A Long History of Rhosyfelin:

A Geomorphological Perspective
Brian John
If you type in "Rhosyfelin" into Google, you will nd a good many entries, including many from my
blog called Stonehenge and the Ice Age (1). For better or worse, the site at Craig Rhosyfelin, not
far from Brynberian, has become a key archaeological site -- which is rather interesting, given that
there is not much archaeology there.
Its new-found fame, of course, lies in the fact that some of the "debitage" at Stonehenge has been
traced back to this particular rather insignicant rocky spur in the valley of the Brynberian River, a
tributary of the Afon Nyfer. The link has been featured in a number of papers by Rob Ixer and
Richard Bevins (2) -- all discussed at length in my blog. More to the point, for the past four seasons
there have been extensive archaeological digs on the site, with Mike Parker Pearson, Josh Pollard
and Colin Richards all involved, along with a host of other amateur and professional archaeologists
who are all apparently sold on the idea that this is the rst proper "bluestone quarry" ever to be
systematically investigated. That is the hypothesis, as enunciated in some detail by Prof MPP in his
1
Map and satellite image from the Wheres the Path? website. The rocky spur is located just to the east of the very
tight bend in the road. The dig site is between the two prominent mayower trees and the rocky ridge.
2012 Stonehenge book (3). To me, it looks like a ruling hypothesis, because it has simply been
accepted as correct, and has not been tested. There have been no published survey reports or peer-
reviewed papers thus far -- and this is interesting, given that this project started in 2011, more than
three years ago.
Why this tardiness? This may be down to the strict veto exercised by the National Geographic
Society, which seems to be nancing the dig, and which (according to MPP in his Brynberian talk
last September) does not allow anything to be published without its consent. Presumably it wants a
"world exclusive" in the pages of the National Geographic Magazine. Im inclined not to believe
that -- after all, MPP has revealed many of the details of the dig in his book, and that presumably
was published with a nod from the publishers of the magazine. Also, if anything spectacular really
had been found, nobody would have been able to restrain MPP or any of the others involved from
going public. There would have been banner headlines and excited press conferences. No -- it is
much more likely that nothing very interesting has been unearthed thus far; and that is why the
diggers have returned for another session in September 2014. The team members are determined
to nd the Holy Grail -- incontrovertible evidence of quarrying and the removal of stones from this
site all the way to Stonehenge. If at rst you don't succeed.........
2
The 2011 excavation at Rhosyfelin, showing the abandoned orthostat of foliated rhyolite which has come from the
adjacent rocky spur. Note the apparent stratication in the exposed sediments. If any organic material from any of
these sediment beds should yield a radiocarbon date greater than 5,000 years BP, that would invalidate the quarry
hypothesis.
We don't know what dating techniques have been used on samples from the site. There are organic
materials in some of the exposed layers in the stratigraphy, and we know that radiocarbon dating
has been used. But other dating techniques -- including cosmogenic or OSL dating -- may also have
been appropriate with a view to working out the sequence of sedimentation. Why have no
radiocarbon dates been published? Well, some bloggers suspect a deep conspiracy on this front --
and I have to agree with them that this lack of publication probably means that the sequence of
events which is emerging is not particularly favourable to the "bluestone quarry" hypothesis. After
all, if any date greater than 5,000 yrs BP is given to material stratigraphically above the base of the
big "recumbent orthostat" which has appeared in all the photos, that would knock the whole
hypothesis for six. I might even speculate that dates considerably in excess of 5,000 yrs BP --
placing them in the Mesolithic or Palaeolithic -- have been found already. No doubt all will be
revealed in due course.
I have never been invited to have a look at the dig, and my one appointment with members of the
team was a grave disappointment since they failed to turn up at the agreed time at Rhosyfelin, so
my impressions are based on quick visits in the company of others and on a lack of proper
eldwork. However, I have a good photographic record of the site, and I have listened intently to
the presentations given to the general public by MPP and his colleagues. So here is my
interpretation of the landscape history of the site. Let's call it a Long History of Rhosyfelin -- since
the timescale is indeed a long one, measured in millions of years. In my view this is a Pleistocene
site, not a Neolithic one.
THE SEQUENCE OF KEY EVENTS
This, I think, is the history of what has happened to the landscape and landforms at Rhosyfelin. It
is intended for use as a working hypothesis, subject to correction and improvement -- and maybe
even to falsication, according to the precepts of Karl Popper! If it needs to be dumped in the
future, so be it...... and in the meantime, I will welcome comments and corrections.
1. Phase One. Early Days.
There was a long period of landscape evolution prior to the Ice Age, during which the main features
of upland and lowland were created. The upland ridge of Mynydd Preseli is all that is left of a
much more extensive mountainous landscape. We can assume that there were once spectacular
alpine peaks here, created during the Caledonian mountain-building episode around 450 million
years ago, and then maybe inuenced also by the Hercynian upheavals of 350 million years ago.
(These are very rough dates -- in reality those episodes were prolonged and complex.) There was
much volcanic activity in connection with these upheavals; the Fishguard Volcanic Series of igneous
rocks was emplaced around 450 million years ago, within and on top of old sea-oor sediments
which now outcrop at the ground surface across much of North Pembrokeshire (4). You can see
traces of the mountain-building episodes in the tight folds, faults and shattered rock zones in the
cliffs at Ceibwr, Newport and many other locations between Pen Caer and Cardigan. Many of
these rocks in the uplands have been eroded away -- maybe because of the frequency of volcanic
ashes and aky rhyolites mixed in with mudstones, shales and thin-bedded sandstones. In a popular
terminolgy, these would be called "soft" rocks. In contrast, the big intrusions of dolerite in the
Preseli Hills have been much more resistant to erosion, explaining the rolling upland landscape with
a scatter of dolerite (and some rhyolite) tors.
