Stone Age Eyes and Ears: A Visual and Acoustic Pilot Study of Carn Menyn and Environs, Preseli, Wales

In 2006, the authors initiated the Landscape & Perception (L&P) project under the aegis of the Royal College of Art (RCA), London. The project is a pilot study of raw visual and acoustic elements mainly on and around the Carn Menyn ridge, Mynydd Preseli, south-west Wales, the source area of some of the Stonehenge bluestones, an area still relatively untouched by modern development. Sites in the surrounding Pembrokeshire countryside were also briefly visited. The project asked: “What might Stone Age eyes and ears have perceived in this landscape, and what aspects made it become important to the builders of Stonehenge?” The L&P project was primarily conceived to encourage a younger generation of audio-visual practitioners to use direct, natural sensory source material for their digital work, to offset the increasing overuse of disembodied digital sources. In the course of the fieldwork, it was felt that observations had been made that could perhaps be archaeologically relevant in a landscape that until very recently has been subjected to surprisingly little archaeological study. In July 2013, the fieldwork part of the project extended to acoustic tests of the bluestones in situ at Stonehenge. This paper is a preliminary report concerning selected, potential archaeology relevant aspects of the project’s fieldwork to date.