A Welsh Ancestor
May/June 2021
The arc of standing stones in western Wales known as Waun Mawn is fairly run-down, which is to be expected of a monument that is more than 5,000 years old. Weather and time, however, are not entirely to blame, according to Mike Parker Pearson of University College London. He believes that the builders of Stonehenge helped themselves to Waun Mawn’s bluestones as building materials for their own monument on England’s Salisbury Plain, some 180 miles to the southeast. (See “Quarrying Stonehenge.”) Excavations by Parker Pearson’s team have demonstrated that Waun Mawn was once a complete circle of stones. The excavators found a pit at the site that still bore the imprint of a missing stone’s pentagonal base. Its dimensions matched those of one of Stonehenge’s bluestones. Parker Pearson suggests that two of Waun Mawn’s largest stones formed an entryway that would have framed the sunrise during the weeks before and after the summer sols
Friday, February 12, 2021
LONDON, ENGLAND Traces of a Neolithic stone circle have been discovered in west Wales, near ancient bluestone quarries in the Preseli Hills, by a team of researchers led by Mike Parker Pearson of University College London, according to a
Science Magazine report. Parker Pearson said that just four bluestone monoliths remain at the site, which is named Waun Mawn. Excavation revealed six empty stone holes, indicating that the four remaining monoliths were part of a larger circle made up of an estimated 30 to 50 stones, he explained. The dating of charcoal and sediments in these holes suggests the circle was constructed between 3600 and 3200 B.C. Radiocarbon dates also show there was no activity at Waun Mawn from 3000 to 2000 B.C. When the researchers compared their findings at Waun Mawn to the bluestones at Stonehenge, located some 175 miles away, they found that the shape of one of the Stonehenge bluestones matches an empty imprint at Waun Mawn, and chips o