Technical Report: plant and invertebrate remains from Iron Age deposits at Sutton Common, South Yorkshire (site code SCOM02-03). Part I. Text and Publication Tables

Investigations were undertaken of plant and invertebrate remains from selected deposits from an Iron Age enclosure at Sutton Common. Assemblages from a large number of postholes (mostly thought to be associated with four-post structures) and some other cut features were restricted to charred plant material. The richer of these comprised high concentrations of cereal remains, mainly grain, but also some chaff and small numbers of weed seeds. On the basis of the stratigraphic record it appears that these were deliberately placed deposits. The remaining samples were mainly from the fills of the enclosure ditches. Those from the vicinity of an entranceway were often rich in coarse oak charcoal, presumably from the destruction of nearby structures, but a significant component of plant material thought to have originated in turves—perhaps also relating to structures—was present in some places. Some other remains were perhaps more consistent with an orign in peat. Other ditch fills, especially those at some distance from the entranceway, provided assemblages of ‘waterlogged’ plant and insect remains which recorded natural or semi-natural vegetation in the vicinity of the ditch, with little or no evidence for human activity and thus presumably represent the natural infilling of the ditches after the site was abandoned, other than a very little charcoal and moderately strong indications of grazing land.