Monument record 0116107000 - Low Grounds Farm, Marlow

MAS undertook an evaluation of a site at Low Grounds Farm in conjunction with Oxford Archaeology. Intact prehistoric soils were located in the northern corner of the site above the level of the natural gravel. Stakeholes forming one or more structures were found cutting the prehistoric soil here, together with worked flints and an area of burning that produced a C14 date of the early-middle Neolithic from radiocarbon dating of charcoal and hazelnut shells. Neolithic pottery was recovered from the same deposit. Several adjacent areas of stakeholes were investigated: they possibly supported cooking frames or acted as drying racks. Elsewhere, natural gravel was sealed beneath sand and/or reddish brown clay silts, probably the geological subsoil. The evidence suggests a continuity of 'occupation' or more properly 'activity' here from the Neolithic to the early Bronze Age. Such activity may have been seasonal, though no time-scale can be elucidated from the excavated evidence and this should be treated as a cautious interpretation of the area as a whole (B18).