SummaryThe three long barrows described in this report were totally excavated between 1959 and 1967. They have been presented in a single report because they had several features in common: they were in close proximity; they were built as single phase monuments; two conformed to a common specification which required elaborate internal structures; and they produced no evidence of funerary function or intent. There are four sections: I. The Horslip (or Windmill Hill) Long Barrow (P. A.). II. The Beckhampton Road Long Barrow (I.F.S.). III. The South Street Long Barrow (J.G.E.). The fourth section (IV) deals with the environmental history of the area as revealed in the long barrow soils and sediments (J.G.E.).
The Fussell's Lodge Long Barrow is an earthen long barrow derived from flanking quarry ditches. It lies on relatively low ground, between the 300 ft. and 400 ft. contours three miles north-east of Salisbury, Wiltshire, on the eastern side of Stock Bottom, a broad dry valley (fig. 1), at Nat. Grid. Ref. SU 19203246.
Ideas about the prehistoric past have for long been based upon pieces dug from the mounds and hollows which are the remains of man’s activities. Only recently has it been clearly realized that monuments are continually being modified by nature and that evidence of weathering, denudation and silting can be as informative as the artifacts sometimes found in them. A recent conference showed that there was relatively little exact knowledge of how such processes take place and, in particular, of their quantitative aspects. As has been recently emphasized archaeological excavation is a means of investigating the truth of an hypothesis by destructive analysis. It thus emerges that any study of the action and interaction of natural processes affecting a prehistoric monument must clearly involve the converse, i.e. a monument must be built and studied, in all its component parts, under controlled conditions. Today an impressive and substantial ditch and bank, cut into and heaped upon the chalk of Overton Down in Wiltshire, stands a shining witness to the execution of this principle.The work of construction was undertaken with hand tools, but not all of these were modern picks and shovels. A part of the bank was dug and heaped with primitive tools and appliances—antler picks, shoulder-blade shovels and wicker carrying-baskets. It has long been known (from the not infrequent discovery of examples apparently discarded) that antler picks were the primary digging tools of those who dug the ditches and heaped the long and round barrows, the causewayed camps, the henges and the cursuses, but precise appreciation of the real potentialities of antler picks was slight. Greenwell and Pitt Rivers commented upon the use of such implements, while the subject was pursued in some detail by Horace Sandars in his paper On the Deer Horn Pick in the Mining Operations of the Ancients, among others. Curwen’s accounts of the Sussex flint mines further stimulated such studies as did Clark and Piggott’s classic paper. From Sandars’s, Curwen’s initial and subsequent study and from summaries of the past two decades the view emerged that the antler picks were almost invariably used as punches and levers to break up chalk. Thus, such thought as has been given to prehistoric mining and digging has been to some extent inhibited by acceptance of that notion.
The excavation of the Normanton Gorse, Wilsford, pond barrow in Wiltshire during the summers of 1960, '61 and '62 aroused very great interest, revealing as it did a circular vertical shaft nearly a hundred feet in depth. Here Mr Paul Ashbee describes the excavations which, in the 1962 season, were assisted by closed circuit television arranged by EMI Electronics Ltd.-the first time that closed circuit TV has been used in this way in the United Kingdom.XCAVATION of the pond barrow at Normanton Gorse, Wilsford, disclosed the weathered top of a circular and vertical shaft which proved to be nearly IOO ft. in E depth. Its fill, the result of natural silting processes, contained pottery in the upper part and, at the waterlogged bottom, broken wooden vessels and other objects, besides a mass of rotted wood, seeds, leaves and other organic remains. The dished and funnelled top of the shaft as well as the uneven sides were, for more than a third of their depth, the product of natural weathering. Below here distinctive antler-pick marks and the clear traces of a broad-bladed metal axe showed that the shaft had been dug in short sections, checked by template and plumbline. No positive trace of how the prehistoric engineers moved up and down their sophisticated shaft remained. Archaeological excavation, beyond the preliminary stages and under exacting and claustrophobic conditions, demanded lighting and mechanical aids. Communication and all-round control posed especial problems. When, in the late summer of 1960, Miss Edwina Field (note I) began her work, she had, unavoidably, details of previously examined pond barrows much in mind. Bulldozing in the interests of total agriculture had destroyed the low bank recorded by Grinsell (note z), and infilled the 'pond' of this scheduled monument. Destruction was distinct in section and below it the contours of the pond were readily detected. However, the pond proved to be but the top of a lens of relatively compact chalky silt the removal of which disclosed what initially seemed to be a great inverted conical cavity. The layered character of the infill, reminiscent of a deep ditch (note 3), showed that weathering and silting could be held responsible. A pit, in which were animal bones, had been dug into the top of this fill which contained Roman and recent sherds, while at a depth of some 9 ft. from the surface an Iron Age B pot was found. (Fig. I).Deeper digging demanded that baulks be removed. Thus after compilation of a sectional record of the upper silts, removal of an infill, largely chalk rubble and flints, showed that the inverted cone gave way to the vertical sides of a cylindrical shaft (PL. XIII (b)). As it had been seen that the conical shape was a natural product it was possible to estimate the volume of weathered material and express it in terms of potential shaft. I 16
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