The Old World is a reference to those parts of Earth known to Europeans before the voyages of Christopher Columbus; it includes Europe, Asia and Africa.
Miniature Stonehenge Discovered In Wiltshire, UK
October 04, 2009
"One of the most important prehistoric finds in decades" according to the article: a miniature Stonehenge a mile from the famous site. "Bluehenge," as the find is being called because of the assumed color of its (now-missing) stones, is believed to have been put up around the time of Stonehenge, 5,000 years ago.
"All that remains of the 60-ft.-wide Bluehenge are the holes of 27 giant stones set on a ramped mount. Chips of blue stone found in the holes appear to be identical to the blue stones used in Stonehenge. The four-ton monsters, made of Preseli Spotted Dolerite — a chemically altered igneous rock harder than granite — were mined in the Preseli Mountains in Pembrokeshire and then rolled, dragged, and floated the 200 miles to the site on the banks of the Avon in Wiltshire.
What they found could be absolutely fundemental to the site, but I get pissed off with theories being stated as fact.
There have been suggestions in the past that the Bluestones at SH are actually secondhand, that they were originally used elsewhere before being incorporated at SH. This might just prove the case.
At the same time it would raise even more questions about the development of the area.
Roy.
First people deny a thing, then they belittle it, then they say it was known all along! Von Humboldt
I bet they filled the spaces with brush and used them as corrals for the livestock!
Something is wrong here. War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime, corruption, and the Ice Capades. Something is definitely wrong. This is not good work. If this is the best God can do, I am not impressed.
Something is wrong here. War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime, corruption, and the Ice Capades. Something is definitely wrong. This is not good work. If this is the best God can do, I am not impressed.
Minimalist wrote:I bet they filled the spaces with brush and used them as corrals for the livestock!
'We' – the community living at the location of my town 1,000/2,000 years ago – did that by building a ring shaped community 'cow dyke' to keep the high tide out and the cattle in. At low tide the cattle would freely graze and roam outside of the 'cow dyke' on the 'community lands' (very soggy, I assure you). They simply clambered/walked up the 'cow dyke's slope and across it. At high tide the cattle would voluntarily and gladly come back into the 'cow dyke' to avoid wet udders. Inside that ring shaped 'cow dyke' was also where human dwellings ('farms' is probably too big a word) were built, i.o.w. where people lived. That's how my town got started. I used to live in a house that still has a very recognizable section of that 'cow dyke' cutting straight through its garden. Today it is roughly 2,5 feet above the average plain. It probably was 6 to 10 feet when it was built, with a 40/50 foot base. I used it to bury deceased pets in...
The moral of this story is: you don't need 20 ton solid boulders to keep cattle in.
Better late than never I suppose, but I thought this might be of interest...
Geochemistry, Sources and Transport of the Stonehenge Bluestones
O Williams-Thorpe & R S Thorpe
Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain, UK, is famous for its construction from large lintelled sarsen stones, and also because it has been proposed that some of its stones — the bluestones which are foreign to the geology of Salisbury Plain — were brought to the site by humans from a distant source in Preseli, South Wales. The bluestones include hard dolerites (mostly ‘spotted’) and rhyolites, and softer structurally unsuitable sandstones and basic tuffs. Chemical analysis of eleven dolerites originated at three sources in Preseli within a small area (ca. 2 km2), while the rhyolite monoliths are from four different sources including localities in northern Preseli and perhaps on the north Pembrokeshire coast, between 10 and 30 km apart. Opaque mineralogy of the dolerites supports the conclusion of a Preseli source, while modal analysis of a sandstone fragment excavated at Stonehenge shows that it is not from the Cosheston or Senni Beds of South Wales, as has been suggested. This variety of source implies selection of material from a mixed (glacial) source, not at a carefully human-chosen outcrop. Glacial erratic material from south-west Wales has been identified as far east as Cardiff, and early (Anglian) glaciation of the Bristol/Bath area is indicated by an erratic find and glacial landforms. The apparent lack of glacial erratics between Bristol and Stonehenge (except perhaps for the Boles Barrow boulder) and in rivers draining Salisbury Plain, is consistent with the irregular deposition of ‘free’ boulders at the edge of extensive ice sheets. Bluestone fragments on Salisbury Plain without clear archaeological context, and pieces incorporated, sometimes apparently accidentally, in monuments of Neolithic age onwards (some predating the bluestone erections at Stonehenge) may be remnants of erratics. Clearance of boulders from Salisbury Plain for agricultural purposes is clearly described by the geologist J. A. de Luc, and a boulder consistent in appearance with an erratic was found at Stonehenge in the 1920s.
