166 THE WILTSHIRE ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND NATURAL HISTORY MAGAZINE 
pieces elsewhere, is confined to the more blade-like 
examples, such as L25, and to worn blades or blade- 
like flakes which were probably once serrated. 
While the more regular serrated pieces may have 
formed part of sickles or knives, the less regular 
ones are likely to have had other uses. 
The distinctive raw material of the seventeen 
flakes from ground implements reinforces the 
impression that the ground axes of middle 
Neolithic industries are often made of different 
flint from that of the assemblages in which they 
occur. This observation has been made in relation 
to the industries of Windmill Hill (Smith 1965, 86), 
Carn Brea, Cornwall (Saville 1981, 138), Staines 
(Healey and Robertson-Mackay 1987, 95) and 
Spong Hill, Norfolk (Healy 1988, 33) among others. 
In some cases this may reflect informed, highly 
selective use of local resources whilst in others it 
must reflect transport of objects or raw material. 
Both indicate the value attached to the axes 
themselves. 
The common condition, technology, typology 
and composition of the material from the interior 
features, even between layers of successive cuts 
1303 and 1368, strongly suggests that it was 
deposited within a short space of time and from a 
common source, an impression heightened by the 
presence of joining fragments of the same sarsen 
rubber in feature 1291 and feature 1293 (see 
below). 
Its composition, encompassing knapping 
debris, used implements and broken grinding 
equipment, suggests that it resulted from a range of 
domestic activities. A large part of it was 
furthermore burnt with other material including 
unworked flint, animal bone, wood and nutshells. 
Once this was done, the combined assemblage, 
burnt and unburnt, must have been pushed or 
shovelled into the features or transported to them 
in containers. It is otherwise difficult to see how so 
many minute chips and spalls could have been 
deposited there. 
The seat of the fire is likely to have been closest 
to feature 1293, where burnt material was most 
frequent, falling off towards the south-east (Figure 
12). The near-absence of burnt material from the 
ditch may be an extension of this fall-off, reflecting 
the 30m which separated the ditch from the nearest 
feature. It is impossible to tell whether the 
deposition of burnt material in layer 1351, towards 
the top of the primary ditch fills, represents the 
same event as the deposition of massive amounts of 
burnt material in the interior features. 
GROUND STONE 
by Frances Healy 
Seven fragments of utilised stone were found 
within the interior features, comprising two 
conjoining pieces of a ferruginous sandstone 
rubber, four pieces of sarsen saddle quern and a 
sarsen maul or hammerstone. No _ detailed 
petrological identifications have been carried out, 
those given here are provisional. Quantities of 
small burnt and unburnt sarsen fragments were 
extracted from a number of samples taken from the 
interior features and it is possible that further 
utilised pieces remain to be identified. 
The two pieces of sandstone rubber were found 
in adjacent fills of feature 1291, two of the quern 
fragments were also found in this feature although 
there was no evidence that they had been used as 
packing stones. A third fragment was found in 1368 
and a fourth in the basal fill of feature 1330. The 
sarsen pounder was recovered from the shallow 
feature 1293. 
Pebbles of ferruginous sandstone and sarsens 
are found on and within the Upper Greensand 
which lies immediately to the west of Whitesheet 
Hill, at the base of the chalk escarpment. However, 
the transport of such artefacts over longer distances 
was indicated at Hambledon Hill, Dorset, where 
sandstone rubbers found within pits in the main 
causewayed enclosure (Mercer 1980, 23) may well 
have been extracted from deposits close to Exeter 
(ibid. 62). 
Sarsen saddle querns have been found at other 
causewayed enclosures. A fragment of one was 
found within the fills of the enclosure ditch during 
the most recent excavations at Maiden Castle, 
Dorset (Laws 1991, 230 and fiche M7:E7) and 
another one was found in a Neolithic pit at the same 
site (Patchett 1943, 322). 
ENVIRONMENTAL DATA 
During the excavation animal bones were 
recovered by both hand and sieving to provide 
information about the function and economy of 
the enclosure. These data were augmented by a 
controlled programme of bulk sampling for 
charred plant and charcoal remains. Information 
about land-use and the nature of the landscape was 
obtained from combined samples of land snails 
and pollen. 
