Re: New study challenges timeline | Forum

tiompan Dec 1, 2012 16:18:43

Replying to Sanctuary

Sanctuary wrote:

Littlestone wrote:

Ancient people probably assembled the massive sandstone horseshoe at Stonehenge more than 4,600 years ago, while the smaller bluestones were imported from Wales later, a new study suggests. The conclusion, detailed in the December issue of the journal Antiquity, challenges earlier timelines that proposed the smaller stones were raised first.

"The sequence proposed for the site is really the wrong way around," said study co-author Timothy Darvill, an archaeologist at Bournemouth University in England. "The original idea that it starts small and gets bigger is wrong. It starts big and stays big. The new scheme puts the big stones at the center at the site as the first stage."

Rest here.

I don't know what chance the amateur has when the professionals can't make their minds up. The Bluestones will have come from Bognor Regis next :-)

It's even more complicated /political than that . MPP has suggested that the Aubrey Holes held bluestones and in the paper there is a comment that "Some or all of the Q and R holes might once have held the bluestone pillars formerly standing in the Aubrey holes and moved into the centre of the monument " as the Q and R holes immediately followed the the Sarsen horseshoe right at the start of the megalithic phase in the "not really so new " sequence there is a possibility that the bluestones , if they were in the Aubrey holes , were there prior to the sarsen horseshoe meaning the small stones were primary after all . The alternative would be Sarsen horsehoe followed by bluestones in the Aubrey holes then moved to Q and R holes .
There have been press comments that are way wrong in relation to quotes supposedly from Darvill and that are clearly not in the paper ,he certainly doesn't make that comment about staetin big and staying big in the paper .

Littlestone Dec 1, 2012 16:29:06

Replying to tiompan

You’d think by now some of these (elementary?) issues would have been sorted. How difficult is it, after all, to determine which stones were where when - well, perhaps not when but certainly where...

VBB Dec 3, 2012 07:36:00

Replying to tiompan

tiompan wrote:

Sanctuary wrote:

I don't know what chance the amateur has when the professionals can't make their minds up. The Bluestones will have come from Bognor Regis next :-)

It's even more complicated /political than that .

Am not sure anyone here really thinks there would be a consensus amongst professionals in relation to what happened in history. What is of far more concern is the mismatch between what they discuss amongst themselves at conferences and in learned print that the public find inaccessible - and what the public think happened in the past. Being brought closer to the detail of the disagreement in question is highly encouraging in that respect.

Having attempted a serious point, I'll have a little lie down...