Stonehenge and its Environs 134
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Stonehenge and its Environs

The bluestone debate

mountainman M
mountainman Dec 16, 2008 15:47:28
Replying to nigelswift

nigelswift wrote:
mountainman wrote:
Since when did the sarsens at Stonehenge come from a long way off? HH Thomas (among many others) thought they had come from the neighbourhood, and I can't see any evidence to suggest that he was wrong on this one.
I think there IS some evidence he was wrong. If you look at the sarsen drifts back towards Avebury you'll see they are all shapes and sizes and ones that are approximately the right size or shape for Stonehenge uprights (or lintels) are mighty rare. It seems a bit of a rum idea that only the right shaped and right sized sarsens existed near Stonehenge. There would be a vastly larger number of unsuitable ones as well wouldn't there? Statistically (and by reference to other drifts) the vast majority would be of no use - too rounded or hopelessly wrong-sized to be used as either uprights or lintels. Where are those rejects?
Since when were all the sarsens at Stonehenge "the right shape and size? They are all sorts of shapes and sizes -- look at stones 11, 3. 27, Heelstone, Slaughter Stone etc etc. Some had to be bedded in deep, oityhers very shallow. A proper grotty collection, if you ask me....... and a lot of the smaller ones were used, in my opinion, as standing "bluestones" before being used again as lintels. Masses of smaller sarsens were used as mauls and packing stones -- they would have been easy to collect around the site and on adjacent areas of the Plain. They probably sent the kids off to collect them while their dads were grunting away, shifting the seriously big stones.

N nigelswift
nigelswift Dec 16, 2008 16:47:13
Replying to mountainman

Well if you walk across an existing sarsen drift (which, after all, is real solid evidence, not speculation) how often will you come across a stone that would be remotely usable, in terms of shape and size, as a Stonehenge upright or lintel? One in fifty, a hundred? Let's take a vote....

How many stones were used in Stonehenge? Multiply that by fifty or a hundred or whatever the vote indicates and that's the size of the drift there needed to be lying around to enable the monument's sarsens to have been sourced locally. And that very large drift, minus only the stones they used on the monument, seems to be entirely absent now.

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