Why are the tors there? Conventionally, the explanation is that the tors survive because they are
made of resistant rocks which are not broken by tight jointing and fractures, whereas the heavily
3
fractured and "softer" rocks around them have been attacked by chemical and physical weathering
processes on a more substantial scale. These tors (like Carn Meini, Carn Alw, Carn Bica and Carn
Arthur) have probably been present as features in the landscape for at least 10 million years, even
though individual rock surfaces on them might be dated as much younger than that -- as seen in the
recent paper on the Dartmoor tors (5) where individual slabs seem only to have been exposed to
cosmogenic bombardment for between 30,000 and 50,000 years.) We always need to bear in mind
that while a tor is being eroded by frost processes and gravitational settling -- and by other processes
too -- the surrounding landscape is also being eroded or lowered at a rate that may be equal, or
maybe faster and maybe slower!

We should bear in mind that tors at the end of the "preglacial" period were actually quite
widespread across North Pembrokeshire. There were tors on the uplands of Preseli, as mentioned
above. But they also occurred on Carningli and Dinas Mountain, at Carnedd Meibion Owen and
in Tycanol Wood, and in various locations in the Newport-Nevern area. There were also tors
further to the west, on the Pencaer Peninsula, on the St David's Peninsula, and at Poll Carn (Lion
Rock) and Maiden Castle at the northern end of Trefgarn Gorge in central Pembrokeshire. (We
need to be careful about the interpretation of some of these features, because some seem to have
been formed originally as islands or skerries when relative sea-level was falling from over 100m to
c30m above its present level. They are called "monadnocks" by geomorphologists. So marine
processes, as well as chemical and other physical weathering processes, have been involved in their
creation.)
4
One of the tumbledown tors of Carn Meini. Here the bedrock is spotted dolerite. It has long been assumed that this
locality was the main source of the bluestones used at Stonehenge. The assumption has now been shown by geologists
to be incorrect.
2. Phase Two. Getting Colder.
At the beginning of the Pleistocene or Quaternary Ice Age, around 10 million years ago, the overall
distribution of upland and lowland in North Pembrokeshire, and the approximate position of the
coastline, were already determined (5). So in addition to the main features of Mynydd Preseli we
can be reasonably sure that there was a shallow depression on the northern ank of the mountain,
with many small streams draining down into the Nevern Valley. The Brynberian valley would have
been a part of this drainage pattern. Were the deep river gorges at Rhosyfelin and Felin y Gigfran
present at the time? Probably not, since the whole land surface was probably higher. However, we
cannot rule out episodes of river downcutting and gorge development during phases of increased
precipitation and runoff, or during periods of low relative sea-level. (Remarkably little is known
about climate and landscape history during this period.) Were the tors at Carnedd Meibion Owen
and Rhosyfelin present at the time? Probably they were -- and maybe they were substantially larger
than those which we see today.
3. Phase Three. Ice here and there -- but mostly there.
In the period between 10 million yrs BP and 2.5 million yrs BP the climate cooled substantially, and
in some parts of the Northern Hemisphere -- in high latitudes and at high altitudes -- there must
have been intermittent glacial episodes, as shown in the deep-sea and ice sheet records (6). It is
doubtful that glacial ice will have affected West Wales and the South of England at this time -- so
probably there will have been a number of periglacial episodes some of which might have lasted for
hundreds of thousands of years. During these episodes frost shattering and scree development will
have occurred in some localities, and the landform details on tors and steep slopes might have been
modied. Generally, debris accumulation in the lower parts of the landscape (valleys and
depressions) will have occurred -- but if at certain stages there were periods of rapid snowmelt or
episodes of high rainfall, oods might have deepened valleys -- and it is possible that the Brynberian
river gorge, for example, might have begun to form at this time. Also, if some of these early glacial
episodes were large enough, it is possible that global sea-levels might have dropped to -30m or more,
leading to the inevitable incision of rock valleys well beneath present sea-level. The rock oor of
Milford Haven and all of the other coastal valleys of Pembrokeshire lies well beneath present sea-
level -- but we do not yet know whether this is because of many different episodes of deep
downcutting or because of just one or two, later in the Pleistocene (7).
4. Phase Four. Glaciation proper.
Around 2.5 million years ago, the rst well-established glacial episode involving big ice sheets
affected the land masses of Western and Northern Europe. Some of the glacial deposits on the
continental shelf seem to date from this time, but the
rst episode to provide investigators with good
quality stratigraphic data was Anglian glaciation,
around 450,000 years ago. That was the most
intense and most prolonged glacial episode of the
Pleistocene, at least in Europe. There was a very
large British - Irish Ice Sheet, covering most of
Ireland, Scotland, Wales and England (8). So much
5
Global glacial and interglacial oscillations over the past
million years. The glacial phases shown did not all affect
SW Britain or leave clear traces.
of the Planet's water was locked into
the big ice sheets that sea-level
dropped to at least -120m, meaning
that the ice streams and glaciers
were for the most part land-based,
owing across vast expanses of land
that are now submerged beneath the
sea. That includes the oor of the
North Sea, the Irish Sea, Cardigan
Bay, St George's Channel and the
Celtic Sea.
These western areas bounded by
Ireland in the west and Great
Britain to the east were occupied by
the Irish Sea Glacier, the largest and
most powerful of all the ice streams
to have affected the British Isles (9).
As realised more than a century ago
by geologists like Geikie and Jehu, this glacier received most of its sustenance from the accumulation
areas on Ireland, NW England and Scotland, and owed broadly southwards towards
Pembrokeshire before expanding into a great piedmont lobe which owed SW, S, SE and even E.
