The search for a second Altar Stone - Andrew Collins

 Collins, Andrew. (2024). The Stonehenge Altar Stone: Its Origins, Composition, and Function, And the Search for Its Lost Companion. 

The most enigmatic "foreign" stone at Stonehenge is its Altar Stone. Long thought to have been sourced from the Old Red Sandstone beds of South Wales, new studies have focused on its origin in the Orcadian Basin of northeastern Scotland, either in the Caithness region or in the Orkney Isles. Despite one paper (Bevins et al, 2024) providing compelling evidence that the Altar Stone does not exactly match the composition of Old Red Sandstone beds on the Orkney Mainland, those responsible for transporting the stone to Stonehenge were almost certainly its original builders, the Grooved Ware culture, who first emerged on Orkney during the Late Neolithic. We look at everything known about the Altar Stone and how its presence at Stonehenge might relate to its construction. We also go in search of its lost companion, and examine where both these huge monoliths might have stood within the monument, and how all this might relate to the monument's underlying geometry.

Woodhenge Dating

"Woodhenge now appears to be a multi-phase monument with at least two main phases – an “astronomical” monument comprising concentric oval timber rings, later enclosed by a bank and ditch... (Demonstrating) possible contemporaneity of the Stonehenge phase 3 stone settings and Woodhenge timber settings. ..The functioning astronomical monument appeared to be of relatively short duration, and presumably was no longer used when the timber rings decayed and the bank and ditch was erected (the latter might have prevented solstitial viewing too). The timber monument was ‘wrapped’ when the enclosing bank and ditch were constructed after a interval of 75–440 years (95% probability) and probably 145–280 years (68% probability)"

"Radiocarbon dating and chronological modelling of samples from Woodhenge suggest that the timber monument was constructed in 2635–2575 cal BC (95% probability), probably in 2635–2610 cal BC (54% probability) or 2595–2580 cal BC (14% probability) and enclosed by the ditch and bank in 2555–2505 cal BC (2% probability) or 2495–2180 cal BC (93% probability), probably in 2465–2345 cal BC (68% probability)."

Woodhenge, Durrington, Wiltshire - Radiocarbon Dating and Chronological Modelling 

Peter Marshall, Amanda Chadburn, Irka Hajdas, Michael Dee and Joshua Pollard 

Historic England Research Report Series 94/2024 

https://historicengland.org.uk/research/results/reports/9070/WoodhengeDurringtonWiltshire_RadiocarbonDatingandChronologicalModelling

Dolmen Capstone Assumptions

 

DZSWS:1998.1008 Drawing of Carreg Samson  Wiltshire Museum

The capstones of the great Preseli Dolmens, Carreg Samson, Carreg Coitan, and Pentre Ifan, and slightly further afield Tinkinswood, are an intriguing mystery.

They are all large, in Tinkinswood's case about 40 tonnes, monoliths that are described as erratics. In Carreg Samson's case the igneous rock is obviously different to some of the supports which are a conglomerate.

There is a reasonable assumption that these different stones all ended up on site by natural processes, and pits under the dolmens might be where they were extracted from. But these are just assumptions, there is no evidence. And as the builders obviously could move and shape the undersides of these very large rocks it is also reasonable to believe they were just as likely to have been brought to the sites by the builders. But without evidence no useful conclusions can be made

As they say to assume is to make an ass out of u and me.

Avebury Stones

 As a part of their wonderful ongoing project to make the information free  The Avebury Papers write: "As an experiment, we have also added the stones of Avebury to Wikidata, along with their coordinates, and, in a few cases, photographs from the archive. This data can now be queried to create an interactive map of the stones (below), or you can run the query yourself here, just click the blue ‘play’ button on the page you land on".

A monument born from climate change

Bryan Lovell investigates how a warm period in Earth’s history associated with Icelandic volcanism could have shaped our ancient stones

The silcretes used to build the Stonehenge sarsens plausibly formed under the warm climatic conditions of the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum

https://geoscientist.online/sections/features/a-monument-born-from-climate-change/

The Shebbear Erratic Sarsen

During Storm Darragh, 7/12/2024, I had the pleasure of driving through Shebbear in Devon.

I examined the erratic on the village green, that is turned over every year to keep the devil at bay.

The photos are below, click to embiggen them.

This year's top surface is a typical sarsen, a tight silica bound sandstone with some iron staining, the lower half is not so well silicified, a thumbnail can dislodge grains. The sand component is coarser and includes small rounded gravel. The relative fragility of it indicates it has never been transported by ice.

It is, without doubt, an outlier of the sarsens found else where in Devon, how far it has been moved by humans to its present prominent position is unknown but the presence of another similar stone in the parish suggests maybe not far. 

 

Current Archaeology Awards 2024

The Current Archaeology Awards are now open for voting:

Can I recommend these three nominees for your consideration as their subject matter links to the interests of this blog?

Book of the Year:

Stone Circles: a field guide
Colin Richards & Vicki Cummings

Stonehenge: sighting the sun
C Ruggles & A Chadburn

Research Project of the Year 2025

Seeking a Scottish source: updating the story of Stonehenge’s Altar Stone

Richard Bevins, Rob Ixer, Nick Pearce, and Tony Clarke