved, interlocking lintels, mortice & tenon joints and all the other aspects that would have required so much labour, commitment and vision.

Absolutely. Wouldn’t disagree with any of that, Dennis. the vision and the engineering were mightily impressive, wherever the stones came from.

I wonder what is sitting there, inside those military areas, waiting to be uncovered and catalogued? Or maybe any spare sarsens in the landscape have been used for target practice?

Back in 1998, I made a ten minute film about Stonehenge which was shot partially on Salisbury Plain, and it transpired that we were in a certain place on Salisbury Plain without permission. This resulted in one of the greatest bollockings I’ve ever had, and believe me, that’s up against some pretty stiff opposition, but it was fair enough and I have no complaints.

However, my abiding memory of this was not my teeth rattling while I was surrounded by armed soldiers with helicopters hovering overhead, but rather the very great interest that each and every one of the soldiers, including whoever was in charge, had in the history and monuments of the Plain. It’s yet another thing that I’ve never been able to follow up, but it made a big impression on me.

Congratulations, Dennis. All people who get bollockings from the military deserve respect. Been looking at the military areas on Google satellite — rather impressive! How anything survives, goodness knows…. NT Steve says Cunnington recorded various sarsen locations, presumably on the areas now taken by the military. Has anybody seen his records?

Brian – Home again, and just a quick update on my N.Devon visit…
Sorry, but I didn’t manage to get to Saunton or Croyde in the end.
I noticed later on the map that there were erratics by ‘Bloody Basin’ at Saunton. We used to go and look in awe at that cave/recess [?] of reddened rock as kids – visions of piratical bloodletting, etc!! …
iirc there is also a natural ‘chimney’ nearby? I even made sure I got plenty of change for (what I imagine) are the steep carparking charges for the beach these days, but weather and uncle’s needs put paid to plans.
I see the thread is getting very interesting. I like the image of Dennis surrounded by the military. The intrepid explorer, eh?! I’d have loved to witness that scene! Priceless……
Good that the soldiers were so keen on knowing more about the stones.

Somebody said that Cunnington had records of sarsen occurrences on Salisbury Plain, presumably including locations inside the military ranges. But I’m on the trail — trying the MOD estates people who do have large-scale maps that might well show sarsen locations and outcrops.

Now we are getting somewhere. Several documents, thanks to Pete G and Dave Field of EH. Sarsen stones all over the place, contrary to what Chris Green says. And it’s interesting that others who know Salisbury Plain well (including the SPTA) don’t seem to agree with Chris Green that the sarsens MUST have come from Overton Down. Others seem to be perfectly happy with the idea that the sarsens were just lying around locally, waiting to be picked up. Some of the fieldwork on all of this was actually sponsored by the Society of Antiquaries, who were made aware of the frequent occurrences of sarsens close to Stonehenge. Quote:
“………However, broken sarsen boulders were frequently
encountered during fieldwork across the area. Observations along the Berril
Valley near Imber, during the construction of a tank track, revealed
extensive deposits of small sarsen boulders. The Society of Antiquaries
study made clear the obstacle that sarsen represented to early settlers in
terms of ground clearance (Bowen and Smith 1977, 185)…..” and so forth.

I’m amazed that the story of the great transportation enterprise between Overton Down and Stonehenge has lasted this long, in the face of the well recorded evidence of sarsens all over the place.

Now, this is all very interesting stuff and I’m very pleased to see that some progress is being made. I expect to be in a minority about this particular subject and that’s fine, but at least one thing is baffling me if there’s a likelihood that all the stones that went into making Stonehenge came from close to where the monument was eventually put in place.

I’ve written about it in exhaustive detail elsewhere, so I won’t go over it again. However, Geoffrey of Monmouth was patently spot-on concerning a number of aspects of Stonehenge and I’m personally inclined to think that this covered a far greater, not far lesser number of aspects. I don’t see how he could have been so accurate about all this unless there were a very real survival of memories of the Neolithic into Arthurian times. One of the foremost elements of his account of the construction of Stonehenge concerned the transportation of stones a great distance, including across a large body of water, and this, of course, was long before any of the modern geological surveys pointing to the Welsh home of some of the stones.

