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Beyond Stonehenge: Carn Menyn Quarry and the origin and date of bluestone extraction in the Preseli Hills of south-west Wales

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 January 2015

Timothy Darvill  and
Geoff Wainwright
Timothy Darvill
Affiliation:
Department of Archaeology and Anthropology, Faculty of Science and Technology, Bournemouth University, Fern Barrow, Poole BH12 5BB, UK (Email: tdarvill@bournemouth.ac.uk)
Geoff Wainwright
Affiliation:
March Pres, Pontfaen, Fishguard SA65 9TT, UK (Email: geoff@bluestone.eu.com)
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Abstract

Recent investigations at Stonehenge have been accompanied by new research on the origin of the famous ‘bluestones’, a mixed assemblage of rhyolites and dolerites that stand among the much taller sarsens. Some of the rhyolite debitage has been traced to a quarry site at Craig Rhosyfelin near the Pembrokeshire coast; but fieldwork on the upland outcrops of Carn Menyn has also provided evidence for dolerite extraction in the later third millennium BC, and for the production of pillar-like blocks that resemble the Stonehenge bluestones in shape and size. Quarrying at Carn Menyn began much earlier, however, during the seventh millennium BC, suggesting that Mesolithic communities were the first to exploit the geology of this remote upland location.

Keywords

BritainPreseli HillsStonehengeMesolithicNeolithicmegalithicbluestonedoleritemeta-mudstoneprehistoric quarrying
Type
Research
Information
Antiquity , Volume 88 , Issue 342 , December 2014 , pp. 1099 - 1114
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd. 2014

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