The glacier also received ice owing from the Welsh Ice Cap into Cardigan Bay -- and it is a fair
assumption that the surface of the glacier in St George's Channel must have been at around
2000m, sufcient to drive owing ice across Preseli and the whole of Pembrokeshire, and up the
Bristol Channel towards the Mendips and the Somerset coast. There will also have been
supplements to the glacier from valley glaciers owing broadly southwards in the valleys of South
Wales, from the uplands of the Brecon Beacons and the South Wales Coaleld. That "boost" might
well have been critical in maintaining the momentum of the Irish Sea Glacier, which was by now
more than 600 km away from its primary source areas.
What was the maximum southern extent of this glacier? Well, from the glacial traces in the
landscape and from the glacial deposits which we know about in southern England, we can be quite
sure that the ice affected Somerset, Devon and Cornwall. Were the uplands of the Mendips,
Exmoor, Dartmoor and Bodmin Moor covered at this time by local ice caps or by the big Irish Sea
Glacier? Almost certainly they were, since we know that in the Devensian glacial episode (peaking
around 20,000 years ago) there was an ice cap on Dartmoor, and an ice edge on the Scilly Isles. The
Anglian was a much more intense and extensive glaciation than the Devensian, and unless there
were as yet unexplained glaciological differences between the Anglian and Devensian glaciers --
expressed as different bed conditions, rates of ice ow and surface proles -- it is reasonable to
6
One of the British-Irish ice sheet models
prepared by Hubbard et al, 2008.
Although this model was created for the
Devensian glacial episode, it may be a good
indicator of the maximum extent of ice
during the Anglian glaciation. Note that
Cornwall, Devon, and Somerset are largely
ice-covered, and that much of Wiltshire is
also submerged beneath ice.
assume that the ice actually reached Salisbury Plain. That assumption is not yet supported by
unequivocal stratigraphic evidence, but as discussed many times on this blog, there are traces of glacier ice
having affected the Somerset Levels, the Mendips, and the Bath area -- and if we accept (as I do) that the
Stonehenge bluestones and other strange stones found on Salisbury Plain are extremely old glacial
erratics, the matter is more or less settled. On the principle of Occam's Razor, we do not need any
other explanation relating to the transport of the bluestones.
What about Rhosyfelin? I suggest that when the Anglian ice started to impinge upon the coastal
strip of North Pembrokeshire, there was a substantial tor or craggy outcrop at Rhosyfelin, standing
prominently above an undulating uvial landscape which had already been affected to some degree
by a prolonged period of periglacial conditions. That is the way it is, prior to all big glacial
episodes. We cannot know whether the tor was massive and coherent, or just a pile of tumbledown
debris. At any rate, when the Irish Sea Glacier had taken possession of the northern slopes of
Preseli and started to ow rapidly across this landscape, conditions were perfect for shearing to
occur within the ice (10), and for the entrainment of bedrock blocks up into the body of the glacier,
and for transport within the glacier away towards the SE and E. Many of the other tors on the
northern ank and summit of
Preseli will have been similarly
affected, while areas on the
southern ank will have been
affected to a much lesser extent,
as explained in other posts on this
blog. It may be that hundreds or
thousands of tonnes of rock were
removed from the Rhosyfelin
rhyolitic outcrop in this way.
Because the rock is ssile and
aky, and broken up by abundant
ssures or joints, the chances of big
slabs or blocks of this rhyolite being transported all of the way to Salisbury Plain without further
damage were not great -- but not impossible. The bulk of transported material will have been in the
form of boulders and cobbles maybe less than 1m in diameter. Most of it will have been dissipated
or ground up in downstream glacial deposits, but some slabs and "orthostats" in protected locations
within the ice mass could have been transported for 300km or more without further damage, to be
melted out or dumped in due course at the ice edge. I have speculated on this blog that the
"entrainment episode" at Rhosyfelin might have been quite short-lived (maybe lasting for just a few
decades or centuries) and that for the rest of the glacial episode the site was protected by immobile
or very sluggish cold-based ice. (As a general rule, warm-based glaciers with their bases at or near
7
A mechanism for the entrainment of
blocks and other debris from locations
on the northern ank of Preseli during
the waxing phase of the Anglian
Glaciation. This phase may not have
lasted for very long; at the peak of the
glacial episode the landscape at
Rhosyfelin might have been protected
from glacial erosional processes.
the pressure melting point can ow fast and erode effectively, whereas cold-based glaciers tend to be
frozen to their beds and are incapable of much "work" in changing the form of the land surface.)
At the end of the Anglian glacial episode, it's reasonable to suppose that the Irish Sea Glacier
wasted catastrophically. The meltwater channel complex of the Gwaun-Jordanston area was
probably formed at this time, with huge volumes of meltwater escaping southwards across any low
cols that were available, or else being forced to ow south-westwards and then southwards deep
beneath the wasting ice surface or actually along the ice edge. Initially, much of the meltwater was
owing subglacially under high pressure, meaning that occasionally it was actually owing uphill (9).
The valleys connected to Cwm Gwaun are classics of their kind, frequently cited in text books and
recognized in the SSSI citations which guarantee a degree of extra landscape protection within the
Pembrokeshire Coast National Park. Was there a glacial lake impounded against the northern face
of Preseli at this time? It's possible, but as yet we do not have stratigraphic evidence which can be
brought to bear. But the gorge at Rhosyfelin may well have had its origins at this time, as great
volumes of meltwater owed northwards towards the lower land of Cardigan Bay at a time of
chaotic ice wastage -- such as we see on the margins of some Icelandic and Greenland glaciers
today.
