Comment on: 'Stonehenge revisited: A geochemical approach to interpreting the geographical source of sarsen stone #58'

Abstract In a recent paper in this journal (Hancock et al. (2024) Stonehenge revisited: A geochemical approach to interpreting the geographical source of sarsen stone #58. Archaeometry https://www.doi.org/10.1111/arcm.12999 ), Hancock and colleagues present a reanalysis of the geochemical dataset used to identify the likely source for the majority of the sarsen megaliths at Stonehenge as West Woods, Wiltshire, UK. This comment discusses the analytical approach used by Hancock and colleagues, and evaluates its conclusions. In our view, there are three significant methodological issues with the study: (i) the use of absolute element concentration data (as opposed to normalised ratio data) as the basis for much of the analysis, which is inappropriate for a material like silcrete with variable proportions of introduced silica, both between and within outcrops; (ii) the choice of highly mobile elements (specifically Si and Fe) to discriminate between potential source areas, which is inappropriate for many geochemically altered sediments; and (iii) the comparison of data from single samples rather than multi‐sample ranges, which fails to capture the inherent geochemical variability that may be present within an outcrop area or set of samples. There are other sections of the paper that demonstrate a lack of understanding of sarsen formation and the geological and geomorphological history of the British and Irish Isles. We conclude by urging that future studies employing sarsen/silcrete as a material for source provenancing are grounded in the now extensive literature on sarsen/silcrete properties, mode of formation and geochemistry, and reflect this body of knowledge in their research design.