Julian Cope presents Head Heritage

Quote: ....."not local and had to be brought to the site without the help of glaciation , particularly in major monuments . e.g. Stonehenge (sarsens ), Newgrange , Old Keig and possibly Brodgar .

Since when did the sarsens at Stonehenge come from a long way off? HH Thomas (among many others) thought they had come from the neighbourhood, and I can't see any evidence to suggest that he was wrong on this one. The fact that Atkinson developed a great story for the sarsen transport doesn't mean it happened. Newgrange? Small white quartz stones from a long way off as "ornamental features" -- wouldn't have a problem with that being done by chaps with haversacks. Old Keig? Where's the evidence that the big stones are not erratics? The Orkney examples -- there are mentions of quarries in connection with the standing stones, but I'd like to have a look at these sites with reference to ice-movements / erratic distributions as well. At Brodgar, Renfrew thought that the stones had come from the ditch around the stones, and not from the so-called quarry.

In the "The great stone circles project" (Antiquity 2005) there are lots of references to quarries, but somewhat surprisingly the archaeologists involved fail to refer to erratics at all..........

What do I mean by "local"? Thorpe and Williams-Thorpe (Antiquity 1991) looked at all of the UK sites and found that the megalith builders used stones from up to 2 km away quite often, but that there was no case of stones being carried more than 5 km. So let's refer to all of these sites as "using locally-sourced stones."