5. Phase Five. Many Missing Millennia.
Following the Anglian Glaciation, over the course of more than 350,000 years, there were several
glacial and interglacial cycles, and it is possible that glacier ice might have affected Rhosyfelin on
more than one occasion. This ice might have come from the north in the form of another Irish Sea
Glacier, or it might have come from a small Preseli ice cap, formed as a result of localised extreme
cold and high snowfall. We really have no local evidence which we can -- at this stage -- interpret
sensibly. But during this long period there may well have been other climatic episodes at least as
warm as the present interglacial, and other very prolonged episodes of periglacial conditions with or
without continuous permafrost. Over a period as long as this, it is inevitable that Craig Rhosyfelin
will have undergone further substantial change, involving the ongoing reduction of the rocky tor
and the accumulation of debris around its foot and in the river valley adjacent to it. What about the
details of the river valley? They are actually quite complicated here -- and particularly notable are
the subsidiary valleys or gullies on either side of the craggy ridge which we see today. They suggest
that water has at some stage (or stages) owed down from the valley side into the gorge, maybe
excavating out zones of weakness coinciding with faulted or brecciated zones, or maybe coinciding
with the junctions between the rhyolites and the adjacent sedimentary rocks.
6. Phase Six. The Last Interglacial.
Thus far, we have no evidence of either the climate or the process of sedimentation at Rhosyfelin
for the period around 100,000 - 70,000 yrs BP. However, there are abundant signs on the coast that
at some stage during this interglacial (called the Ipswichian) relative sea-level was higher than it is
today, by at least a couple of metres. There are not only raised beach platforms cut across bedrock
in many coastal locations, but also raised beach deposits of rounded cobbles, sand and gravels --
sometimes cemented into a hard conglomerate by calcium carbonate and sometimes stained heavily
with iron and manganese oxides. The climate was warmer than it is today, with a landscape just as
richly clothed with vegetation (11). It may be that Mynydd Presely would have been quite heavily
wooded, in spite of the high exposure and the location in the far west of Wales.
Soil development during the interglacial would have been much more prolonged than that of the
present interglacial -- so soil horizons maybe 2m thick would have been commonplace. But in
North Pembrokeshire, the chances of any such soil horizons surviving the events of the following
Devensian are very slim indeed.
8
7. Phase Seven. The Devensian Glacial Episode.
This episode is conventionally considered to have started around 70,000 years ago and to have run
until about 10,000 years ago (12). Now we are getting into the period which we might expect to be
represented in the sedimentary sequence at Rhosyfelin. Prior to the arrival of the Devensian ice in
this area, there was a long period (maybe 50,000 years) of oscillating periglacial climate. For parts
of this period there was continuous permafrost, as indicated by occasional traces of patterned
ground including fossil ice wedges and cryoturbation features. When at last the ice of the Irish Sea
Glacier did arrive in North Pembrokeshire it created an effective ice dam along the coastline,
holding up the drainage of north-owing rivers and streams on the northern anks of Mynydd
Preseli and leading to the creation of ice-dammed lakes in the Tei Valley (now well documented in
a sequence of laminated lake sediments more than 50m thick in places) and maybe in other valleys
as well (13). Various researchers have suggested a series of glacial lake overows across low-lying
cols, leading to the creation of "overow channels" or spillways -- but the precise sequence of events
is still a matter for debate, and much more evidence of glacial lake sediments is needed before the
true story can be told. In this blog we have had some debate on the question of whether there was a
"Glacial Lake Brynberian". If it ever did exist, then the site of Craig Rhosyfelin might well have
been submerged beneath the waters. And if there are laminated or varved lake clays to be found
anywhere, then they might be found on the oor of the valley adjacent to the site being excavated
by Prof Mike Parker Pearson and his team.
9
A conservative assessment of the Devensian ice edge in North Pembrokeshire, based on the most recent Geological
Survey map. Evidence is accumulating to show that the ice of the Irish Sea Glacier was more extensive than this,
probably owing across the whole of the Carningli upland and maybe across the eastern end of the Preseli ridge as
well.
I am now convinced that the Irish Sea Glacier pushed further south than Rhosyfelin and pressed
against the northern hillslope of Preseli. I am also convinced that the ice owed across Carningli,
maybe even covering the highest crags, and across Tycanol Wood and the tors of Carnedd Meibion
Owen. There are fresh-looking glaciated slabs in many locations, and I think it possible that the ice
might even have inundated the highest tors including Carn Meini. More work needs to be done on
this, and maybe we will need cosmogenic dating to be employed in order to answer the question of
maximum Devensian ice extent. There may have been several pulses or ice advances within a short
period, and as evidence for this I would cite the recently discovered morainic accumulations at
Gernos Fawr, Cilgwyn and Pont Ceunant.
So what traces of the Devensian glaciation might we expect to nd at Rhosyfelin? Well, one thing
we know from a long study of the coastal exposures of Ice Age deposits around the Pembrokeshire
coast is that the glacial episode was neither long enough in duration not intense enough to erode
away all of the older sediments overriden by the glacier. The "lower head" accumulations of frost-
shattered and pseudo-bedded slope deposits may have been partly removed, but plenty of them still
exist. So we can assume that they remained deeply frozen and reasonably resistant to erosion by the
glacier that came in from the north and north-west -- or maybe at some stage from the north-east as
well. We can discount the effects of the short-lived Preseli ice cap which might have occupied the
highest parts of Preseli at some stage. That would have been cold-based, thin and almost stagnant,
with a very limited capacity for affecting landscape change.
If the ice was capable of streaming across bedrock surfaces and polishing or moulding them, it must
also have been capable of some destruction of upstanding craggy outcrops such as that of Craig
Rhosyfelin. So delicate crags might have been demolished, rubble might have been moved and
maybe dragged away to other locations further south, and a great deal of debris from pre-existing
scree banks might well have been incorporated into the basal ice material derived from country
already overridden.
We might expect that in particularly favourable locations within the valleys of Afon Nyfer and Afon
Brynberian, we might nd a sequence of periglacial deposits with lake deposits above them, and
with glacial deposits higher still in the sequence. These deposits will be sedimentologically quite
distinct from one another -- and will thus be easy to recognize.