With this in mind, I find myself wondering why the long journey taken by the stones was so prominent in his account if it were not based on some memory? I’ll happily admit, as I have done before, that I think there’s a great deal to be gleaned from a close study of these ancient myths and stories, so I’m inclined to believe that Geoffrey of Monmouth was right in a great many ways and that his account echoed one that had survived from 3,000 years, or thereabouts, before his time. All the evidence points towards this conclusion, from what I can see.

So, if these stones had been closeby, why this unique story about an epic transportation? The obvious answer is that he was making the whole thing up and struck lucky to a fantastic degree, but it’s not an answer I find remotely convincing. I’m not saying that the sarsens couldn’t have originated from close to Stonehenge, because that would be willful ignorance, but perhaps you all see my problem?

Sarsens are a different matter from the bluestones as the Cuckoo Stone and Bulford Tor show that sarsens were in the area – the only evidence it seems for a bluestone is Boles Barrow.

Rob Ixer suggests The Altar Stone is ex Brecon which seems to be a different ice flow from that of Preseli?

Rgds
John

At the moment the thought seems to be that the Altar Stone is from Powys or Carmarthenshire. if you look at the glacier flow maps you’ll see that all of the South Wales valleys carried ice broadly southwards, under pressure from the Welsh ice cap which had its centre further north. The ice coming southwards towards the Bristol Channel coast was convergent with ice flowing eastwards — the south Wales ice streams were “bent” or forced to flow parallel with the Irish Sea Ice. There doesn’t seem to be any disagreement on any of that among the experts. The question seems to be as follows: was the Altar Stone — and probably other ORS erratics as well — dumped somewhere in South Wales during an earlier glacial phase, or was it entrained, carried and dumped in the same glaciation as that responsible for the collection of the Preseli stones? Erratics are of course often picked up and dumped more than once as one glaciation follows another.

The sarsen occurrence on Salisbury Plain is interesting. But does it point to the likelihood of the stones being sourced locally? From what I’ve read here, I don’ t think there’s anywhere near sufficient evidence yet.

I’m doubtful for those tedious statistical reasons that I’ve invoked in the past. To find a large number of suitable sarsen stones (ie, big, and 75 of them, minimum) you need a large population of stones, a statistical distribution of all sizes from the small to the too large. Stones don’t come in convenient standard sizes – you just have to look at the remaining stones on Overton Down. They come in all shapes and sizes. Some of them are going to be just too unwieldy or big to be of any use. Again, look at Overton Down. Many won’t quite make the grade. And there’ll be a lot of rubbishy small stones that are no use whatsoever, except for packing, maul stones, etc.

Now, if the Stonehenge builders were able to find 75 decent stones (30 outer ring, 30 lintels, and 5 trilithons) I believe – though can’t prove – that they’d have had to have chosen from a much bigger population with a size distribution that would have yielded what they needed. And that would have left a still largeish population of bigger, and smaller (though still sizeable) stones.

But there’s no evidence above for these sizeable stones. “Small [buried] sarsen boulders”, yes, but not the sort of stones that could be considered for constructing a monument. In the past I’ve covered a lot of Salisbury Plain, along the extensive byways, and I can’t remember seeing large stones anywhere (though I can’t be 100% certain about that now.)

We need a petrologist to pronounce on this, but isn’t the nature of sarsen that it’s sedimentary, it’s exposed in layers and, as they’re exposed, these layers weather and separate into the characteristic tabular form? And don’t you only find the required tabular form in stone fields? Fields of many stones where, among all the others, you’ll find enough suitably shaped and sized stones. Fields like Overton Down.

Brian says there’s “well recorded evidence of sarsens all over the place.” Well, OK, let’s see that evidence. The quote above doesn’t convince me. Photographs and the locations of large stones that were too big or the wrong shape would certainly convince me. Where are they?

Brian mentions Imber as a source of sarsen stones, the “small sarsen boulders”. As the crow flies, Imber is more than 10 miles from Stonehenge, with a total of 280 meters of ascent, though that could be reduced by a longer route. Overton Down is farther, at about 17 miles as the crow flies, 470 meters of ascent, with the same provisions about route. It doesn’t seem to me that Imber offers a significant enough advantage in distance to compensate for what was obviously a vastly inferior choice of stone (judging by the remains in both sites.)

