New theory about the Stonehenge bluestones from Rob Ixer and Richard Bevins
Submitted by Andy B on Saturday, 26 February 2011 Page Views: 18168
StonehengeCountry: England County: Wiltshire Type: HengeInternal Links:
The site's megaliths are traditionally classed into two groups, sarsens (a local sandstone) and bluestones. While the former, at an estimated total weight of 1,700–1,800 tonnes, outscale the 250- odd tonnes of the latter, the bluestones have dominated debate. The issues of where they came from and how they reached Stonehenge, have polarised into two widely divergent views:
•Most derive from the Preseli Hills in Pembrokeshire, south-east Wales, and were taken to Wiltshire by the builders of Stonehenge around 3000–2500bc
•Alternatively, they come from a variety of sources in south Wales, and reached Salisbury Plain as glacial erratics during the ice age, thousands of years before Stonehenge was built.
Most prehistorians believe people
moved the stones. This was what
geologist Herbert Thomas proposed,
when he first identified the Preselis as
the origin in 1920: a view endorsed by
geologists including Christopher
Green and James Scourse, and recently
by archaeologists Timothy Darvill and
Geoffrey Wainwright, who claim to
have found quarry outcrops and "sacred
springs" at the source of the megaliths
around Carnmenyn.
Geologist George Kellaway
proposed in 1971, by contrast, that the
bluestones had been transported by a
glacier. This view has been supported
by archaeologist Aubrey Burl, and (in a
differing glacial interpretation) an
Open University team of geologists
including Olwen Williams-Thorpe.
Last year the latter wrote on a BBC
Timewatch blog that the bluestones
"are a rag-bag mix… from all over south
Wales", and Brian John published The
Bluestone Enigma (see Books, page 55).
Now geologists Rob Ixer (University
of Leicester) and Richard Bevins
(National Museum of Wales) are
proposing a third option. They say
many bluestones came not from
Pembrokeshire, but from "a far wider
and, as yet, unrecognised area or more
likely areas" – perhaps north Wales
(Snowdonia, the Llyn Peninsula and
Anglesey), or even beyond.
[BUT see important update below].
The well known
spotted dolerite, is a Preseli
rock, they say – but Carngoedog was
the likely source, not Carnmenyn.
These conclusions derive from a new
study of thousands of Stonehenge rock
specimens: from near the west end of
the Cursus earthwork (where a lost
bluestone circle has been proposed),
collected in 1947 and excavated by the
Stonehenge Riverside Project in
2006/08; and from Stonehenge,
excavated by Mike Pitts in 1979/80 and
Darvill and Wainwright in 2008.
The geologists also found the Cursus
bluestones, which are all rhyolitic and
mainly tuffaceous (with no Stonehenge
dolerites), had significant mineralogical
differences from visually similar rocks
at Stonehenge. The Darvill and
Wainwright excavation produced
significant amounts of a type of
rhyolite or rhyolitic tuff "not recorded
in north Pembrokeshire and noticeably
absent in the Mynydd Preseli area".
How the stones were moved, Ixer
told British Archaeology, "is an
archaeological problem", though he
wondered if "different groups [of
people] brought different stones?"
Ixer and Bevins's detailed study will
be published in the 2009 Wiltshire
Studies. In WS 2006, Ixer and Peter
Turner suggested that the Stonehenge
Altar Stone (the largest bluestone)
came from an unidentified source far
from Milford Haven – the traditional
attribution said to indicate where the
Preseli stones were taken downriver
and out to sea by neolithic gangs
Source: British Archaeology Magazine iss Nov/Dec 09.
Note: Update: research casts doubt on the Milford Haven route for the Stonehenge bluestones, and we highlight the location of Pont Saeson, another likely source
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