From what I have seen thus far of the excavations at Rhosyfelin, I suspect that at the end of the
2012 digging season the archaeologists reached the top of a till layer which incorporates much local
material derived from the immediate vicinity. In this regard it will have been very similar to the till
found all over the land surface of the Newport - Nevern area. Where rhyolites are outcropping,
there are rhyolite boulders in the till; where dolerites are outcropping, the boulders and coarse
debris are of dolerite, set in a matrix of debris largely derived from soft and aky Ordovician shales
and slates.
Back to the details for Rhosyfelin. It seems to me that on the exposed rock face we have a series of
glaciated slabs coinciding with a fracture plane -- maybe along a fault line. The broken debris piled
up along the base of this face is mostly angular or sharp-edged, but it includes slabs and stones
which have been smoothed by erosion, with many sharp edges and corners rounded off. That seems
to suggest glacial action or else a short-lived episode of uvio-glacial activity, with torrents of
meltwater owing down the gully and into the river valley proper. (I'll reserve judgment on that one,
until we can see -- maybe in the nal excavation report -- whether there are any uvioglacial
deposits in the stratigraphic sequence, downslope from the excavation site.) As indicated in some of
my earlier posts, it seems that the "2012 surface" exposed by the archaeologists coincides with the
top of a layer of mixed rubble and till, with signs of iron staining and weathering. This iron pan or
hard pan is common throughout the Preseli uplands area, and the top of it has no archaeological
10
signicance. The till exposed at Rhosyfelin appears to be clay-rich, like many of the other tills in
North Pembrokeshire. To me, the colouring indicates a period of sub-arial exposure prior to the
accumulation of relatively ne-grained slope deposits on top of the boulder litter. On the other
hand, iron-staining and weathering can occur in the top 50cm of a clay-rich till layer even when it is
buried beneath other sediments which permit easy water percolation. (This can be seen in the cliff
section at Abermawr.)
11
Above: The foxy red hardpan here
coinciding with the top of the
Rhosyfelin till layer. Note the
incorporated erratics of dolerite and
other stone types. The erratics are
generally smoothed and have their
edges rounded off by ice action.
Right: Other erratic boulders and
stones extracted from the dig during
September 2013. These are mixed
here with slabs of local rhyolite
removed from the dig site.
In the 2013 digging season the archaeologists excavated well into this till layer and revealed the
presence of many sub-rounded and sub-angular stones and boulders made of rhyolite, dolerite and
other exotic stone types. Its thickness is variable, as one would expect. Striae are difcult to pick
up on these rock types, but I found one broken bedrock slab with clear crescentic gouges on its
surface, suggesting heavy ice movement across this site.
The Rhosyfelin scree / rubble layer which has
been interpreted as quarrying rubble by
Professor MPP and his colleagues (for reasons
best known to themselves) rests against the base
of the rock face. When did this scree start to
accumulate, and when did accumulation come
to an end? As indicated above, it is possible that
some of the broken debris has been in position
since the end of the Anglian glacial episode around 450,000 years ago, when the Irish Sea glacier
disintegrated. If we bring our understanding of glacial episodes to bear, we may assume that there
were periglacial episodes which followed the melting of the glacier ice, leading to the breakdown of
glacially steepened slopes and the accumulation of scree and other slope deposits. There may have
been no further glacial action in this area until the Devensian; there was at least one other glacial
phase (referred to as the Wolstonian or Saalian glaciation in other parts of the world) but if the Irish
Sea Glacier of that time did not extend this far south, then there would have been a prolonged
period of cold or periglacial conditions (maybe lasting for 50,000 years or more) during which
further breakdown of the Rhosyfelin crags might have occurred. Whether the rock debris fell from
above the rock face as we see it today, or from the face itself, we cannot tell on the basis of the
current evidence.
When the Devensian ice arrived there would have been a great deal of debris around the Rhosyfelin
"spur" -- some of it fresh and some of it having been in place for maybe hundreds of thousands of
years. One would expect the oldest material on the site to be stained with iron and manganese
oxide. As the ice owed across the site, some material will have been overridden in a relatively
undisturbed state, some incorporated into the basal layers of ice and transported away, and some
mixed up with basal till and erratics transported from the land surface to the north of the site.
8. Phase Eight. The Late-Glacial.
Probably this site was clear of glacier ice by 18,000 yrs BP. After that, for maybe 6,000 years, the
climate remained cold as the great ice sheets gradually wasted away further to the north. We know
from the stratigraphic evidence in other parts of Pembrokeshire that there was some redistribution
of glacial and other old deposits by soliuxion and slope washing processes, but there were no thick
accumulations of "head" as there were in the earlier part of the Devensian (14). But in the period
13,000 yrs BP to 10,000 yrs BP there was a strange "triple event" referred to as the "Late Gacial"
and characterised as a cold phase (Zone 1 or Older Dryas), a warmer interlude (Zone 2 or Allerod)
and another cold phase (Zone 3 or Younger Dryas). There is still much debate about whether these
three episodes are recognizable across the world, or whether they were localised within NW Europe
for reasons that are not yet apparent (15). At any rate, they do seem to appear in the Pembrokeshire
12
Crescentic gouges on a attish slab of foliated rhyolite,
suggesting that this slab has been subjected to intense
pressure by thick over-riding ice.
record from other Pleistocene sites, and we can surmise that there were further rockfalls onto the
Devensian till surface at Rhosyfelin during the Older Dryas and Younger Dryas, accompanied by
soliuxion of broken rock materials from the hillslope on the other side of the gully.
The lowest layer above the till surface at Rhosyfelin is a dark-coloured and ne-grained bed up to
30 cms thick, with many stony and gravelly inclusions and "streaky" bands which appear to be rich
in organic material. This might
be a l a c us t r i ne de pos i t
accumulated during a glacial
wastage phase, either in a
localised small lake within the
bounds of the valley or in a
more extensive "Glacial Lake
Br y nbe r i a n" i mpounde d
between a retreating ice edge
and the northern slope of
Mynydd Preseli. There is at
least one small feature that
looks like a fault; and less than a
metre away there is something
that looks like a small fossil ice
wedge indicative of permafrost.