No, in fact there has been further invesigations of the stones, only a limited number were tested first time around, and one came from a location much further north than the bulk of them.
Off the top of my head I forget the actual location though.
Roy.
First people deny a thing, then they belittle it, then they say it was known all along! Von Humboldt
Important revision to Stonehenge bluestone theory (Score: 1)
by Andy B on Monday, 26 October 2009
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Important revision to Stonehenge bluestone theory
In the News pages of the Nov/Dec 2009 issue of British Archaeology, it is reported that new petrographical work by Rob Ixer (University of Leicester, Department of Geology) and Richard Bevins (National Museum of Wales) had suggested that some of the Stonehenge bluestones had not come from Pembrokeshire, but (in Ixer's words) from "a far wider and, as yet, unrecognised area or more likely areas". As the magazine was being printed, however, Bevins was out in the field, and found an apparent source for the rocks in question north of the Preselis. Ixer and Bevins have kindly written this interim note on this latest development.
Stilpnomelane-bearing rhyolites/rhyolitic tuffs at Stonehenge are most probably from the Preseli Hills region
Field and petrographical work continues on new Stonehenge lithics and on in situ material from areas around the Preseli Hills. This includes excavated material from the Avenue at Stonehenge, and rocks from undistinguished outcrops in the low ground north of Mynydd Preseli, close to Pont Saeson.
The former, as expected, conformed to the range of lithologies seen throughout Stonehenge. But the latter had surprising results, and has led to our radically modifying our proposal that many of the bluestones do not have a Preseli Hill origin, but have an unknown and possibly non-southern Welsh origin.
In thin section the Pont Saeson fine-grained acidic rocks show most of the features of our class of Stonehenge rocks, informally called "rhyolite with fabric", including a lensoidal fabric and the presence of stilpnomelane. Despite nearly a century of collecting and analysis, this is the first record of this mineral in rhyolitic rocks in south Wales. The only previous recorded occurrences of stilpnomelane in acidic rocks in Wales are from the Cregenen granophyre in the Cadair Idris area of southern Snowdonia, and in granophyric rocks of the St David’s Head Intrusion, in north-west Pembrokeshire.
Although not an exact match for the Stonehenge rocks, the Pont Saeson lithics strongly suggest that the "flinty rhyolite/rhyolite with fabric" found in the excavations at Stonehenge has an origin in the Preseli region, and that there is no longer a need to look further north in Wales for this important class of Stonehenge debitage.
The other and more abundant unusual rock-type (carrying distinctive titanite-albite inter-growths) from the Great Cursus area (but not so far identified at Stonehenge) is still unprovenanced, and its petrography has still yet to be matched with rocks from south Wales, or indeed from the rest of Wales.
An interim summary of where we now believe the Stonehenge bluestones come from, and incorporating these new data, is:
* Spotted and unspotted dolerites, the flinty rhyolite/rhyolite tuffs and possibly the basaltic tuffs have a Preseli origin, but a search for their associated source rocks must no longer be restricted to the prominent outcrops on the Preseli Hills
* The Altar stone Devonian sandstone – the largest bluestone – cannot be from the Preseli region
* The rare other sandstone orthostats comprising a Palaeozoic sandstone are also not from the Preseli Hills, but may be southern Welsh in origin
* The titanite-albite-bearing rhyolitic rocks have yet to be sourced, but it is now anticipated that they too will have come from the Preseli region; only detailed and dedicated collecting and petrography will be able to prove that.
