The Shaugh Moor Project: Third Report—Settlement and Environmental Investigations

Abstract

The third phase of the Shaugh Moor Project comprised survey and excavation work on the Saddlesborough Main reave and Wotter Common (fig. 1). Following the decision of the china clay companies not to develop the area immediately around Saddlesborough (Area Y), Watts, Blake and Bearne & Co Ltd and English China Clays Ltd embarked upon a joint tipping programme which will eventually destroy the terminal reave east of Saddlesborough and most of the monuments on Wotter Common (fig. 2).The area to the north of Saddlesborough was surveyed in 1976 and limited excavation was undertaken early in 1977 (Site 10, Wainwright et al 1979). An enclosure, 1 km to the north-east of Site 10, was totally excavated in 1977 and 1978 (Site 15, Wainwright and Smith 1980). In 1979 and 1980 the area threatened by the quarry extensions was surveyed and a programme of limited excavation was undertaken on the Saddlesborough Main reave and Wotter Common (Site 208).

Bronze Age upland settlement decline in southwest England: testing the climate change hypothesis

“…Firstly, the remoteness of the site from the actual field systems means that it is likely to be insensitive to vegetation change on the upland margins (Davies and Tipping, 2004;Edwards, 1979;Fyfe, 2006;Fyfe et al, 2004). Secondly, settlement abandonment as represented by the archaeological evidence does not necessarily equate to landscape abandonment; it is probable that transhumance practices maintained an open pastoral landscape, an assumption supported by pollen diagrams in closer proximity to reaves (Smith et al, 1981).…”

“…Given that the onset of peat formation occurred at different times in different locations across Dartmoor, it is probable that patterns of abandonment may have been equally patchy (Burgess, 1985;Caseldine and Hatton, 1996;Staines, 1979), particularly in light of recent rethinking on the form of social control on field system development (Johnston, 2005). This is in part supported by palynological evidence for regeneration of moorland vegetation with continuation of pastoral activities in some locations (Smith et al, 1981), although the role of later transhumance in the maintenance of improved grassland is difficult to establish.…”

Mid- to late-Holocene vegetation history of Greater Exmoor, UK: estimating the spatial extent of human-induced vegetation change

“…This period is particularly significant as palaeoecological studies in south west Britain have traditionally focussed on the upland area of Dartmoor (e.g. Simmons 1964;Smith et al 1981;Simmons et al 1983;Caseldine and Hatton 1993), and there are few securely dated sequences spanning the latter half of the Holocene (Caseldine 1999). Corylus within the limits of the enclosed landscape, the enclosed land being dominated by improved pasture.…”

Subfossil mammalian tracks (Flandrian) in the Severn Estuary, S. W. Britain: mechanics of formation, preservation and distribution

“…Hitchcock 1858) and are the subject of a huge literature (Sarjeant 1974(Sarjeant , 1975(Sarjeant , 1987Delair & Sarjeant 1985) and important recent syntheses that stress their ecological value (Gillette 1986 ;Lockley 1986Lockley , 1991Leonardi 1987 ;Gillette & Lockley 1989 ;Thulborn 1990 ;Lockley et al 1994 ;Lockley & Hunt 1995). Tracks of mammalian origin, predominant in Tertiary and uaternary sediments, have attracted less attention but are being increasingly reported from a widening range of geological (Robertson & Sternberg 1942 ;Chaffee 1943 ;Bjork 1976 ;Demathieu et al 1984 ;Loope 1986 ;Scrivner & Bottjer 1986 ;Leakey 1987 ;Belperio & Fotheringham 1990 ; Loope & Simpson 1992 ;Smith et al 1993 ;Lea 1996 ;Roberts et al 1996) and archaeological (Michel 1968 ;Fowler et al 1976 ;Cramm & Fulford 1979 ;Smith et al 1981 ;Bahn & Vertut 1988) settings. Scrivner & Bottjer (1986) give a subtantial listing of papers.…”