User:MartinP991

= Garn Goch = The established view is that Garn Goch is notable for its twinned Iron Age hillforts, together the largest in southern Wales, but just as it has taken almost 100 years for Waun Mawn to be recognised by leading archaeologists and the BBC as a significant and unique Neolithic monument, the 'original' Stonehenge, it has taken almost 50 years for the view to be challenged that Garn Goch is merely one of almost 700 Iron Age forts in Wales.

An Iron Age Fort?
Three types if Iron Age forts were built in Wales: promontory forts using coastal cliffs to protect three sides of the fort (often more accurately described as defended enclosures); earthwork forts on the top of steep sided hills with concentric rings of defensive ditches and banks; large stone forts including revetted walls typically 3 metres high by 2 metres wide, and always with ramparts on top. While Garn Goch fits into none of these categories, the received view has been that Garn Goch is an Iron Age hillfort because of one report nearly 50 years ago.

AHA Hogg's Iron Age Hillfort Report
The Iron Age fort interpretation derives from a brief report in Archaeologica Cambrensis nearly 50 years ago by AHA Hogg, then at the end of a long career that had resulted in him being regarded as the foremost authority on Welsh Iron Age hillforts. He says he will undertake no excavation, and concentrate on 'detailed factual descriptions', yet then admits his descriptions are 'only rough'. With impressive honesty, he admits to features being 'puzzling', and uses phrases like 'The writer inclines to the view that...' as well as admitting to there being several 'anomalies'. The verifiability of some of his conclusions can be called into question because he himself calls them into question, and admits 'proof is impossible'. Specifically:

1.    He assumed, so neither questioned nor proved, that Garn Goch was a 'fort', yet Tre'r Ceiri, where his ongoing excavations had made his reputation decades before, has 'a formidable single rampart which still stands up to 4m high in places. Where nearly intact, the top of the rampart still has its parapet walk reached via a number of sloping ramps from the interior.' Similarly, the ramparts of the nearby Garn Boduan Iron Age hillfort, yet Garn Goch offers no such evidence. Simple observation of the number of stones, and the absence of any evidence of revetted walls, argues compellingly that there never were revetted walls, so cannot be, as Hogg describes them, 'very ruinous'.

2.    Tre'r Ceiri had 8 posterns, and Hogg stated that Garn Goch has 6 posterns (and Coflein copies this ), which he described as 'ruinous', yet there is only evidence of one postern. It is far from ruinous, and is a narrow gateway - an access point rather than the cleverly constructed defensive fortification posterns seen at Tre'r Ceiri. Strictly, it cannot be termed a postern because it does not resemble 'a secondary door or gate in a fortification...often located in a concealed location which allowed the occupants to come and go inconspicuously'. It is not at all concealed, and there are no signs of gate posts, nor holes for gates hinges, so could not have been part of defensive arrangements.

3.    Hogg argues that the wide entrances east and west are a 'double portal' and 'gateway', although he admits there is no evidence, and that 'proof is impossible'. While such wide entrances are entirely inconsistent with a fort, they are entirely consistent with a Neolithic causewayed enclosure, especially as the entrances are north, south, east and west. Forts want to keep people out, so have restricted entrances. Causewayed enclosures wanted to welcome people in, so have 4 or more wide entrances - as Garn Goch does.

4.    He admitted he could not date anything on Garn Goch with any confidence, and openly stated that there are 'very tenuous features', yet still claimed that it as an Iron Age fort.

5.    He focused on foundations which he hazarded might be Iron Age, Neolithic or, he said, may be mediaeval. Is it reasonable to expect an archaeologist of his renown to know whether something is 600 years old or 6,000 years old? Does this encourage us to trust his knowledge and his judgement without question?

6.    He concluded that some stone foundations are of a round house, yet observation clearly shows that they lie about a metre below the level of the post-glacial pond, now bog, and that an outflow stream runs through the foundations. It is clearly an elongated oval, not round at all, and would make much more sense as a pool constructed for ceremonial purposes (such as baptisms and votive offerings).

7.    He dismissively describes the main long cairn as 'a mass of rubble' and 'completely ruinous' because it shows 'no trace of revetment'. This seems to be an extraordinarily desperate attempt to claim that the long cairn as an Iron Age building, yet he then guesses the cairn must be Neolithic or Bronze Age. His conclusion is that it is 'anomalous', yet at a Neolithic site such a large cairn is the very opposite of 'anomalous'.

8.    Of the second most dominant feature of the site, its lines of stones, he said 'there are short lines of small boulders deliberately placed', but then said they don't 'fall into any defined pattern', so left them 'unsurveyed'. If there was one thing to be properly surveyed, and explained, surely it was these stones? Observation shows the individual stones were not, indeed, 'deliberately placed', but very much do 'fall into...[a] defined pattern' as their location and precise mathematical position testify. As to 'short lines', they run for 1.7 kms.

