Present-day soils in the Borwick area form the Carnforth Association, i.e. freely drained gravelly brown earths, some calcareous brown earths and peaty gleys and peaty soils in hollows. pH is normally 6 to 7, with some soil pH higher than 7.

The buried soil beneath the cairn was a truncated stagnopodzol with a pH of 7.35. The Eag, Bf and Bs horizons were present but the lack of a topsoil and relatively high pH suggested that pollen analysis of the soil would be unproductive. Similarly, detailed soil analysis was unlikely to add to the interpretation of the site and was therefore not pursued. The development of podsolised soils on such gravels is not unusual and may indicate that the vegetation at the time the cairn was constructed was acid grassland or moorland. The soil pH would have been on the acid side at this stage, rising subsequently due to downward leaching of the calcium carbonate from the overlying limestone of the enclosure.

pH tests were carried out on eight soil samples taken from the site at the time of excavation. These were prepared and processed according to Black 1965, 922-923. Locations of the samples and the results showing the soils to be acidic are given below. All the samples were taken from the medium brown sandy loam (fig. 4).

A segment of earlier Bronze Age arable landscape incorporating isolated round barrows on the high chalk spur of Hog Cliff Hill became the chosen location for a later Bronze Age earthwork of considerable dimensions. The area excavated within the bank and ditch was densely occupied by two major phases of buildings of timber construction, lasting into the earliest Iron Age. Sometime during the early Iron Age the oval enclosure was replaced by a more substantial one which partly followed its line and contained a series of unusual structures comprising dry-stone flint banks or wall-footings. The site was subsequently abandoned, the land probably being returned to agricultural use, until the Roman period when the agger of the Roman road from Dorchester to Ilchester was constructed across the earthwork.

Excavation of the basilica of the Roman town of Silchester (Calleva Atrebatum) has produced evidence for two phases of pre-Roman occupation. The earlier, probably dating to the mid-first century BC, consisted of roundhouses and pits. Around 20 BC a rectilinear steet pattern, with building plots at right angles to the streets and rectangular buildings, was laid out; later a palisaded enclosure was built. Imports included amphorae and fine pottery; Central Gaulish wares suggest an early trade connection to the south. There is some evidence of disuse before the Roman streets were laid out on a different alignment in mid first century AD.

Macroscopically this sherd appears to be of a fine sandy ware, with ripple burnish. In thin section it can be seen to be a ferruginous clay with a large number of lumps of colloidal iron. It containes a high proportion of small grained and proportionately rounded quartz particles, and a small number of large, calcined flint particles. From the ID, T10, L2,

The absence of earth-filled structural features or easily identifiable graves precluded any systematic sampling programme for environmental evidence. However, two samples for the analysis of carbonised plant remains were collected from each of the two insitu inhumations (SF55 and SF73). The samples consisted of the sediment associated with the burials which included the matrix of the overlying cairn (context 002), and were processed using manual flotation into an 0.5 mm mesh sieve. The sample sizes and results are given in Table 1.

The evidence was minimal: only three fragments were found, none of which could be adequately identified. In sample 1, one grass seed was found, but it was badly preserved and could not be identified to genus. In sample 2, one cereal grain was found, again too badly preserved to distinguish it as either wheat or barley. The Polygonumsp. seed from sample 4 again is too fragmented to allow an identification to species level.

Test excavations in 1984 at the middle palaeolithic rockshelter of 'Ain Difla (Wadi Hasa Survey Site 634) in west-central Jordan produced a lithic assemblage dominated by elongated levallois points with very few retouched tools. Length/width ratios of the levallois points and width/thickness ratios of a sample of complete flakes suggest an affinity with Tabun D/Phase 1 mousterian sites. This kind of assemblage is generally thought to occur during the early Levantine mousterian. However, there is evidence of persistence of Tabun D assemblages in the southern Levant until the middle/upper palaeolithic transition. Comparing the ’Ain Difla lithic assemblage with those of other Levantine mousterian sites underscores problems with the analytical frameworks used to ‘date’ sites through technological and metrical analyses. A rather coarse-grained regional paleoenvironmental sequence exacerbates these problems.

Magdalenian settlement systems and man/land relationships in South-west Germany are reconstructed, using archaeological evidence and modern ethnographic observation. Archaeological sites are divided into four size categories, each with distinctive structural and artefactual records, and assigned to different seasonal and functional uses in the annual subsistence cycle. Hunting of reindeer and horse dominated and, in contrast to previous theories of long-distance reindeer following, a territorial model of land-use is proposed.

The exceptional preservation of structural detail at the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B site of ‘Ain Ghazal allows analysis of techniques of house building, and of sequences of construction and modification of houses. Frequent remodelling was common, with a trend towards smaller residential areas. The concept of the ‘development cycle’ is applied, to explain the structural modifications in terms of the changing nature of the co-residential group.

Survey in the inhospitable steppe lands of eastern Jordan has revealed late neolithic settlements, part of a settlement pattern probably of the sixth millennium BC. Faunal and artefactual evidence is sparse, but the sites are characterized by lithic assemblages dominated by burins. Analysis of the structures and their relationship to artefactual deposits offer opportunities for further research.