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The Welsh Stonehenge?

Posted: Fri Feb 12, 2021 12:52 pm
by Grumble
Programme on BBC2 tonight, and I don’t know how unusual this is but it’s based on a paper that’s been published here: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals ... WtB3sEBJtM

I’m definitely going to watch!

Re: The Welsh Stonehenge?

Posted: Fri Feb 12, 2021 1:52 pm
by Martin_B
Grumble wrote:
Fri Feb 12, 2021 12:52 pm
Programme on BBC2 tonight, and I don’t know how unusual this is but it’s based on a paper that’s been published here: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals ... WtB3sEBJtM

I’m definitely going to watch!
Stonehenge's FAT?

Re: The Welsh Stonehenge?

Posted: Fri Feb 12, 2021 1:56 pm
by tenchboy
The reports of the program seem awfully confused though; it's not Stonehenge as a whole though, just the smaller rarely seen circle of bluestones inside the main circle. It had, I thought, been long established that they came from that quarry on the side of Presily mountain, that's why people go there, that's why I went there anyway; there was even talk at one time of some bluestones being found in the bristol channel that had been dropped on the way over but they might have turned out to have been glacial erratics. Certainly every book I read when I was circle-chasing back in the eighties-nineties said that the bluestnes came from Wales, from Presily and were probably a circle there before they were brought over to salisbury plain.

The iconic circle of trilithons that are usually referred to as 'stonehenge' and of which they insist on using a picture of even though these are not the stones that they are talking about - and what everyone thinks of when they hear the name - were locally quarried sandstone - sarsens, they lie all over the plain and look like sheep -sarsen is a name for sheep - the blue dolerite of the welsh bluestones has been shown to have a particular composition that is only found in that quarry at Presily: they may have established that fact more securely but it ent new.

I also went to Waun Mawn too, it too is in all the books - not really a newly discovered circle in the manner of which they are hyping it up but an established site on the itinerary (for those that like a walk!) (I remember coming around the corner and seeing the shape of the skyline just as I had seen it in every picture in every book I'd read. When you are up there by the quarry you can look across the sea and see the Wicklow(?) mountains); I think it might be that postholes making up a circle have been found where before there were merely stones. If I remember Waum Mawn was one of the less exciting welsh sites I visited (more bracken than stone).

It really sounds like there has been some new research, 'they've' found some new holes and found some holes the shape of the bases of the blues, then went over its relevance to previous research, then 'they' made a telly prog about it and they over done the oh my god oh my god oh my god this is amazing ness of it all and then gave it to someone who neither goes out much reads much about archea maybe quite young to write it up for the news web page and who got confused.

All of which conjectureing dun't mean it might not be worth watching though.

Sorry about the typing, keyboard's all over the place: still full of toast crumbs; I got most of em, the rest you'll just have to put up with.

Happy Days
TB

Re: The Welsh Stonehenge?

Posted: Fri Feb 12, 2021 2:01 pm
by Grumble
I think as you say the new bit is that it seems likely that the bluestones were previously assembled in a henge at Waun Mawn, as opposed to simply being excavated there and carted straight to Stonehenge. I’d like to see a timeline showing the relationship between the earlier Waun Mawn circle and the Orkney circles in particular as well.

Is there a single timeline for all our Neolithic monuments somewhere? Accepting there will be overlapping error bars.

Re: The Welsh Stonehenge?

Posted: Fri Feb 12, 2021 3:27 pm
by tenchboy
Grumble wrote:
Fri Feb 12, 2021 2:01 pm
I think as you say the new bit is that it seems likely that the bluestones were previously assembled in a henge at Waun Mawn, as opposed to simply being excavated there and carted straight to Stonehenge. I’d like to see a timeline showing the relationship between the earlier Waun Mawn circle and the Orkney circles in particular as well.

Is there a single timeline for all our Neolithic monuments somewhere? Accepting there will be overlapping error bars.
I thought if it's going to be anywhere, it's going to be in Burl, Aubrey, the Stone Circles of the British Isles (even if somewhat dated) just had a quick look: lots of graphs and entabletures concerning shapes and orientations and pottery and axe heads but no site/time-line as far as I can see.
Are you on the internet? There might be something on there :D

Re: The Welsh Stonehenge?

