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THE WILTSHIRE ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND NATURAL HISTORY MAGAZINE 



9. Vessel or fired clay object. Two holes of different 

 size made before firing. Slight thickening at lip. 

 Fabric SI. (pit 127, fill 128) 



Saxon 



10. Rim and bodysherd from a simple, everted 

 handmade jar. Black in colour. Fabric SXORG1. 

 Unstratified (context 7). 



1 1 . Jar with a slightly thickened rim. Black in colour. 

 Fabric SXORG1. Unstratified (context 7). 



Medieval 



12-14. Handmade jars with plain, sharply everted 



rims. Fabric MED1. (layer 515). 



1 5. Thin-walled plain jar with an everted rim. Fabric 



MED4. (ditch 505, fill 504) 



16. Handmade jar with an inturned rim. Fabric 



MED6. (ditch 755, fill 756) 



Conclusion 



The pottery recovered from the archaeological work 

 is quite diverse chronologically with material of 

 Neolithic, Iron Age, Roman, Saxon, Medieval and 

 post-Medieval date. The group is really too small 

 to determine whether there is complete continuity 

 of occupation from the middle Iron Age through 

 to the late Saxon/early Medieval period or whether 

 occupation/use of the area has been intermittent 

 through time. 



Excavated settlement sites of the middle-late 

 Iron Age are quite poorly documented from the 

 Wiltshire area, most of the sites of similar date 

 having been investigated earlier this century. 

 Similarly evidence of Saxon domestic occupation 

 is quite sparse making the pottery here a valuable 

 addition to the known assemblages from the area. 



and dating attempted where possible. Unworked 

 burnt flint was quantified and weighed. 



Raw material and condition 



All the raw material used for lithics on site was flint. 

 Much of the flint appears to be derived from river 

 gravels. One distinct flint type was noted several 

 times in the assemblage. This is a dark grey colour 

 with many small light grey inclusions and a thick 

 slightly weathered grey cortex. It is possible that 

 the source of this flint is close to the chalk, although 

 not directly from it. 



The majority of the flint from site is 

 uncorticated, although a few pieces exhibit either a 

 light cortication or a heavy white cortication. A total 

 of 10 flints (25% of the assemblage) were either 

 rolled or exhibited some form of post-depositional 

 damage. This degree of post-depositional damage 

 and the distribution across a wide variety of contexts 

 suggests that possibly the entire assemblage is 

 residual. 



The assemblage 



The composition of the flint assemblage is shown 

 in Table 4. It is dominated by a mixture of soft- and 

 hard-hammer struck flakes. Several of these are 

 clearly utilised and one has had the edge rounded 

 through use. It has been suggested that this form 

 of use-wear results from the scraping of animal hides 

 (Tringham et al. 1974, 187-189). 



A fragment of a late Neolithic or Early Bronze 

 Age plano-convex knife represents the only datable 

 artefact present in the assemblage. Technological 

 traits do however assist in further dating the 

 assemblage. A Levallois core is datable to the later 

 Neolithic, whereas the three blade cores would 

 appear to be earlier Neolithic. These three cores all 



Table 4: All flint by category. 



The struck flint 



by Hugo Lamdin-Whymark 



Forty-one pieces of struck flint and a single piece 

 of burnt unworked flint were recovered from twenty 

 contexts. All the flint from site is residual, mainly 

 originating from the topsoil, although a few pieces 

 were found in Iron Age contexts. The flintwork 

 appears to be early Neolithic to Bronze Age in date. 

 The artefacts were catalogued according to broad 

 artefact/debitage type; general condition was noted 



CATEGORY TYPE 



Flake 



Blade-like 



Irregular waste 



Core single platform blade core 



Other blade core 



Single platform flake core 



Multiplatform flake core 



Levallois core 



Plano-convex knife fragment 



Retouched flake 



Grand Total 



No. of flints 



28 



2 



1 

 2 



3 

 41 



