South Cadbury Environs Project
Early Neolithic
Flints from the lower deposits in test pits provide the best evidence for the general distribution of activity during the Early Neolithic, a stark contrast to the results from ploughsoil collection which produced very little. Gradiometry was less effective as there appears to have been a lack of larger-scale boundary systems or characteristic landscape features of the period, such as causewayed enclosures.
The rare structural evidence for the period has been a valuable by-product of other research agendas (Alcock 1972 ,108-13) found several Early, and a few Late, Neolithic features during his campaigns. SCEP's excavations on a spur revealed an occupation area and pit alignment which appears to have marked the west approach to pre-hillfort Cadbury. They contained large fragments of pottery, much of it in the elegant style associated with the south west peninsula sites of Hembury, Devon, and Carn Brea, Cornwall.