In places there are traces of
what appear to be involutions
or cryoturbation features; they
need close examination, for they
may also have originated as
" l oadi ng di s t or t i ons " or
injection features resulting from
t h e c o m p r e s s i o n a n d
di s t ur bance of s at ur at ed
sediments by materials dumped on top of them. This dark-coloured layer has a sharp upper
surface, and above it is a brown stony layer full of angular broken debris. Maybe this is frost-
shattered material, and maybe not; exposed crags and even rocky outcrops on hillsides break down
in this way, with angular fragments being worked from the eroding face by a wide range of
processes including root expansion, pressure release, rockfalls and small landslides in periods of
exceptional rainfall.
9. Phase Nine. The Holocene Interglacial.
When the Younger Dryas ended quite abruptly, the last small glaciers to have survived in the
uplands of Britain all disappeared. The climate warmed rapidly, and from this point on, for the last
10,000 years or so, the dominant processes on most slopes (including those at Rhosyfelin) have been
related to soliuxion under a temperate climatic regime. In the exposures on the anks of the
archaeological dig we can see what appear to be up to six distinct layers -- some with a darker
colouring reminiscent of organic-rich soil layers, and others with a buff or foxy brown colour. The
darker layers seem to have a greater proportion of silts and clays in them, and the brown layers have
more in the sand and gravel fractions. But the layers are discontinuous, which means that we should
perhaps refer to "pseudo-bedding" rather than bedding.
What is the climatic signicance of these "layers"? Well, we know that there were climatic
oscillations on a small scale during the British Holocene, although correlations across the rest of
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Six distinct layers exposed during the 2012 dig. The three darker coloured
layers might incorporate organic materials. In the lower dark layer (which
has been sampled) there seem to be permafrost structures including
involutions, a small fault and a fossil ice wedge.
Western Europe are difcult. These episodes are referred to as the Pre-Boreal, Boreal, Atlantic
(also referred to as the "Climatic Optimum"), Sub Boreal and Sub Atlantic periods. The warmest
episode (Hypsithermal) seems to have been around 8,000 to 6,000 years BP, and after that, in the
episode sometimes referred to as the "Neoglacial" by glaciologists, there were a number of short
episodes cold enough for glacier advances in the uplands of the Alps, Norway and Iceland. Around
5,000 years BP, when the earliest phases of Stonehenge were being built, the climate seems to have
been cool and rather wet, but with a slow reduction in rainfall totals over 2,000 years or so.
It may well be that when radiocarbon and other dating has been completed for the layers exposed in
the Rhosyfelin digging seasons of 2011-2014, a reasonably accurate timescale may be applied to the
six (or more!) "layers" -- but for the time being we simply have to say that within the last 10,000
years slope deposits up to 2m thick have accumulated on top of the broken rock debris, as the gullies
on the ank of the rhyolite ridge have been gradually lled with the products of ongoing erosion
and accumulation. Personally, I would not be too surprised if these sediments were to be found to
contain Mesolithic int akes or microliths made from the Rhosyfelin rhyolite raw materials. In
exceptionally wet periods there may even have been mudows and slope collapses leading to the
redistribution of soil and rock debris -- helping to explain why some apparent "layers" are
discontinuous. Not all of the rock debris was covered with later soliuxion or slope deposits; close to
the rock face many blocks were visible sticking up through the ground surface, or were covered by
thick vegetation but not soil. The highest part of the "abandoned orthostat" was only about 20 cm
beneath the ground surface when found by the 2011 excavation team.
10. Phase Ten. Human Interference?
Leaving aside for the moment the assumption that all of the rock debris at Rhosyfelin is "quarrying
debris" resulting from Neolithic stone extraction activities, the archaeologists have mentioned several
features that supposedly demonstrate human interference in the arrangement of stones and
supercial deposits:
(a) At least two rounded stones referred to as hammerstones, supposedly used for the shaping of
rhyolite orthostats. According to Professor MPP, these stones have percussion fractures and other
damage on their surfaces, showing that they have been used for striking against softer rock surfaces
so as to remove projections or irregularities. Apparently these "hammerstones" have been found
among the broken rhyolite rock debris low in the sequence described above. I have not examined
these "hammerstones", and so I reserve judgment on whether any surface markings are natural or
man-made. (My guess is that they are most likely to be fractures, scratches and chatter-marks typical
of erratic stones dragged along on the bed of a glacier -- and indeed there are other rounded and
sub-rounded erratics as well, including at least two made of quartz, scattered in the rhyolite rock
debris and described in earlier posts on this blog.)
(b) The so-called "rhyolite orthostat" lying some 5m from the rock face, with its upper surface just
20 cm beneath the ground surface at the onset of excavation. This elongated slab has caused great
excitement, and has been much photographed as "the bluestone which was left behind" by the
Neolithic quarrymen. Its dimensions, according to the archaeologists, make it a good candidate for
recognition as an ideal Stonehenge bluestone; and they are also quite convinced that it has been
shaped. They also argue that it is too far from the rock face to have reached its nal resting place
naturally. On the other hand, I am not the only observer to have suggested that it looks entirely
natural, and that its position is not at all exceptional, lying as it does within the "apron" of broken
rock debris beneath the Rhosyfelin crags. It lies on top of other smaller blocks, suggesting that it
was emplaced by a more recent rockfall from high up on the adjacent crag. I can see no evidence
on the stone of any working with hammerstones or other tools.
