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So what has this information told us? The dark humic lenses in the shaft (see image 05) were comprised of soil, leaf litter and other organic debris that accumulated on temporary surfaces during the shaft infill. The environment around the shaft during the later Mesolithic (dated here to the early fifth millennium BC) seems to have been a closed but light forest providing ideal cover for deer, but also for the flowering and fruiting of hazel trees. Some red deer bone between the soil layers was butchered, indicating Mesolithic hunting within the open forest. This is in a period when we should see good woodland of the 'climatic optimum', which we have inferred existed in the slightly earlier evidence (mid-sixth millennium BC) washed into the Cursus ditch. The difference seen here indicates a slightly different picture of local vegetation, possibly created by the presence of the 'great shaft' itself In a short space of time, although the rate of infill remains constant, a change is revealed in the local landscape.
| Image 1 - Shaft and gangway. |
Image 2 - View from above. |
Image 3 - Students on the gangway. |
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The once open woodland became denser with deciduous trees forming a good leaf litter layer, more typical of our regional and national conception of the later Mesolithic landscape (primeval forest). Perhaps the most significant evidence is of the creation of a progressively larger clearance within the wood which followed and occurred at the same time as the hafted microlith weapon was lost; perhaps hurled into the almost infilled shaft in pursuit of red deer or aurochs, the isolated bones of which were found here. This clearance is radiocarbon dated about 4350-4000 cal BC and is one of the first recorded woodland clearances in southern England. Here it might have been created to attract wild animals to graze and browse on the lighter vegetation, and provide an ideal hunting ground. The depression left by the 'great shaft' may have given ritual significance to the area, as well as providing a convenient culling basin. After a time woodland re-colonised the clearing, re-enforcing our indication of the transient nature of Mesolithic activity in the area. Although the environmental evidence from the shaft continues into the Neolithic and Early Bronze Age, it is better to deal with these chronologically with our other evidence.
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