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Stonehenge and its Environs
Re: The bluestone debate
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[i]”wouldn't a combination of transportation techniques make sense?”[i]

I heartily agree, and a lot of us have said so from the start. When contemplating a re-enactment one of the major problems is that there are loads of individual elements that could have been done in more than one way and there needs to be a guiding principle governing which should be incorporated into the exercise else the choices are random and unlikely to be right in more than 50% of instances – which undermines the credentials of the total end product. I pushed for an approach which was largely accepted: that it was reasonable to assume the ancients acted like people do now, i.e. they’d tend to opt for whatever was easiest, where easiest meant least effort in every respect – so it was a sort of combined application of the laws of ergonomics, economics and human nature.

(I’ve seen it suggested (by archaeologists) that some things might have been done in a particular fashion for “ritual reasons” but I’m doubtful that would have applied. Shifting a big stone is hard enough without doing it a hard way because a long haired foreman says a deity prefers it that way.)

So, applying this “whatever was easiest “assessment method to the wider question, then yes, they’d surely have adjusted their method in accordance with whatever terrain they encountered (or the weather or the seasons or the number of people that turned up etc). You'd lever it, roll it, kick it, slide it down hills, maul it over and round obstacles and drag it, whatever you needed to do every minute - wouldn't we all. BUT I have to say, on the basis of how superior dragging appeared to be at Foamhenge I can’t see many situations in which anything else but that would be ergonomically or economically easier as the main method. Bear in mind the dragging at Foamhenge was uphill and it looked very much as if it was so powerful it could have been done up all the hills on the Avebury-Stonehenge route however steep (the worst one has a less steep zig-zag natural (?) track up it). (I say "could have" but of course it could have with enough people). At the same time, one would assume that a much narrower path would need to be cut through undergrowth for draggers than for rowers and where the land was boggy then the total effort of laying a strong track plus dragging a stone may well have been less than the total effort of rowing (which might need two more tracks anyway to stop the rowers being bogged down themselves)

So for me there’s no obvious circumstance that would make rowing much of a rational choice for almost any part of the route. Except one – if they were short of labour – which has been the central and essential plank of Gordon’s hypothesis from the start. The bald implication is that Stonehenge itself was built by a limited workforce and therefore they were forced to row the stones there.

Incidentally, I’m banging on about sarsens, you’re talking about bluestones. It’s salutary to consider that people who could drag a big sarsen could drag ten bluestones all in one go. It’s quite possible that bringing bluestones the last bit by river was indeed a ritual matter (hence the Avenue) and not an indication they actually needed to.


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nigelswift
Posted by nigelswift
22nd November 2008ce
07:44

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Re: The bluestone debate (Littlestone)

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Re: The bluestone debate (Stoneshifter)

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