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Radiocarbon Dates for Northton, Harris (3)
|  |  | Leaving aside this problem, there are two points worthy of note. In the first place, the phase of open country, however brought about, was not in the nature of a short temporary clearance of the kind described by Turner (1965) but was of long duration. In this respect it is similar to the situation at several sites in southern England (Evans, 1971), as for example at Durrington Walls (Wainwright and Longworth, 1971, 329) where woodland clearance took place in the middle of the 3rd millennium and was followed by a period of about 500 years when an open grassland environment, probably maintained by sheep grazing, obtained. The second point of interest concerns the phase of woodland regeneration. At several sites in southern England, which comprise long barrows and causewayed enclosures, snail analysis of ditch sediments has demonstrated an episode of woodland or scrub regeneration, often associated with late Neolithic or Beaker occupation horizons: e.g. South Street (Evans, 1968), Wayland's Smithy and Nutbane (M. P. Kerney, pers. comm.), Horslip (Connah and McMillan, 1964), Thickthorn Down (Drew and Piggott, 1936), Knap Hill (Connah, 1965, 19) and Windmill Hill (Smith, 1965). In these cases it is sometimes held that regeneration is a local phenomenon engendered by the favourable environment of the ditch and confined to it. But at Northton there can be no question of this, for the shells in the Beaker II horizon are probably culled from a wide area by wind action, and the virtual absence of open-country species is thus good evidence for widespread woodland regeneration on this site in the middle of the 2nd millennium BC. RICHARD BURLEIGH, J. G. EVANs and D. D. A. SIMPSON | |
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