INVESTIGATION OF THE WHITESHEET DOWN ENVIRONS 1989-90 179 
The third seed was an incomplete example of 
Galium spp. (bedstraw, cleavers) and its size 
suggests one of the smaller bedstraws, eg. Galium 
verum (lady’s bedstraw). 
Seed impression 
The Neolithic pottery was examined for possible 
impressions of plant remains. A latex cast showing 
part of a grain of emmer was obtained from a sherd 
from context 1342. 
Discussion 
It is common for Neolithic sites in Britain to 
include a range of wild fruits and seeds but only 
small amounts of cereals (Moffet et al. 1989) and the 
results here are comparable. The predominant wild 
plant food represented is hazel, which grows in a 
range of soil types but only flowers and fruits when 
allowed light, such as in open woodland, woodland 
margins, and scrub. 
There exists the possibility that the shrubs or 
trees from which the nuts were gathered were not 
entirely ‘wild’ and it might be that a harvest of nuts 
was a further aim in the management of woodland 
by the clearance of light-obscuring vegetation, 
perhaps in conjunction with coppicing. Fruits other 
than hazelnuts are represented only by one sloe 
stone. Sloe, like hazel, grows in woods, hedges and 
scrub and needs light to flower and fruit freely. 
Tubers of pignuts have a history of collection 
for food or medicine (Grigson 1975, 232), but are 
rarely recorded from archaeological sites. They 
have been recorded at Windmill Hill (Fairbairn in 
Whittle et al. 1999), but poor preservation 
prevented conclusive identification of tubers in 
Late Neolithic/Early Bronze Age samples from 
Robin Hood’s Ball, Wiltshire (Carruthers 1990). 
Moffet (1991) has identified pignuts (Conopodium 
majus) from a pit containing a Middle Bronze Age 
cremation burial at Barrow Hills in Oxfordshire. 
Tubers cannot be easily pulled from the soil and 
require careful digging out so are unlikely to be 
_ included by chance. The presence of pignut tubers 
in association with hazel nut refuse in two of the 
pits (and probable fragments in others) at 
Whitesheet Hill is fairly convincing evidence for 
their collection as food at this site. After flowering 
the stems and leaves of pignut plants die back and 
by July only the tuber is alive (Grime et al. 1988, 
202). This suggests that they were dug before mid- 
summer, but the hazelnuts that accompany them 
could only have been gathered in the autumn, when 
pignut plants would not be visible. Since the tubers 
were charred soon after digging it would mean (if 
the tubers and nut shells were burned at the same 
time), either that the nuts had been stored until the 
spring, or that locations where tubers grew densely 
was known. Although the pignuts and hazel nut 
fragments occur in the same contexts in the pits, it 
does not necessarily follow that they were burned at 
the same time. 
Pignuts are plants of damp woods, found today 
in the more acid soils of permanent grassland which 
have developed from cleared woodland. 
Uncommon on chalk soils, it is likely that tubers 
originated in wooded areas or on thicker more acid 
soils locally. 
The seeds of the probable vetch, nightshade and 
bedstraw, today are found in hedges, scrub, arable 
or grassland, may have become included in the 
deposits as weeds of cultivated cereals, perhaps 
originating in the margins of cleared areas. 
Common vetch seeds, however, are edible, while 
bitter vetch (Lathyrus montanus) has tuberous 
rhizomes long known to be edible (Grigson 1975, 
153-4). 
The impression given by the results from the 
Whitesheet Hill samples is that cereals formed a 
minor part of the vegetable diet but possibly they 
are under-represented. Poor condition of the few 
grains and fragments indicates charring at high 
temperatures and subsequent damage, and it may 
be that they represent only a fraction of what was 
originally burned. 
There is too little evidence to discuss whether 
cereals were grown near the enclosure or whether 
they were brought in from elsewhere, perhaps as 
ears or spikelets after preliminary threshing. 
OTHER SITES ON 
WHITESHEET DOWN 
Three other features on Whitesheet Down were also 
examined (Figure 1), and are summarised below. 
They comprise a Beaker pit on Mere Down and two 
cross-ridge earthworks (Whitesheet Linear and 
Mere Down Linear). 
Mere Down Pit 
On the eastern side of the Mere Down plateau the 
pipe-trench cut through a small U-shaped pit 
(Figure 1) 0.6m wide and 0.6m deep (Figure 14). 
The base of the dark fill (1260) was rich in charcoal, 
