INVESTIGATION OF THE WHITESHEET DOWN ENVIRONS 1989-90 187 
1 and 2). Using land snail evidence the cross-ridge 
earthwork adjacent to the main enclosure is not 
Neolithic (contra Oswald et al. 2001, 65 and 136). 
The barrow overlying the earthwork is thus later 
again (cf. Oswald et al. 2001, 136). 
Until the construction of the Iron Age hillfort 
there is no subsequent intensive activity on the 
Down. Activities isolated by both time and location 
occurred throughout the Bronze Age, and these 
include the isolated Beaker pit on Mere Down 
which contained a collared Beaker and may 
indicate domestic and settlement activity rather 
than a funerary deposit. Presumably Bronze Age 
barrows scattered across the hilltop, many of them 
false-crested , may allude to settlement in the dry 
valley to the west or the clay vale to the east. The 
cross-ridge earthworks on Whitesheet Down and 
Mere Down are more enigmatic. While the former 
indicates land division probably in the Bronze Age, 
the latter seems to suggest similar activity in the 
Romano-British period. 
The most coherent record, however, is that of 
the prehistoric land-use on the Down derived 
largely from land snail evidence from the Beaker 
pit, and cross-ridge earthworks. The Bronze Age 
environment and land-use was strikingly different 
from the Neolithic. Tillage and soil deflation (wind 
blown soil erosion) is indicated by aeolian deposits 
in the Whitesheet cross-ridge earthwork and its 
accompanying restricted and xerophile mollusc 
faunas loosely attributed to the Bronze Age. Thick 
humic, calcareous soils (brown earths) in the 
enclosure recut, were degraded to silty calcareous 
brown earths or rendzinas by the time the 
Whitesheet cross-ridge earthwork was infilling. We 
cannot be sure whether the environmental 
sequence from the Whitesheet linear covers the 
Iron Age, but when the Romano-British cross-ridge 
earthwork (Mere Down Linear) was dug, intensive 
Bronze Age agriculture and grazing had ceased. 
This ditch was dug through a long, probably 
ungrazed, grassland in which small shrubs and 
bushes very likely existed with the tall grassland of 
a typical chalk downland. Soon after construction 
of the ditch, there is evidence to suggest that the 
downland was lightly grazed. More intensive 
grazing producing a short grass sward occurred 
only in the medieval or post-medieval periods. The 
Mere Down cross-ridge earthwork, at least, may 
therefore be a part of pastoral land management 
and division. 
Evidence so far recovered from Whitesheet Hill 
indicates that activities classed as non-domestic or, 
using Mercer’s (1980) terminology, ‘irrational’ took 
place in the earlier Neolithic and later. These 
activities included the construction of major 
monuments and smaller-scale activities such as the 
deposition of a Beaker with associated pig bone ina 
shallow pit described above. 
PART 2: WHITESHEET 
QUARRY 
Mick Rawlings 
The pipe trench descended from the south-west of 
Whitesheet Hill down the scarp slope of a small 
spur. At the base of the slope, immediately below 
the disused quarry (Figure 1), a dark brown buried 
soil was sealed beneath a light, highly calcareous, 
silty hillwash, and beyond which two ditch sections 
and two pits were identified. These features and 
hillwash sequence were only recorded in the pipe- 
trench section. A number of artefacts were 
recovered manually and samples taken for snails 
and charred remains. 
The buried calcareous brown earth (1225) lay 
directly on the chalk bedrock nearest the quarry 
and was sealed by a pale brown, highly calcareous, 
silty hillwash up to 0.4m thick, the result of 
downslope wash-out of chalk mud from the quarry. 
The dark, grey-brown, humic silty loam was 
recorded in section over a total distance of 76m and 
was c. 0.30m thick. Within it was a band of burnt 
sandstone fragments, probably dumped material 
rather than structural. Calcareous hillwash 
extended further down slope than the buried soil 
and overlay the natural geology. 
The feature nearest Whitesheet Hill was a U- 
shaped ditch (1237), 1.8m wide at the surface and 
1.6m deep, which was the only feature sealed by the 
buried soil. It was filled with an homogeneous 
brown soil, while the buried soil that sealed it filled 
the upper part of the ditch. This ditch was located 
towards the downslope (western) end of the buried 
soil. A second U-shaped ditch (1234) was recorded 
nearly 75m to the west and was I.3m wide at the 
surface and 1.4m deep, but only sealed by hillwash. 
Two pits were recorded between the two ditches. 
The first (pit 1211), about 50m downslope from the 
first ditch was U-shaped 1.5m wide, 1.6m deep and 
sealed by hillwash. A series of fills contained small 
fragments of chalk and much charcoal. A second pit 
(pit 1215) was recorded 10m to the west of the first 
and 11m upslope of the second ditch. This pit was 