Posted: Fri Feb 12, 2021 4:53 pm
by Gfamily
The recently repeated BBC documentary Britain's Ancient Capital; Secrets of Orkney had a quick scan up a map of UK with neolithic structures marked, with a commentary that structures got older the further north you go.
The thesis being explored is that stone circles were first constructed on Orkney and then exported to the rest of Britain.

Re: The Welsh Stonehenge?

Posted: Fri Feb 12, 2021 10:53 pm
by Grumble
That was well worth watching. Mike Parker Pearson has his pet theories and narratives but you have to say he’s come up with something worth discussing.

Re: The Welsh Stonehenge?

Posted: Tue Feb 23, 2021 12:45 pm
by Bird on a Fire
The ancient Britons were descended from Anatolians. Basically the people who built Göbekli Tepe migrated west across Europe and ended up in the British isles a few thousand years later. Stone Henge is just a later variation on a Turkish theme, about as British as St George.

There's quite a few stone circles in Iberia too, including this rather impressive example just up the road, which is 3000 years older.

Re: The Welsh Stonehenge?

Posted: Tue Feb 23, 2021 2:21 pm
by Grumble
Bird on a Fire wrote:
Tue Feb 23, 2021 12:45 pm
The ancient Britons were descended from Anatolians. Basically the people who built Göbekli Tepe migrated west across Europe and ended up in the British isles a few thousand years later. Stone Henge is just a later variation on a Turkish theme, about as British as St George.

There's quite a few stone circles in Iberia too, including this rather impressive example just up the road, which is 3000 years older.
Ooh, I like that. Didn’t know about Portuguese circles, was aware of stuff in Brittany.

Re: The Welsh Stonehenge?

Posted: Tue Feb 23, 2021 5:58 pm
by monkey
They have stone circles in Africa too, but they're a few thousand years more recent than the European ones, IRC.

(That's pretty much all I know about them)

Re: The Welsh Stonehenge?

Posted: Tue Feb 23, 2021 6:48 pm
by Grumble
I would also love to go to Göbekli Tepe, that place has fascinated me for ages.

Re: The Welsh Stonehenge?

Posted: Tue Feb 23, 2021 7:48 pm
by lpm
Yep. And Çatal Hüyük - my god, that's an astonishing place.

Re: The Welsh Stonehenge?

Posted: Tue Feb 23, 2021 8:38 pm
by Bird on a Fire
Be careful with these wishes.

Right before I left sixth-form in 2009, a friend and I were semi-seriously planning a trip to Libya and Tunisia to see Carthaginian and Roman sites, especially Leptis Magna. Then it all went pear-shaped, so we thought of other under-visited sites with impressive classical monuments and soon hit upon a suitable alternative. Syria.

So I'm sure it's very nice and all, but I dare not say that I'd like to go to Göbekli Tepe and Çatal Hüyük etc., lest some horrible tragedy befall Turkey too. It's already looking pretty dicey.

Re: The Welsh Stonehenge?

Posted: Wed Feb 24, 2021 11:51 am
by jimbob
Grumble wrote:
Tue Feb 23, 2021 6:48 pm
I would also love to go to Göbekli Tepe, that place has fascinated me for ages.
lpm wrote:
Tue Feb 23, 2021 7:48 pm
Yep. And Çatal Hüyük - my god, that's an astonishing place.
Yes to both of them - they seem hardly real - especially for their age.

Re: The Welsh Stonehenge?

Posted: Wed Feb 24, 2021 11:58 am
by Grumble
I’ve got a good book on Çatal Hüyük but nothing on Göbekli Tepe. Any recommendations?

Re: The Welsh Stonehenge?

Posted: Fri Mar 05, 2021 9:57 pm
by jimbob
Grumble wrote:
Wed Feb 24, 2021 11:58 am
I’ve got a good book on Çatal Hüyük but nothing on Göbekli Tepe. Any recommendations?
There's a good program on Çatal Hüyük on BBC 2 at the moment