Bancbryn: At long last…

Three years after it was written the report on the work carried out at the Bancbryn stone alignment has been released. You can see it for yourself here and a response to it here. Despite promises that only 10m of the alignment would be destroyed and that it would be treated as if it was prehistoric, this does not appear to have happened.   Around 35m of the stone alignment was finally destroyed and of this only 5m was excavated, the rest being lost with no record being made at all as a result of a mix up regarding its course. As if this was not bad enough the report’s conclusions are consistently contradicted by a catalogue of mistakes, exaggeration and the use of blatantly biased carefully selected information. Much has been made of the fact that the excavated stones were not associated with sockets, however in at least one photograph a large stone appears to sit within a cut and another one is on top of an unexcavated hollow.

The reasons for doubting the prehistoric interpretation are remarkable. Apparently the Bancbryn stone alignment can’t be prehistoric because the stones are of variable size, small, embedded into the subsoil and the alignment itself is sinuous in form. So there we have it after years of waiting we have finally been told that it can’t be prehistoric because …. well err…. it shares precisely the same characteristics as most of the scheduled stone alignments in the United Kingdom. This would be laughable if it was not so serious.

The Erme Valley stone alignment can’t be prehistoric after all it has a sinuous form and stones of variable size, many of which are small.

Whoops! The report failed to mention the size of the stones in the nearby Cerrig Duon stone alignment, instead implying they were between 1.5m and 3m high. (Scale 1m.)

Perhaps this alignment was “overlooked” because it did not fit the storyline. Stones of very different sizes at the single alignment at Maen Mawr. (Scale 1m.)

Even the classic site at Hingston Hill would have failed this particular prehistoric test. Different sized stones, many of them very small combined with a sinuous character means that this row too can’t be prehistoric!