If the evidence is there, I’m willing to be convinced. But what would it prove? Only that the original builders still had to move massive stones a considerable distance – but from a different location, not Overton Down. It won’t grant us significant new insights – just shift the geography a bit.

I’m quoting from Dave Field, Isobel Geddes and others — there’s a lot in the published info relating to the SPTA. The sarsens won’t occur anywhere on the Plain as bedded outcrops — the sarsens are apparently residuals, let down from overlying beds above the chalk and left behind when everything else has been eroded away. 60 million years of erosion, or thereabouts. So their distribution was always patchy, and is even more patchy now after many centuries of stone collecting. I think you are jumping the gun, Alex, in assuming that there ever were 75 sarsens at Stonehenge. Fifty, more like — that’s all we have evidence for. All shapes and sizes, some (like stone 11) far too short ever to have held a lintel. They collected up all they could find within striking distance (and collected up the smaller stones to use as mauls and packing stones) and finally gave up. That’s my theory, and I haven’t yet seen any evidence to shift me off it!!

Brian, that’s heresy … but I’ve nothing against heresy, and it’s an interesting idea that Stonehenge was only two-thirds completed. It would certainly account for the asymmetry in the remaining stones, for which I’ve heard the prevailing weather from the southwest offered as a partial explanation.

At present, my instinctive feeling is that the people who had the capabilities to conceive, design, plan, organize, source and build such a structure would not have failed to ensure that they could have completed their vision with sufficient resources. They would have had a complete design, probably a wooden model, and they’d have known exactly how much stone they needed. The time needed for experienced surveyors to explore local resources would have been tiny compared with the building time, so I can’t believe they simply ran out of stone.

My comments in my previous post about a large population of stones with a size distribution still apply for 50 stones as much as for 75. I would still expect to find a good range of stones that were either too big or the wrong shape. The Salisbury Plain Training Area (I had to look it up) doesn’t seem to make its information very available, so I haven’t been able to verify what you say.

But external circumstances may have forced the builders to change their plans. Conflict, a long spell of crop failures, epidemic, etc. I think it may be possible, as you assert, that Stonehenge was never finished, though I believe not because they ran out of stone. Would the geophysics surveys in SIIL show stoneholes where there are missing stones? I’d have though that your hypothesis must be capable of being tested with available data.

Let’s face it, Brian will always have some glacier up his sleeve! Stone circles needed dragging and erecting – no other way. Are we now to believe that Stonehenge was built by morons who could erect the lintels, but not know how much stone was available?

Simply no! It might not be proven, but common sense says otherwise.

PS had a particular bad day – washing machine broke down last week after six months. It was meant to be repaired today only for Hotpoint to ring and say the parts were not available and the date was now December 17th! If that was the ilk in charge of Stonehenge, then just imagine what we would have been left with today!

Just the one glacier will do!! Sorry to hear the sad news about your washing machine, John. Planned obsolescence — you are not SUPPOSED to want it fixed. Very unsporting of you. Was Stonehenge built by morons? Quite possible, I suppose. But as somebody else (ie not me!) has pointed out on one of the blogs, throughout history there have been many mismatches between the ambitions of the architects and the high priests, and the abilities of the builders. So the standard excuse comes out: “Sorry, boss. We did our best, but we just can’t get them bloody great stones. They seem to have used them all up at Avebury….”

Brian it could well be the case. But it would have been logistics at Marden who probably got the blame and having run out of stones they came up with the idea of using the spare labour to dig bloody great ditches at Marden, Avebury and Durrington as well as Silbury Hill (I think something similar holds as a prevailing “good” Archaeological theory).

If it was known what Stonehenge was for then it may be possible to make surmises about its completeness but without that knowledge isn’t it rather jumping the gun?

However when you encounter the mind numbing apathy of the morons I had to deal with Tuesday (deluding themselves as “customer services”) you have to have wonder what systems enabled not only Stonehenge but all of the many other magnificent Neolithic monuments to be constructed.

Slave labour maybe? Or lack of trade unions? Or maybe the inducement of attaining paradise on the completion of the job? Then there was probably no minimum wage in those days, or NHS. Which brings us neatly back to the healing stones…….