Having just read the paper in Antiquity (that's the journal, I'm not a time traveller) im left frustrated, not so much by what has been presented as evidence for quarrying at cryf, but by my inability to be able to identify its importance. I want to discriminate, but I haven't the tools, if you will. We (the punters) have little option but to assume the blocks underneath the 4m long recumbent, for example, are of importance, because we are told they are. Are they different in any way to other bits of stone in the vicinity? What makes them not just bits of stone that were on the surface when that stone was moved/fell/slid into its current position?
The levelled platform, the diminutive stones standing in pits, the dry stone walling, how much do these really tell us about quarrying? They have been dated and they indicate activity at a certain period, but I can't satisfactorily work out their relevance to large scale quarrying of stone.
The recess isnt dated, and it felt weak to have to mention th Neolithic occupation site "only" 1.5 metres from it. It read more like "come on, that's got to have something to do with it, eh?".
Suggesting bluestones were perhaps brought to Salisbury plain much earlier to cope with the very inconvenient boles barrow feels similarly desperate. Looking for a monument between the two sources is just flailing around in my opinion. We can all construct possible scenarios.
Ultimately, I don't know how vital some of these quarrying "indications" are.
But I also know there is no current evidence 'bluestones' arrived on Salisbury plain from hitching a lift on a glacier.
So, I'm still romantically attached to the image of human transportation, but no closer to really believing it. However, in the absence of any decent alternative, it's where my bet would be placed.