Excavation of a Neolithic Barrow on Whiteleaf Hill, Bucks

Abstract

Sir Lindsay Scott carried out excavations on the barrow on Whiteleaf Hill, near Princes Risborough, Bucks., with meticulous care from 1934 till the outbreak of war in 1939 interrupted operations. After the war he had no opportunity to resume excavations beyond making a 2 ft. section across the ditch on the west, and he was not able to complete the work he had planned or to prepare the material for publication before his untimely death in 1952. He gave four short and explicitly provisional reports in P.P.S. 1935, p. 132; 1936, p. 312; 1937, p. 440, and in the Records of Bucks. 1941–6, p. 298, but insisted that ‘this description must be taken as entirely provisional.’ His papers comprised a master plan contoured at 6 inch intervals, and showing the grid over the excavated area, small detailed plans of individual features—post holes, pits, and the ‘peristalith trench’—and a series of sections taken across the whole excavated area at 2 ft. intervals on both X and Y axes, but no complete plan of the excavated area nor any detailed description of the observations made in the course of the excavation. The relics are, however, all numbered with three co-ordinates, so that the position of each can be exactly located on the plans and sections, and these, especially the Neolithic pottery, are of such exceptional importance that it is an obvious duty to attempt a provisional account of the results achieved, without waiting for the completion of the excavation.

Neolithic Causewayed Enclosures and Later Prehistoric Farming: Duality, Imposition and the Role of Predecessors at Kingsborough, Isle of Sheppey, Kent, UK

“…These forms (the developed rims, the pinprick decoration, the decorated rims and necks) demonstrate that the Kingsborough assemblages belong to what has been variously defined as the Mildenhall (Childe & Smith 1954) or Decorated (Whittle 1977) style of earlier Neolithic pottery. The type site for this style is Hurst Fen, Cambridgeshire (Clark et al 1960) of which the K1 assemblage has all the elements.…”

A new mortuary enclosure from Northamptonshire

“…The presence of an ovoid covering mound emphasizes this aspect of combination. Such a mound recalls a tradition most clearly seen at Pitnacree (Coles and Simpson, 1965) and Great Ayton Moor (Hayes, 1967), and possibly at Whiteleaf (Childe and Smith, 1954). Some parallel may be drawn with Wor Barrow where a comparable mortuary enclosure was followed by quarry ditches of two phases and of enclosing rather than flanking form (Pitt -Rivers, 1898, 58-135).…”

A Neolithic dugout from a multi-period site near St Albans, Herts, England

“…Local comparisons are few, since Early Neolithic sites, particularly domestic, ones are at present uncommon in Hertfordshire, and the Chiltern area more generally (Holgate, 1995). Comparable rims to those from Parkbury occur in larger assemblages known from areas further afield in eastern England such as The Stumble (Brown,199%;Brown,forthcoming), and Hurst Fen (Clark et al, 1960), and amongst the assemblage from the Whiteleaf long barrow (Childe & Smith, 1954). The Grooved Ware from Parkbury can be attributed to the Durrington Walls Style ).…”

“…The large part of a Deverel-Rimbury bucket urn is of Middle Bronze Age date, and can easily be accommodated in the Lower Thames regional group of Deverel-Rimbury ceramics (Brown, 1995a). It may be paralleled by the pot, which accompanied a secondary burial at Whiteleaf long barrow (Childe & Smith, 1954), pottery from cemeteries in Middlesex (Barrett, 1973), and from sites in south Essex (Brown, 1995~).…”