Dr Ixer is very welcome to his opinions, and readers will no doubt be aware that he is not exactly an impartial observer, having long since nailed his flag to the "human transport mast" along with other colleagues in Mike Parker Pearson's research team. He has a great deal to lose from any reinforcement of the glacial transport hypothesis, and I am not at all surprised that he should seek to minimise the importance of this new discovery.
I'm not aware of any proper publication of any data from Steep Holm, but I am not surprised at the presence of erratic boulders or smaller stones there. There are after all erratics from the west on Flat Holm as well.
In flagging up the importance of the Mumbles erratic there will be nothing that surprises Quaternary specialists -- they are all perfectly aware of the traces of glaciation (till, fluvioglacial deposits and erratics) around the shores of the Bristol Channel. The "giant erratics" referred to by the geologists of the Geological Survey in 1904 have, as far as I know, been lost without trace and never properly analysed, but the Pencoed "boulders" are of course well known. They all contribute to the same story -- of Irish Sea Glacial ice pressing eastwards up the Bristol Channel, capable of transporting large masses of rock. And yet Mike Parker Pearson, who leads the team to which Dr Ixer belongs, still insists, whenever asked, that the glacial transport hypothesis is "dead in the water"...........
The press release issued a week ago is aimed at those who do not read the specialist Quaternary literature, and at archaeologists and members of the public who may have convinced themselves that the narrative perpetrated by Parker Pearson is not opinion, but established fact.
When it comes to glacial erratics, as with crystals contained within rock, we see what we are trained to see. When I look at the abraded and weathered slabs and boulders of the bluestone circle at Stonehenge, I see erratics. I am not sure what Dr Ixer sees -- maybe quarried pillars? When I look at Rhosyfelin and Carn Goedog, I see natural rock outcrops, while he, presumably, sees Neolithic quarries. When I consider the 30 or so "rock types" at Stonehenge in the bluestone assemblage, and the wide scatter of such materials across the landscape, I see possible evidence of a very ancient glaciation. And I see no evidence whatsoever to support the human transport hypothesis, whereas I presume that Dr Ixer does. Such is life.
I appreciate that Dr Ixer has helped me to identify certain rock samples in the past, as I have helped him through the collection of samples for his own research. Mutual benefits, which we are presumably both happy about. I thank him for his offer of assistance on this occasion, but we have a perfectly competent team on the case, and when our samples have been accurately described and written up in the peer-reviewed literature, he will have a chance to comment, just like everybody else.
Something is not right. This message is just to keep things from messing up down the road