164 THE WILTSHIRE ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND NATURAL HISTORY MAGAZINE 
Table 4. Whitesheet Hill: Retouched forms 
1 2 3 4 
Primary ditch - 2 - - 
Ditch recut - 1 1 1 
Internal features 3 23 6 - 
1 = Leaf Arrowheads 
2 = Flake Scrapers 
3 = Scrapers on Thermally Fractured Fragments 
4 = Borers 
5 = Serrated Pieces 
The two commonest forms, scrapers and 
serrated pieces, were made on some of the larger 
flakes from the assemblage. Four scrapers are 
elongated, including L17 (Figure 11). Four, 
including L16 and L19 have oblique or squared 
ends. Apart from overall size, the main criterion 
employed in the selection of scraper blanks seems to 
have been thickness. Some seem to have been made 
on the distal ends of plunging flakes and others, 
like L21, have near-vertical retouched edges. This 
feature is particularly marked in the seven scrapers 
made on non-flake blanks, most of them, like L22, 
on thermally fractured fragments. 
While many serrated pieces are made on thin, 
elongated, straight-edged blades or flakes like L25, 
almost half are made on squat, even irregular flakes, 
some with sinuous or concave edges like L23 or 
L24. Variations in flint type among flakes retaining 
areas of grinding suggest that at least two axes were 
present, although no refits have been found. One 
may be represented by L13 (Figure 10) and a 
smaller flake, both from successive layers of feature 
1291. Another, with squared sides, by four small 
flakes of banded flint from separate layers of feature 
sequence 1297/1330/1352. The recut of the 
enclosure ditch contained forms not represented in 
the earlier contexts: a spurred flake (Figure 10, L1), 
a notch (L2), an indeterminate biface (L3) and a 
thermally fractured fragment bifacially flaked 
along one edge. 
Use 
The teeth of many serrated pieces seem to have 
been worn down by use and at least six examples, all 
blade-like, have edge-gloss, generally ventral, as on 
L25 (Figure 11). At least 20 blades or blade-like 
flakes have worn, sometimes glossed, straight edges 
and appear to be heavily used serrated pieces. The 
total for this form given in Table 4 is thus an under- 
5 6 7 8 9 10 
- - - - - 1 
1 1 - 6 2 - 
87 - 1 ll - - 
6 = Notch 
7 = Tanged Flake 
8 = Miscellaneous Retouched 
9 = Heavy Implements 
10 = Hammerstone 
estimate. Macroscopically visible wear can 
otherwise be identified confidently only on two 
other pieces. One edge of a flake from pit 1303 has a 
series of small, irregular, contiguous — scars 
exhibiting the same degree of cortication as the 
flake itself. A flake from feature 1301 has the 
regular blunting described by Smith (1965, 92) as 
class a utilisation and by Whittle (1977, 38) as 
bevelling. 
Discussion 
The fresh, sharp condition of the small assemblage 
from the primary rubble fills of the causewayed 
enclosure ditch indicates that it was contemporary 
with those fills. The technological similarity of this 
assemblage to the material from the ditch recut 
(archive) combines with the generally more 
abraded condition of the latter to suggest that much 
of it may have been derived from earlier deposits or 
from the surface, rather than contemporary with 
the small quantity of Peterborough Ware also 
present. 
The recut did, however, contain implement 
forms, among them LI1-L3 (Figure 10), not 
recovered from the primary fills or the interior 
features and generally rare in earlier or middle 
Neolithic industries. Ll, for example, is 
comparable with spurred flakes found in the upper 
levels and on the surface at Windmill Hill, but not 
in the primary levels (Smith 1965, 105). Some, 
although perhaps a minority, of the material from 
the recut is likely to be of later Neolithic date. 
Distinctions between assemblages from the 
primary ditch fill and the interior features are 
unlikely to be due entirely to differential recovery. 
When only those flakes with areas greater than 
400mm? are compared, to exclude the bias 
introduced by sieving the fills of the interior 
features, those from the ditch remain generally 
