68 THE WILTSHIRE ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND NATURAL HISTORY MAGAZINE 
indication of the current state of preservation of 
the monument. 
Augering 
Very limited archaeological intervention (limited 
and pinpointed hand augering and excavation) into 
barrows in Cranborne Chase, by Dr French and 
ourselves (French et al. 2000), has proven to be of 
great value. Augering can determine the presence, 
depth, nature and extent of buried soils under such 
monuments and the presence of other features 
within and around the mounds. This information is 
of use in the interpretation of the construction 
sequences of monuments, in outlining their palaeo- 
environmental potential, and in _ providing 
information about the survival and integrity of 
various elements of the monuments to inform 
English Heritage and relevant curatorial bodies. 
On this basis, a small augering programme was 
conducted with a 25 mm diameter screw auger and 
a 40 mm diameter dutch soil auger. Five small 
auger holes and one natural exposure (Appendix 1) 
were examined (Figure 3). 
Augering through the low, western end of the 
barrow revealed a well preserved chalk mound 
comprised of loose blocky chalk, obviously hewn 
from chalk quarry pits or ditches. There is no 
mention by William Cunnington, Colt Hoare, or 
other archaeologists later, of flanking ditches 
associated with this monument; indeed, Maud 
Cunnington (1914) specifically states that there was 
no trace of ditches and this is reiterated by Kinnes 
(1992, 10, 24). 
Two auger holes were positioned close to a 
slight fall in the ground surface that appeared to 
mark the edge of the eroded mound. Surprisingly 
auger hole 2a (Figure 3) revealed deposits up to 0.75 
m deep and a similar sequence, up to 1.45m deep, 
was recorded in auger hole 2b. These undoubtedly 
record the inner edge of the previously unrecorded 
flanking ditch of the long barrow. As the project 
aim was to examine the buried soil, rather than 
provide a profile of the ditch, no further augering 
was conducted at this point. Like Maud 
Cunnington in 1913, we could not see any real 
impression of flanking ditches around the 
monument. Recent survey by RCHME/English 
Heritage has, however, recorded flanking ditches 
and Eagles and Field say that ‘side ditches are in 
part just visible and appear to curve slightly, though 
presumably have been curtailed at either end’ 
(forthcoming). Our augering shows that they must 
indeed curve and extend beyond the shallow 
surface features observable at present. 
Attempts to locate the edge of the mound and 
the buried soil around its western edge (auger holes 
1 and 5) failed. Examination of a small erosion 
hollow (see point 3, Figure 3) showed clean natural 
chalk at an altitude of nearly 0.5 m above the 
surrounding field surface. This indicated severe 
lowering of the surrounding chalk and that the 
buried soil was to be found on a perched and 
preserved chalk plateau. Consequently an attempt 
was made to auger though the chalk mound and 
penetrate the buried soil near the western extremity 
at a considerably higher level than we had 
originally anticipated. Augering was difficult 
though 0.8m of chalk rubble but this proved to lie 
directly on a rich, stonefree silty clay buried soil 
nearly 0.4m thick. 
The buried soil 
The buried soil was encountered 0.86 m below the 
surface of the mound (auger hole 4; Figure 3 inset 
and Figure 4). The lower 0.06 m of the chalk mound 
rubble contained patches of dark brown silty clay 
soil material, presumably portions of the buried soil 
which had been worm-worked into the mound (cf. 
Macphail 1995). The main buried soil was a very 
rich, dark brown plastic silty clay with no stones. It 
was not possible to determine from the augering the 
presence of a turf horizon, nor even of any 
horizonation. The lowest 30mm of the profile was 
soil and weathered chalk. Soil magnetic 
susceptibility measured with a Bartington MS2B 
meter coupled to a MS1B sensor coil calibrated for 
10g of soil, showed a significant enhancement 
towards the surface of the silty clay typical of an 
upper, more humic, soil profile. The enhancement 
however, was not distinct enough to suggest 
conclusively that this represented the turf. We can 
consider this as a humic rendzina or possibly a 
brown earth soil. 
80-86cm _—_ Blocky loose chalk rubble with patches 
of dark brown (10YR 4/3/3), stonefree silty clay. Post- 
depositional worm worked soil into base of chalk 
mound 
86-22cm Dark brown (10YR 4/3) plastic silty clay 
with some chalk pieces (Ah) giving way to stonefree, 
plastic silty clay soil (A/B). No structure or 
differentiation noticed in augered soil. Buried old 
land surface 
122-125cm Brown (10YR 5/3) plastic silty clay with 
some small and ?medium chalk pieces. Base of soil 
