188 THE WILTSHIRE ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND NATURAL HISTORY MAGAZINE 
1.3m wide and 1.4m deep and its fill sealed by a 
0.25m thick layer of stone blocks, mainly 
sandstone, but with some greensand. This layer 
represented an attempt to cap the pit, maybe in 
anticipation of subsidence. This deposit in turn was 
sealed by hillwash, but here was only 0.15m thick. 
The site appears to be a small, possibly 
enclosed, settlement. The two U-shaped ditches 
were similar in profile and may represent a single 
enclosure c. 75m across. The only two features 
within the putative enclosure were pits. This 
hillwash sealed all of the other features. 
FINDS 
by Elaine L. Morris 
Small quantities of a wide range of artefacts were 
recovered from excavated contexts including three 
worked flints; four pieces of fired clay, possibly 
from a loomweight or daub; burnt flint; a fragment 
of slag, possibly from a hearth base, and stone 
including fragments of sarsen saddle quern. In 
addition, 46 fragments of animal bone (397g) 
included 10 cattle, 8 ovicaprid and 5 pig (id. M. 
Maltby) were recovered. 
Pottery 
A total of 71 sherds (1559g) of pottery (Figure 16, 1- 
11) was recovered from excavated contexts and 25 
sherds (17g) from sieved samples. This collection is 
mainly Early Iron Age in date, with some earlier 
Middle Iron Age material and one rim sherd (45g) 
of wheelthrown, Romano-British greyware. 
Overall, the condition of the pottery is sharp with 
many large sherds and very little evidence of post- 
depositional abrasion. 
Despite the small number of sherds recovered, 
fourteen different fabrics from six principal fabric 
groups were identified (Table 11). The sequence of 
fabric type numbers follows on from those used for 
the pottery from the causewayed enclosure (Cleal, 
above). The most common groups are calcareous 
fabrics that represent over 75% of the pottery. The 
oolitic and shelly limestone-tempered group (C4— 
C6) contain varying amounts (20-50%) of crushed 
limestone containing shells and ooliths in clay 
matrices, C6 also containing 5-10% of iron oxides. 
The shell-tempered group (Group S3-S7) contain 
crushed shell in various amounts (20-50%) and 
degrees of sorting in clay or slightly sandy clay 
matrices. 
The remaining fabrics consist of a fine 
micaceous fabric (M1), a flint-tempered fabric (F3), 
a grog-tempered fabric (G1) and four sandy or silty 
fabrics (Q4-7), of which one (Q6) also includes rare 
flint and limestone fragments. 
The area around Whitesheet Quarry contains a 
variety of calcareous deposits of the Jurassic period, 
including the Corallian and Oolitic series, which 
could have been utilised to produce the calcareous 
fabrics. These deposits are not located immediately 
adjacent to the site but liec. 6-8km to the south and 
west respectively. In addition, the flintbearing 
fabrics (F3 and Q6) might be local products since 
the site lies on chalk, and the sandy fabrics, 
particularly Q7, may have been produced from the 
Upper Greensand and Gault deposits nearby which 
include glauconite-bearing sandy clays. 
Table 11. Whitesheet Quarry: Quantification of pottery by fabric type. 
Context/feature 1271 
Fabric no/wt 
C4 6/173 
C5 3/212 
C6 - 
F3 - 
Gl 1/3 
S6 - 
1225 1211 1215 
no/wt no/wt no/wt 
9/366 12/177 9/4* 
1/210 1/18 - 
5/24 - - 
- 2/8 - 
/2* 1/9 = 
2/N7: - - 
4/16 3/5, 1/2* 
1/7 - ZILX 
1/8 - - 
- - PH eas 
6/182 - - 
1/19 - - 
10/57 - 5/35 
4/4* - - 
Weight in grammes: *denotes sherds retrieved from sieved samples 
