This note draws attention to similar sequences of archaeology and environment in three long barrow ditches on the Chalk of southern and eastern England. Although the data have already been, or will shortly be, published in individual site reports, the events warrant consideration as a group because they are of regional importance. They are significant specifically for the later Neolithic use of long barrows and more generally for the identification of areas of arable, pasture and abandoned land in the later Neolithic and Bronze Age. The state of the Bronze Age soils has implications for their later use.

To start, the basic lithopedostratigraphy of a large ditch infilling on chalk (Evans 1972.) is iterated. There are four main stages:

(1) Primary fill. Coarse rubble with finer layers and turves derived from the contemporary soil. Formed by high energy, but seasonally intermittent, processes of physical weathering and gravity.

(2) Secondary fill. Loam, generally fining upwards and becoming increasingly humic as chemical weathering supersedes deposition. Formed by low energy processes of soil creep, rainwash of earthworm casts and others subsumed under the term colluviation; the details are unknown because such deposits have never been observed forming.

(3) Soil. Formation of soil profile after the natural depositional processes have ceased. Essentially this involves the increasing humification and weathering of the deposits as infilling slows down and ultimately ceases, so there is a merging boundary between the secondary fill and the soil.