D. Graham Jenkins (from J. Cooper)

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D. GRAHAM JENKINS,  1933 - 1995

a personal tribute by

JOHN COOPER


Graham Jenkins and I shared a mutual interest in STONEHENGE: he was
involved in recent papers (see list below) concerning how the Welsh
Bluestones came to be there, and my interest was with the Late Palaeocene
"Sarsen Stones" forming the bulk of the monument, and of a supposed ancient
trackway linking Grimes Graves to Stonehenge (RUDGE 1994).

Graham held the opinion that the Welsh Bluestones had been transported to
Salisbury Plain by ice-action during the Pleistocene.  When myself and
others pointed out to him (and his Open University co-authors) that there
was a remarkable lack of other fragments of Bluestone on the Plain (and of
other "exotic" rocks, as one would expect if there was glacial action), he
replied that they had been buried by tidy-minded farmers, ancient and
modern.  It was also pointed out to him that there were no Bluestones used
in farm walls, buildings, etc, etc.

Most people favour the idea that the Bluestones had been transported by
early Bronze Age peoples around 2100BC from Wales:  by sea, river and
overland, for the especial purpose of erecting them within the circle of
megalithic trilithons at Stonehenge.

These doubts did not quench his feisty Welsh spirit: when I last spoke to
Graham in the Spring of 1995, he had a scheme to involve under-employed
"squaddies" and the Army Air Corps to transport Bluestones from the Preseli
Mountains to Salisbury Plain by helicopter and to bury them, just like the
farming folk were supposed to have done.  After a few years, a helicopter
with sensory and imaging equipment would attempt to locate these buried
Bluestones by detecting the disturbed earth: in this way, perhaps other
Bluestones buried in the remote past might also be revealed and add weight
to his theory.

Alas, now Graham is gone, and without his enthusiasm, it seems unlikely
that this idea will (literally) take off.  Also, I guess our squaddies are
now too busy these days, stitching up Johnny Foreigner and helping the UN
out of a hole.

But the story does not end here, nor will papers ever cease to be written
about Stonehenge (over 1000 titles already).  On May 5th 1995 Dr.
Christopher Green gave his Presidential Address to the Geologists'
Association entitled Stonehenge: Geology and Prehistory, which will
eventually be published, setting forth the conventional view; Graham was
not there to hear it, and now he will not be able to read it and to respond
in his usual robust manner.

The papers by JENKINS et al. in various journals provoked a lively
correspondence in the pages of Geology Today, to which the interested
reader is referred for replies from those opposed to the views of the
Jenkins' camp.




BIBLIOGRAPHY of Graham Jenkins (Stonehenge only), chronological order:

THORPE, R.S., WILLIAMS-THORPE, O., JENKINS, D.G., WATSON, J.S., IXER, R.A.
& THOMAS, R.G. 1991  The Geological Sources and Transport of the Bluestones
of Stonehenge, Wiltshire, U.K.  Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society
57(2): 103-157.

JENKINS, D.G.  1991  Stonehenge - the Welsh connection and the Druids'
revenge. Geology Today 7(4): 118.

JENKINS, [D.] G. & JENKINS, J.  1992  The bluestone enigma. Geology Today
8(4): 126-127.

JENKINS, D.G. & JENKINS, J.  1993 The Stonehenge "bluestones" enigma: how
to test the glacial hypothesis.Geology Today  9(3): 87.

WILLIAMS-THORPE, O., JENKINS, D.G. & JENKINS, J.  1994  Those bluestones
again.Geology Today 10(2): 55.

JENKINS, [D.] G., JENKINS, J. & WILLIAMS-THORPE, O.  1994  de Luc's
Salisbury      Plain in 1780 and 1810, and the rocks of Stonehenge.Geology
Today 10(3): 95-96.

RUDGE, E.A. (edited by John Cooper) 1994  The Lost Trackway. From Grime's
Graves to Stonehenge.  West Wickham, Kent: the editor, 34pp,
illus.