Issue no 47, September 1999

LETTERS

Bluestone journey

From Dr Christopher Green

Sir: Glacial transport of the bluestones is less plausible than Aubrey Burl suggests (`Glaciers and the bluestones of Wales', June).

Although there is no other instance of people transporting megaliths over the distance from the Preselis to Stonehenge, many were transported over lesser distances. So the technical skills existed; the problem is the distance. Burl observes in his book, Great Stone Circles, when comparing the transportation of the bluestones and the Stonehenge sarsens, that the latter task was `much easier because the journey was all across dryland'. So why highlight the possible difficulties of a sea journey? Why not overland? It was technically possible - the question is why, not how.

Secondly, even if the bluestone in Salisbury Museum came from Boles Barrow, which remains unproven, where is the other glacial material on Salisbury Plain? It is inadequate to say, as Burl has, that `absence of evidence is not evidence of absence'. The rivers draining Salisbury Plain are flanked by terraces formed in the period when glaciers might have reached Salisbury Plain, and occupied by sediments derived from the surrounding landscape. If rocks were carried by glaciers to Salisbury Plain, they would occur in these sediments. In examining over 50,000 pebbles, I have found no glacially derived rocks. Burl must explain this, not dismiss it.

Thirdly, is the bluestone in Salisbury Museum from Boles Barrow? It is much larger (1,338lbs) than the stones recorded there by Cunnington (28-200lbs), and the ten stones taken by Cunnington to Heytesbury he described as sarsens. As Burl notes `Cunnington was . . . well able to distinguish between sarsen and dolerite'. There is no unequivocal evidence that the disputed bluestone was ever in Cunnington's possession. What we know is that it reached the grounds of Heytesbury House before 1860, supposedly from the nearby garden of Cunnington's house.

Yours sincerely,
CHRISTOPHER GREEN
Royal Holloway
University of London
14 June

From Prof Sean McGrail

Sir: Aubrey Burl argues that late Neolithic seamen (`kamikaze crews') would have been overwhelmed by natural hazards if they had attempted a coastal voyage with Stonehenge bluestones. The difficulties of such a passage should not be underestimated, but these seamen were descendants of people who had settled much of the British and Irish archipelago in some of the most difficult seas in the world, and there is every reason to think that they could have coped with the races, sands, rocks and shoals of the Bristol Channel and Severn Estuary.

They would certainly have used the tidal flows to advantage - the tide would, in fact, have been their prime mover, paddles being used mainly to steer and to avoid hazards. Furthermore, they would have chosen a period of settled summer weather.

What sort of craft might have been used is a more difficult question. Logboats are the only type of water transport we have direct evidence for before the mid-2nd millennium BC. Although the evidence that logboats were being joined together by 2000BC is slim, my preferred hypothesis would be three logboats linked together side by side, with a bluestone on the central boat and paddlers in the others. Such a vessel would give the best combination of buoyancy, freeboard, stability, speed and manoeuvrability, together with a reasonably robust structure and some protection for the crew.

Yours sincerely,
SEAN MCGRAIL
Salisbury
4 July

From Mr Stan Rendell

Sir: Aubrey Burl refers to Preseli bluestone erratics on the Bristol Channel islands of Flat Holm and Steep Holme. As Archaeological Advisor to the Kenneth Allsop Memorial Trust which owns and manages Steep Holme, I have to say that the fragments of `bluestone' announced in 1996 by the Trust's (then) Warden were nothing to do with Preseli.

Aside from serious doubts about how the sharp-edged fragments actually reached Steep Holme, the former Warden's confident assertion that these were of the same type of rock as the bluestones of Stonehenge was very quickly shown to be incorrect following hand specimen and thin section petrography by Dr Robert Ixer of Birmingham University.

Regarding Flat Holm, neither the Flat Holm Project Director nor I are aware of any fragments of Preseli bluestone on that island, although many other erratics have been identified on its pebble beaches.

Yours sincerely,
STAN RENDELL
Weston-super-Mare
22 June

First gods

Sir: Mike Parker Pearson argues that deities were an invention of the Bronze Age (`From ancestor cult to divine religion', June). I cannot see how the nature of the evidence changes in the period he suggests. It seems to me that the reason he can identify deities with certainty for the first time is the development of writing.

He also asserts that the great monuments of today's deity-oriented religions are focused on the deity not the collective or individual dead. How is it, then, that we should interpret a Neolithic long barrow containing the remains of many disarticulated individuals as ancestor-oriented, but the charnel house of a church as deity-oriented? Demolish the church and how does one tell the difference?

Yours sincerely,
ANDREW MILLARD
University of Durham
15 June

Scots Parliament

Sir: Following your article on the historical research and excavation at Queensberry House, Edinburgh (`Symbolic finds on site of new Scottish Parliament', June), it is indeed ironic that the Scottish Office's current plans for this important building disregard and contravene not only the Venice and Burra charters but also Historic Scotland's own draft Scottish Conservation Charter.

The proposals include the destruction of virtually all the surviving interior - including the sequence and shapes of the State rooms on the principal floor - and covering the roof with pantiles, for which there is no archival or archaeological evidence.

This lost opportunity for good conservation practice is doubly ironic since the site lies within the Edinburgh World Heritage Site.

Yours sincerely,
FIONNA ASHMORE
IAN CAMPBELL
Society of Antiquaries of Scotland
Edinburgh
24 June

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