14
15
Another photo of the abandoned orthostat at Rhosyfelin; this was taken in 2011. It shows how foliated, aky and
fractured the rhyolite is here -- giving rise to speculation that it was never very suitable for local standing stones, let
alone for long-distance transport. The stone rests on a great deal of rock rubble. We do not know how much rock
rubble was resting on top of it.............
Two photos showing the abandoned orthostat and the rock face at Rhosyfelin. The one on the left is from 2011 and
the one on the right is from 2012. We can see that some of the fallen rock debris is deeply covered by ne-grained
slope deposits and some broken blocks are hardly covered at all -- with some sharp edges projecting through the ground
surface.
(c) A number of long thin stones with "worn surfaces" which according to Prof MPP have been
used as "railway tracks" along which the "orthostat" has been dragged away from the rock face.
MPP says that some of these elongated stones are still positioned beneath the orthostat,
demonstrating that the Neolithic quarrymen were in the process of dragging the stone even further
away from the face when the project -- for some reason or other -- was suddenly abandoned. The
diggers of 2012 also found fragments of "railway track" stones which had supposedly been broken
during the dragging of the "orthostat" across them; and some of these bits were joined together
again on the grass for all to admire. I am not alone in considering all of this to be fanciful in the
extreme. There are elongated stones everywhere amid the broken rock debris, and most of these
long stones are not "conveniently arranged" at all. There are broken stones everywhere, and if one
was keen enough one could probably reassemble many of them. The wear on the edges and at
surfaces of the "railway track" stones is no greater that that on many other stones scattered amid the
scree material. Interestingly, in the 2013 digging season the railway tracks were removed, and
were not mentioned in Prof MPPs Moylgrove lecture.
(d) A "stone hole" near the tip of the
Rhosyfelin rocky spur, and excavated into
the reddish-brown "oor" of the 2012
excavation. It is quite a dramatic feature,
almost circular, and about 1m across and
60 cm deep. We have to assume that it is a
real feature, and not an "excavation
artice." Did it at one time hold a
standing stone or a massive timber pole?
Did it have ritual signicance? Or was it something intended for storing food or other items? Could
it have been a burial pit? We have no way of knowing more about the use of the pit until further
information is forthcoming from the archaeologists. However, one feature that interests me is the
occurrence of quite large angular stones in the sides and on the bottom of the pit, indicating that
the stone litter at Rhosyfelin does not sit on top of the "oor" but passes beneath it. The signicance
of this will be discussed in the following paragraphs. Also, because of these stone projections any
standing stone or wooden post set into the hole must have had a much smaller diameter than the pit
itself.
(e) Between the "stone socket" and the rocky outcrop near the tip of the spur there is a burnt
surface or camping oor which suggests, according to Prof MPP, occupation of this site during the
Iron Age. The archaeologists might well have taken charcoal or other organic materials for
radiocarbon dating. According to the Brynberian presentations on 18 September 2012, the traces
of occupation tie in with the stone socket, although the evidence underpinning that statement was
not enunciated. No doubt some attention will be given to the history of Iron Age occupation during
the 2013 and 2014 digging seasons. As I have stated before on this blog, it is not at all surprising
that a site such as this might have been used for many years by hunters and travellers, given that the
location lies in a well wooded river valley suitable for hunting and shing, close to a point where the
river could easily be forded even at times of high river ow. Also, the gully on the ank of the
Rhosyfelin spur would have afforded protection from wind and rain; and indeed a simple shelter
could have been built against the rock face. We await developments on this matter.
16
The socket or stone hole at Rhosyfelin. Note
that rock rubble is seen in the base and sides of the
pit, beneath the Iron Age (?) ground surface seen in
the photo.
(f) In his talks Professor MPP has referred to ghosts or precise locations in cracks or crevices on
the Rhosyfelin rock face from which recognisable elongated stones in the stone litter have been
taken. I have examined the rock face and see no evidence whatsoever to support this contention.
(g) In his 2013 lecture at Moylgrove, Professor MPP showed a slide of a small vertical stone
embedded in the ground. It looked perfectly natural to a geomorphologist, but he claimed that this
stone and others were deliberately set into the ground as pivots so that bigger stones could be moved
across them by the use of levers. He also claimed that scratches or striations on a smaller transverse
stone just beyond the downslope tip of the big monolith had nothing to do with fractures or
foliations, or with ice action. So he concluded that the scratches must have been made by one or
more big orthostats being dragged across it from the inner depths of the quarry, further upslope.
However, examination of this transverse stone shows that the marks are not striations, scratches or
erosional grooves. They are outcropping foliations on the rock surface, no different from those on
scores of other stones to be found throughout the dig site. They follow the strike of these micro-
structures. Examination of the side of the rock shows that the foliations or "pseudo-layers" run
within the rock, downwards towards the bottom left of the photo at the top of the next page.
(h) One gets the impression from the archaeologists that there is a clearly dened surface or quarry
oor on which quarrying activities were carried on during the Neolithic. This oor has a greater
clay content than the layers above it, and in has a reddish colour which marks it out from the buff,
brown and black colours of the sediments above it. I am quite convinced that this oor is an
artice, invented by the archaeologists. As indicated above, it looks to me like a perfectly typical iron
pan or hardpan with gleyed till of boulder clay beneath it. Many stones, slabs and boulders rest
above this hardpan layer; others are beneath it, and others project through it.
17
The location of the camp site at Rhosyfelin, between the outer end of the rock face and the pit, which can be seen in
the foreground.
DISCUSSION
This site is fascinating from a geomorphological standpoint because the archaeological dig has
revealed a number of features that can be tied in with the known landscape history of North
Pembrokeshire. There are many coastal exposures of Pleistocene deposits which can be used to
elucidate a complex sequence of events; but there are relatively few inland exposures which reveal a
matching stratigraphy. Indeed, the stratigraphy at Rhosyfelin does not match that of Abermawr (for
example) in great detail. Nonetheless, we know from comparable exposures that slope deposits
incorporating frost-shattered debris take a very long time to accumulate in this environment -- at a
rate of maybe one or two metres per 10,000 years in a periglacial climate. (Much faster rates of
accumulation are found beneath steep cliffs made of friable rocks including shales and mudstones.)
