180 THE WILTSHIRE ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND NATURAL HISTORY MAGAZINE 
Fig. 14. Mere Down Beaker pit 
with some of the fill recovered and wet-sieved in 
order to recover both environmental and 
artefactual evidence. 
Two sherds of a collared, rusticated Beaker with 
paired, plastic, finger-nail decoration were 
recovered (Figure 14). Decoration was in vertical 
columns on the body but horizontal above the 
collar. Collared Beakers are rare and usually 
associated with domestic sites rather than funerary 
contexts (Clarke 1970, 36-7). The 39 fragments of 
both burnt and unburnt animal bone included pig 
(including two skull fragments), one ovicaprid 
bone and a tooth of a short-tailed vole (Microtus 
agrestis). Fifteen pieces of worked flint included a 
scraper manufactured on a thermally fractured 
fragment. Two fragments of burnt hazel nut shell 
were recovered from the sieved sample. 
Whitesheet Hill Linear Ditch 
This ditch (SAM 442), over 275m long, lies between 
the causewayed enclosure and the hillfort (Figures 
1 and 2) and is aligned north-east to south-west. A 
well-preserved bank is extant on either side of the 
ditch although eroded in several places by 
trackways. The pipeline crossed the ditch directly 
on the line of the current access track thus the 
banks were no longer extant and the ditch was only 
just visible prior to excavation. It has been 
suggested that this feature is Neolithic (Oswald et 
al. 2001, 65 and 136). 
The ditch (1500) was 0.65m deep and 2.2m wide 
at the surface with an irregular profile (Figure 15), 
being much steeper on the eastern side. A further 
irregularity was a small step at the base of the ditch 
that may indicate a recut, although this could not 
be substantiated in the fill sequence. Weathering 
and/or the use of the track may account for the 
surface width of the ditch, the profile indicates that 
1.7m may be closer to the original size. 
Angular fragments of chalk 50-100mm in size 
formed the main part of the basal fill (1510) along 
with compact decayed chalk and some large flint 
nodules. A secondary fill (1507) made up of fine 
chalky material and unworked flint nodules is 
probably aeolian in origin and is reminiscent of fills 
of ditches in the Dorchester area of Dorset, e.g. 
Mount Pleasant (Wainwright 1979) and Alington 
Avenue (Allen 2002a) which have been dated to the 
Bronze Age. 
A small ditch recut (2m deep and V-shaped in 
profile) was recorded within the upper part of the 
fill sequence. This was aligned directly along the 
main linear ditch. A sample column was taken from 
the section in order to examine the environmental 
evidence. 
Thirteen pieces of worked flint were recovered 
from the main ditch, and a further six from the 
small recut. The condition of the material from the 
main ditch ranges from fresh to dulled and iron- 
stained. Most pieces were flakes, including a single 
scraper. A single small fragment of ovicaprid 
