Carbonised Plant Remains from Two Iron Age Sites in Central Hampshire

Abstract

In recent years increasing attention has been focused on the palaeoeconomic interpretation of prehistoric sites, and a number of projects have been carried out both in Britain and abroad on plant and animal remains from archaeological sites with a view to interpreting subsistence patterns and activities of early communities. Though large-scale, systematic sampling and recovery of palaeoethnobotanical data has been carried out on several sites in the last ten years, the practice is still not widespread and has yet to be judged by its results. Fundamental issues relating to sampling, recovery and data presentation still require attention. Although studies of palaeoeconomic material have been done on Iron age sites in southern Britain, for example at Portway (Murphy 1977a) and Abingdon (Parrington 1978), as yet little evaluation of this evidence has taken place. The aim of this paper is to present, assess and compare the evidence from two such studies of different types of Iron Age site.