Articles | Volume 73, issue 1
https://doi.org/10.5194/egqsj-73-117-2024
https://doi.org/10.5194/egqsj-73-117-2024
Research article
 | 
05 Jun 2024
Research article |  | 05 Jun 2024

A bluestone boulder at Stonehenge: implications for the glacial transport theory

Brian Stephen John
Publisher's note: we note that the publication of this article has led to some controversy among the scientific community working in the respective field. As a platform for scientific discourse, EGQSJ welcomes and expects critical commentary on this article. This page will be updated accordingly.

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Cited articles

Atkinson, R. J. C.: Stonehenge, Hamilton, London, 224 pp., ISBN 014 02 0450 4, 1979. 
Barclay, G. J. and Brophy, K.: 'A Veritable Chauvinism of Prehistory': Nationalist Prehistories and the 'British' Late Neolithic Mythos, Archaeological Journal, 178, 330–360, https://doi.org/10.1080/00665983.2020.1769399, 2020. 
Benn, D. I. and Ballantyne, C. K.: Reconstructing the transport history of glacigenic sediments: a new approach based on the co-variance of clast shape indices, Sediment. Geol., 91, 215–227, https://doi.org/10.1016/0037-0738(94)90130-9, 1994. 
Benn, D. I. and Evans, D. J. A.: The interpretation and classification of subglacially-deformed materials, Quaternary Sci. Rev., 15, 23–52, 1996. 
Benn, D. I. and Evans, D. J. A.: Glaciers and Glaciation, Hodder, London, 802 pp., 2010. 
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Short summary
There is an ongoing dispute between those who believe that the bluestones at Stonehenge were (a) transported by humans or (b) glacially transported erratics. An igneous boulder found at Stonehenge in 1924 and then lost for over 90 years has been found in Salisbury Museum. Its shape and surface characteristics suggest that it was carried from West Wales by the Irish Sea Ice Stream. The author proposes that most if not all of the 43 bluestone monoliths are glacial erratics.