Bancbryn: The dangers of Twitter!

Having asked Cadw if they would keep us in touch with developments at Bancbryn there was no news. Instead the only snippets emanating from the organisation were a few tweets from a Cadw officer who had been copied into internal correspondence and who clearly despite having never visited the site felt confident enough to announce to the world:

The Mynydd Y Betws wind farm stone row fiasco – a field boundary not neolithic but hey what do I Know? dlvrit/17rD8J

and

Mynydd y Betws stone row is conveniently placed next to a sheep track—- Mhmm those sheep must like neolithic archaeology!

These comments provide a window into Cadw’s  “balanced” approach  to heritage protection whilst at the same time illustrating a total failure to understand basic fundamentals of field archaeology. Cadw now accept that there is no evidence to support the field boundary interpretation and even after all this time there is actually no evidence to support the position that the alignment is not Neolithic. These tweets clearly indicate that even before the assessment process had started that some sort of uninformed biased consensus had enveloped Cadw’s mind set. The second tweet provides the clearest indication that the officer concerned has no field experience or they would have known that most stone rows are “conveniently placed next to” sheep tracks. This is because sheep respect ancient features in the landscape whilst Cadw…

The Ringmoor Down stone row on Dartmoor is conveniently placed next to a sheep track—- Mhmm those sheep must like neolithic archaeology!