NEOLITHIC AND LATER PREHISTORIC LANDSCAPE OF THE AVON VALLEY 245 
floor would have been available for use during at 
least spring to autunm for each year. On the higher 
ground to the east of the river the lack of recorded 
Neolithic sites is presumably due in part to 
intensive later activity and the limited size of the 
sample. The absence of any isolated pits, which 
unlike surface sites are likely to have escaped 
complete destruction, is likely to represent a lesser 
density of sites in the Neolithic than in the area 
around Durrington Walls. It is perhaps of 
particular interest that no Neolithic features were 
noted where the pipeline passed close to the long 
barrow at Longbarrow Clump. 
It is clear, therefore, that the evidence from the 
pipeline fits well into the known pattern, but also 
fills out the picture in some areas. The occurrence 
of occupation north of Durrington Walls, suggested 
by the residual material found during Wainwright’s 
excavations in Ditch A, is confirmed, and the use of 
the area to the north of the river meander and south 
of the abortive flint mines is attested for the first 
time. The flint artefacts from this area, however, do 
not include any material obviously from the flint 
mines. Indeed the single piece of gravel flint (pit 
184, Harding, above) indicates that raw material 
from the river valley was being utilised. 
The nature of activity represented by the 
features excavated along the route of the pipeline is 
more difficult to identify, but they seem to be part 
of a local concentration of sites focused on the river 
valley rather than simply on the henge monuments. 
The occurrence of beaver in pit 165, and the similar 
occurrence at Durrington Walls (minimum of one 
individual, Harcourt 1971, 338) suggest, as might 
reasonably be expected, that the river valley was 
exploited, and this is also borne out by the 
occurrence of chub, a freshwater fish, at Ratfyn 
(Jackson 1935, 301). Without a firm date for the 
intensive agricultural activity suggested by pollen 
zone Durrington:2 it is difficult to be confident 
about the nature of the contemporary landscape. 
The molluscan evidence from Durrington Walls 
and Woodhenge indicates strongly that there was 
well-established open grassland in the immediate 
vicinity of the monuments, but the wider picture is 
still unclear. Some woodiand or scrub is likely to 
have survived, perhaps along the slopes of the river 
valley, as hazel, hawthorn, ash and oak charcoal 
were identified at Ratfyn and Durrington Walls. 
Beech was also present at Durrington Walls, and 
the majority of structural timbers appear to have 
been oak, requiring a very large quantity of that 
timber to construct the Northern and Southern 
Circles. The excavators suggest that this might have 
been obtained from the Vale of Pewsey to the north, 
with the felled trees transported along the river 
(Wainwright and Longworth 1971, 222-3). 
Although the results of the pipeline 
observations and excavations have been on a small- 
scale in terms of the Neolithic finds, observation of 
the pipeline provided a valuable opportunity to 
assess the likely spread of Neolithic activity within 
the environs of the two major later Neolithic 
monuments. The environmental evidence is of 
particular importance and the necessity of dating 
the intensive agricultural activity of Durrington: 2 
is clearly a priority. If this should prove to be of 
later Neolithic or earlier date, as suggested here, it 
would radically alter the prevailing view of the area 
at that period, and indeed of the type of occupation 
generally associated with the users of Grooved 
Ware, for which there is little evidence of cereal 
cultivation. If, on the other hand, it should prove to 
be of Bronze Age date, it would fit the known 
settlement of the area attested by the ‘egg-shaped’ 
Middle Bronze Age enclosure excavated by 
Cunnington (1929), which appears to lie within an 
area of more extensive activity (Richards 1990, 279; 
Stone et al. 1954, 164-6). 
The palimpsest of features along the eastern 
length of the pipeline is difficult to interpret. The 
section cut through the main Earl’s Farm Down 
linear (ditch 3) has neither proved nor disproved 
the presumed later Bronze Age dating of this 
feature, as only two flint flakes were recovered from 
the primary fill. But the small sherd of later Bronze 
Age pottery found in the primary fill of the ditch 
running south from the Earl’s Farm Down linear 
(ditch 7), and the lack of Romano-British pottery in 
the lower fill, seems to indicate that this ditch at 
least may date to the early first millennium BC. 
This is in contrast to the results of the Wessex 
Linear Ditches Project, which classify this 
cropmark as a ‘trackway (confirmed) (Bradley et al. 
1994). Environmental data from the linear ditches, 
however, has provided a useful picture of the likely 
landscape during the life of ditches 3 and 40. The 
long history of pasture and lack of arable suggested 
by this forms a useful contribution to our 
knowledge of the area in later prehistory. 
Acknowledgements 
Wessex Archaeology would like to thank Wessex 
Water Engineering Services Ltd for their assistance 
