Cornish Archaeology 4343-44 (44)

Between 1998 and 2000 three seasons of archaeological recording were carried out within Imerys' Stannon China Clay Works. The first two seasons focused on excavation of an Early Bronze Age cairn group and on Middle Bronze Age and Middle Iron Age settlement activity. The third season was designed to confirm the existence of a number of cairns and a field system and to sample palaeoenvironmental sites. The cairn group comprised three ring cairns and two `tailed' cairns; one ring cairn was reused as a ceremonial monument in the Middle Bronze Age, and again in the Iron Age as a house site. An artefactual assemblage including Bronze and Iron Age pottery and stonework was recovered. Three beads, one of faience, one of amber and another of glass, were also found. Twelve radiocarbon determinations spanning the Early to Middle Bronze Age and two Iron Age determinations were obtained from three of the excavated cairns. Two pollen columns from an adjacent area were also dated, one of which provided environmental information from the Mesolithic to the early medieval period. The dating revealed that significant impact on the vegetation of the Down commenced during the Neolithic, with more extensive clearance during the Bronze Age. Widespread open grassland was in evidence by the Middle Bronze Age. Analyses of charred environmental material produced only limited evidence for cereal cultivation and the palynological evidence suggests that the economy in the Middle Bronze Age was based on pastoralism. It is suggested that the cairns formed a coherent group of monuments which were part of a wider landscape cosmology which involved the grouping of particular monument types and the referencing of prominent rocks and tors. The investigations on Stannon Down provided an opportunity to examine an Early Bronze Age ceremonial landscape and consider how subsequent Middle Bronze Age and Iron Age inhabitants might have engaged with and made sense of earlier prehistoric monuments. Separately authored contributions include

The authors describe the techniques used to model the probable appearance of the landscape of Stannon Down, St Breward, at various points during the prehistoric period.

Short report on a watching brief carried out in the winter of 2004--5 along the route of a new sewage transfer pipeline between Mullion and Lizard village. A series of archaeological features were identified, including a scatter of prehistoric flints found in association with Beaker, Neolithic and Iron Age pottery, a curvilinear feature of possible prehistoric or Romano-British date, two charcoal-rich pits or hearths, one of which was dated by fragments of Romano-British pottery found within it, and a large number of ditches, boundaries and other landscape features from the medieval and post-medieval periods. The account focuses specifically on the discoveries of prehistoric and Romano-British date.

Note on an early medieval cast copper-alloy buckle frame with terminals in the form of sub-triangular animal heads, found in Phillack parish and recorded under the Portable Antiquities Scheme.