9.    Of four metre long, 0.8m high mounds, he suggested they were 'intended to encourage the growth of rabbits'. A conclusion needing no further comment.

10. He concluded that it is 'unlikely' the two forts were 'occupied at the same time', but then concludes they were 'roughly contemporary'.

One example of how the Hogg interpretation has continued to be perpetuated is the Archwilio entry for Garn Goch which repeats verbatim three of Hogg's points before valiantly talking of 'gateways', six 'posterns' (her speech marks) when there is evidence of only one, medieval foundations when there is absolutely no evidence they are medieval, and 'ramparts' when there is absolutely no evidence that there was anything more, even at the western ends, than piled stones. Other authorities, including Cadw and Coflein, have also continued to repeat Hogg's opinion without, seemingly, questioning it.

In the last 50 years, no archaeological investigation has taken place, yet that is understandable if Garn Goch is believed to be merely one of almost 700 Welsh Iron Age hillforts, and that Brecon Beacons National Park, its current managers, have done their best to promote it as such.

Garn Goch: Neolithic Monument
There are three defining factors of Neolithic monument building: religious motivation, communal execution, and scale. Consequently, there are also three things they didn't build: defensive structures, ceremonial buildings, complex buildings (with one major exception). However, over about 1,500 years, they built monuments with some relevance to Garn Goch including oval mortuary enclosures, ring cairns, stone and timber circles, and cursuses However, even more relevantly they built:

Causewayed Enclosures: built on easily accessible, flat hill tops, oval or circular earthworks typically 200+ metres in diameter with spectator banks surrounded by religiously significant ditches (delineating life from death), and featuring wide tracks (causeways) leading to four large entrances. They can be thought of as being like sports stadia, not least because nobody lived in them.

Henges: evolved out of causewayed enclosures, and then into massive super-henges like Durrington Walls, Avebury and Mount Pleasant, which have diameters upto 480 metres (the width of 7 football pitches).

Long Barrows & Long Cairns: long barrows (earth) and long cairns (stones) upto 300 feet long with a burial chamber inside. Garn Goch is a westerly example of the chain of Neolithic long cairns that link it with Penywyrlod, near Talgarth, and Ty Isaf in Wales, and the numerous long cairns in the Cotswold-Severn group centred on Hazleton.

While Garn Goch exhibits few, if any, characteristics of an Iron Age fort, it shares significant characteristics with many of these Neolithic monuments, not least long cairns, causewayed enclosures (the most obvious design origin), henges and super-henges (being as large as them).

While a long cairn such as Garn Goch would have required no more than 6,000 hours (for example, 100 people working 6 hours a day for 10 days), archaeologists have reckoned that Silbury Hill would have taken 18 million man-hours, and Stonehenge 30 million. In that context, the cairn and surrounding stones at Garn Goch are a minor achievement, and well within Neolithic monument building parameters.

However, given its scale, Garn Goch must have been a major pilgrimage destination, and that can be seen in the context of Professor Parker Pearson's statement that there is 'no doubt that [Pembrokeshire] was one of the great religious and political centres of Neolithic Britain'. When Waun Mawn was built, it was the largest stone circle in Britain, so would have been a major pilgrimage attraction. Consequently, Garn Goch can be seen not as an outlier, but directly on the ridgeway 'camino' from the more heavily populated south east to the major early Neolithic religious sites at, and around, Waun Mawn.

Dating Garn Goch
Neolithic monuments are dated to between 6,000 and 4,500 years ago, but we can be more precise about Garn Goch. From the recent irrefutable DNA evidence of the human bones interred under the Penywyrlod long cairn (just 36 miles away), we know that people born and brought up in Brittany were migrating to this region to farm it 5,700 years ago, give or take upto 70 years. As Garn Goch's long cairn is similar in size, shape and scale, it is reasonable to also date it to around 5,700 years ago, or perhaps 100 years later, and that makes Garn Goch older than Stonehenge. It is also reasonable to assume that it too has human bones underneath it ready to be excavated, which would definitively confirm or disprove such dating. Why Garn Goch has not been archaeologically excavated when English long cairns and Penywyrlod in the same group have been since the 1970s is something only Dyfed Archaeological Trust and Cadw can explain.

Garn Goch Tomorrow
If Garn Goch is a major Iron Age fort, then this needs to be proved by being academically examined, technologically explored, and archaeologically excavated.

If Garn Goch is not merely another Iron Age fort, and was a major Neolithic monument, then it is even more important that it is academically examined, technologically explored, and archaeologically excavated.

A Community Interest Company Limited By Guarantee, Garn Goch CIC, has been created to promote and facilitate such initiatives as well as support local good causes. It has also created a dedicated website - garngoch.org - with much more information. There is also a 160 page book available via the website.