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The Chalk Plaque Pit, Amesbury

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2022

Philip Harding
Philip Harding*
Affiliation:
The Trust for Wessex Archaeology, Portway House, South Portway Estate, Old Sarum, Salisbury, Wilts SP4 6EB
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Extract

Well-defined late Neolithic structures in lowland Britain are rare. The contents of pits with Grooved Ware have, therefore, been used to interpret both settlement patterns and economic activity in this period. Pits occur both individually and in groups, are normally circular or slightly oval in plan and rarely exceed 1 m in diam or 2 m in depth (Wainwright and Longworth 1971, 250). Most were probably for grain storage (Field et al. 1964, 367) which were later filled with refuse.

The Amesbury area, 3 km E of Stonehenge, has produced several groups of pits of this type. They include five at Ratfyn (SU 15954205) N of Amesbury (Stone 1935; Warren et al. 1936, 196), four at Woodlands (SU 151431) 250 m S of Woodhenge (Stone and Young 1948; Stone 1949), a group within a henge on Coneybury Hill (SU 13434161) (Richards 1984, 183) and others on King Barrow Ridge (SU 135425) (Richards 1984).

Type
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Information
Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society , Volume 54 , Issue 1 , 1988 , pp. 320 - 327
Copyright
Copyright © The Prehistoric Society 1988

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