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The Modern Antiquarian Forum » Stonehenge and its Environs » The bluestone debate |
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tiompan 5758 posts |
Dec 15, 2008, 16:37
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mountainman wrote: "The recumbent at Old Keig could be an erratic but if it is, it had been quarried before glaciation and would therefore be a unique example of Paleolithic masonry ." Sorry -- not with you on that one. Kindly explain. The recumbent was quarried . If it was an erratic too then the quarying would have had to have been pre Holocene and therefore before any evidence of human habitation/quarrying in that area .
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nigelswift 8112 posts |
Dec 16, 2008, 07:01
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mountainman wrote: 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. I think there IS some evidence he was wrong. If you look at the sarsen drifts back towards Avebury you'll see they are all shapes and sizes and ones that are approximately the right size or shape for Stonehenge uprights (or lintels) are mighty rare. It seems a bit of a rum idea that only the right shaped and right sized sarsens existed near Stonehenge. There would be a vastly larger number of unsuitable ones as well wouldn't there? Statistically (and by reference to other drifts) the vast majority would be of no use - too rounded or hopelessly wrong-sized to be used as either uprights or lintels. Where are those rejects?
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Stoneshifter 379 posts |
Dec 16, 2008, 09:06
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"Where are those rejects?" - ermm - Salisbury Cathedral (in small pieces).
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mountainman 90 posts |
Dec 16, 2008, 15:40
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tiompan wrote: mountainman wrote: "The recumbent at Old Keig could be an erratic but if it is, it had been quarried before glaciation and would therefore be a unique example of Paleolithic masonry ." Sorry -- not with you on that one. Kindly explain. The recumbent was quarried . If it was an erratic too then the quarying would have had to have been pre Holocene and therefore before any evidence of human habitation/quarrying in that area . You appear to be very certain on this point. Come on -- give us your evidence that it was quarried by man and not by ice. (Ice quarries blocks too -- it's rather good at it.)
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mountainman 90 posts |
Dec 16, 2008, 15:47
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nigelswift wrote: mountainman wrote: 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. I think there IS some evidence he was wrong. If you look at the sarsen drifts back towards Avebury you'll see they are all shapes and sizes and ones that are approximately the right size or shape for Stonehenge uprights (or lintels) are mighty rare. It seems a bit of a rum idea that only the right shaped and right sized sarsens existed near Stonehenge. There would be a vastly larger number of unsuitable ones as well wouldn't there? Statistically (and by reference to other drifts) the vast majority would be of no use - too rounded or hopelessly wrong-sized to be used as either uprights or lintels. Where are those rejects? Since when were all the sarsens at Stonehenge "the right shape and size? They are all sorts of shapes and sizes -- look at stones 11, 3. 27, Heelstone, Slaughter Stone etc etc. Some had to be bedded in deep, oityhers very shallow. A proper grotty collection, if you ask me....... and a lot of the smaller ones were used, in my opinion, as standing "bluestones" before being used again as lintels. Masses of smaller sarsens were used as mauls and packing stones -- they would have been easy to collect around the site and on adjacent areas of the Plain. They probably sent the kids off to collect them while their dads were grunting away, shifting the seriously big stones.
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tiompan 5758 posts |
Dec 16, 2008, 16:04
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mountainman wrote: tiompan wrote: mountainman wrote: "The recumbent at Old Keig could be an erratic but if it is, it had been quarried before glaciation and would therefore be a unique example of Paleolithic masonry ." Sorry -- not with you on that one. Kindly explain. The recumbent was quarried . If it was an erratic too then the quarying would have had to have been pre Holocene and therefore before any evidence of human habitation/quarrying in that area . You appear to be very certain on this point. Come on -- give us your evidence that it was quarried by man and not by ice. (Ice quarries blocks too -- it's rather good at it.) Maybe you could give some evidence that it was moved by ice . Glaciation does strange things but if it was involved in this case it would have transported the stone against the direction of flow and uphill plus there are no other similar examples of this type of rock , sillamanite gneiss , as erratics in the area , and very few erratics full stop . Some areas of Britain did not have quite the same cover of ice and N Aberdeenshire is one . Whatever the merits of the Blustones being transported by glaciation you seem to have extrapolated that thinking to anything found within the area covered by ice which is ultimately irrefutable and therefore nonscientific .
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Littlestone 5386 posts |
Dec 16, 2008, 16:39
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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." No case of stones being carried more than 5km? They must have missed some of the sarsens at Stonehenge then - the ones that were hauled there from some 30km away. The expressions 'locally sourced' and 'in the neighbourhood' are pretty meaningless when used out of the Neolithic context. And the detail of the context here is being able to shift a forty ton stone bugger 30km from A to B some four and a half thousand years ago. That ain't local - local is my Indian takeaway fella who delivers free within a radius of three miles (on his bike ;-)
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nigelswift 8112 posts |
Dec 16, 2008, 16:47
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Well if you walk across an existing sarsen drift (which, after all, is real solid evidence, not speculation) how often will you come across a stone that would be remotely usable, in terms of shape and size, as a Stonehenge upright or lintel? One in fifty, a hundred? Let's take a vote.... How many stones were used in Stonehenge? Multiply that by fifty or a hundred or whatever the vote indicates and that's the size of the drift there needed to be lying around to enable the monument's sarsens to have been sourced locally. And that very large drift, minus only the stones they used on the monument, seems to be entirely absent now.
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Stoneshifter 379 posts |
Dec 16, 2008, 23:49
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Yeah, yeah, but the stones are absent because they've been quarried. What do they sat - absence of evidence is not evidence of absence (or is it the other way round?)
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nigelswift 8112 posts |
Dec 17, 2008, 03:51
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"absence of evidence is not evidence of absence".... well that's certainly true regarding the Treens. (I know you're the sort that'll understand that, SL....)
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