Thus I would be very surprised indeed if all of the material accumulated above the "broken rock
apron" at Rhosyfelin had accumulated in a temperate climate over no more than 5,000 years
(basing that date upon the assumed time of rock quarrying and stone transport to Stonehenge, using
the archaeologists' own chronology.) If such short-term accumulation did occur, where are all the
other deposits from the 15,000 years between 20,000 BP and 5,000 BP?
Another fact which suggests accumulation of these post-glacial layers over a long period of time
(maybe 20,000 years) is the alternation of various layers (or pseudo-layers) of different colours and
textures. It is easiest to explain these by reference to a history of periglacial warming -- namely cold
snap -- temporary warming -- colder snap -- nal warming in the Holocene or post-glacial period.
If we seek to explain these changes or oscillations in sedimentation by reference to the very subtle
changes that have occurred over the past ve millennia, all sorts of difculties emerge.
If we assume (for the sake of argument) that the slope deposits that have come from the rising
ground to the NW, W and SW of the dig site had started to accumulate prior to the onset of
quarrying activity, one would expect major disruptions in sedimentation to have occurred, with the
quarrymen using a cleared "oor" which would then have been covered by sediments following the
cessation of quarrying activity. Only those involved in the dig will know whether such a break or
unconformity in sedimentation has been observed; but I suspect, from an examination of all the
18
Close-up of the "grooves" supposedly
caused by heavy orthostats being dragged
across the stone in question. There are
indeed grooves, but they coincide exactly
with the outcropping foliations on the
stone surface. They are perfectly normal
weathering phenomena, of no signicance
whatsoever to the quarrying debate.
photos available from 2011 and 2012, that the sediments removed down to the 2012 excavation
"oor" had accumulated in an unbroken sequence over a very long period of time.
My conclusion, from the evidence currently available to me, is that all of the features at Rhosyfelin,
with the possible exception of the Iron Age "camp site" and the strange pit located nearby, can be
explained by natural processes operating over many thousands of years -- possibly hundreds of
thousands of years. When I look at the broken rock litter, and even at the famous "abandoned
orthostat", I see no signs of quarrying or any other human activity.
That having been said, there are a number of interesting features of the site which require further
investigation and discussion. For a start, the Iron Age camp site near the tip of the spur (near the
outer edge of the slope deposits) seems to have been covered with later sediments up to 50 cm thick;
these must have accumulated in the past 2,500 years or so. Do these sediments match the sediments
at the top of the sequence further upslope, or are they distinguishable in some way? Do these
deposits comprise more sandy, silty and clay material, as might be expected from relatively recent
hillwash processes at the bottom end of a long slope? Hopefully, the site report, when published,
will give guidance on this.
There are two alternative scenarios that might resolve the debate about whether there ever was a
Neolithic quarry at Rhosyfelin. If there was a discrete episode of rock removal, with human beings
levering down slabs of rock from a favourable rocky crag or ridge, we might expect the pre-
Neolithic land surface to pass beneath all of the rock debris. In other words, the "apron" of rock
rubble and slabs -- including the "abandoned orthostat" -- should rest on a discernible surface of till
or other material which might be in contact with a buried part of the rock face. If such an
unconformity does NOT exist, then the likelihood of there ever having been a quarry here is much
reduced. On the other hand, if the rock rubble passes well down beneath the surface exposed in the
2012 excavation, that means that there has been a long history of rockfalls and debris accumulation
along the lines described above. Perhaps, during the course of the latest dig, an answer will be
found to this question.........
Finally, we must consider another anomaly. If the Iron Age "camp site" has been correctly
identied and dated, that means that the ground surface which we can see in the photos dates from
around 2,500 yrs BP. This surface seems to pass BENEATH the big "abandoned orthostat" which
has caused so much excitement. That means that the orthostat was emplaced later than the Iron
Age, possibly as a result of a spectacular rockfall from one of the higher crags on the rocks ridge.
On the other hand the Neolithic ground surface on which our hypothetical quarrymen worked must
be LOWER in the sequence than the Iron Age surface, making the archaeological "quarrying
hypothesis" even more difcult to accept.
These notes are provided in a spirit of enquiry, to encourage academic debate and perhaps to feed
into the discussions surrounding the 2013 and 2014 digs. I have provided a working hypothesis
which can be shot down in ames, or else modied dramatically through new discoveries. No
working hypothesis survives for very long, and I anticipate that this one will be no different.
Whatever the outcome of the researches at Rhosyfelin may be, it is certainly a fascinating site.
Whether its ultimate signicance is geomorphological or archaeological remains to be seen.
Finally, a couple of pleas to Prof MPP and the other archaeologists. When are we going to see your
site reports? And when are we going to see the colour of your evidence? With the completion of
four annual digging seasons, we have seen nothing, and have heard nothing apart from rumours
about inconvenient radiocarbon dates. You have made some pretty dramatic claims for
Rhosyfelin, but thus far we have not seen any published photos of the hammerstones, of the ints
and akes which (according to some diggers) have been found, or of the hard evidence for Iron Age
19
occupation. There are many people who would like to know how hard your evidence actually is,
and who would like to work out for themselves whether this really is a site worth enthusing about.
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There are also interesting discussions on other sites such as The Megalithic Portal.
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bluestone debitage from the Heelstone and other areas within the Stonehenge Landscape. Wilts
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Richard E. Bevins, Rob A. Ixer, Peter C. Webb, John S. Watson. 2012. Provenancing the rhyolitic
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Manuscript revised 15th September 2014
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