Description

Summary: several hazelnut shell fragments, from Tilshead Nursery School, excavated by Wiltshire Archaeology & Natural History Society Archaeological Field Group in 2009.

Research results

A collection of hazel nut shell fragments found within a Neolithic pit at Tilshead Nursery School, excavated by Wiltshire Archaeology & Natural History Society Archaeological Field Group in 2009. These were amongst 600 shells found in the later of two pits identified on the site, which also contained animal bone, worked flint, and pottery sherds, including neolithic peterborough ware and late Bronze Age sherds in the upper fill. Hazel nut shells from this group (found in context 003) were sampled for radiocarbon dating by Roberts and Marshall (2020), and produced a date of 4495 (+/- 30) BP, these come from the upper fills of the pit, and provide a terminus ante quem in the Late Neolithic, by which time the pit had mostly been filled in.

This group was sampled as part of Roberts and Marshall's (2020) project synthesising the dating evidence of Neolithic pit digging in Wiltshire, as part of which a number of new radiocarbon dates were obtained. In addition to providing new insights into the chronology of Neolithic pit digging and ceramic depositon, the study also gives further support to a theorised decline in cultivation in the mid- to late-neolithic, when grains decrease in frequency and a shift to a more pastoral way of life may have occured.