ABSTRACT
The establishment of a dated, early–mid Holocene environmental record from Borehole A (BHA) was an important element in the Shapwick Project. It was always a key objective of the Shapwick Project to complement the environmental research undertaken previously by the Somerset Levels Project and others in the northern third of the parish. In 1997, a trench on the north side of the hotel was dug down through the full profile of the later medieval moat with the intention of recovering waterlogged material suitable for full environmental analysis. The earliest evidence for the pre-Neolithic environment of the part of Shapwick Heath comes from the pollen assessment of the basal clay-silts from BHA. As pollen preservation was very poor and pollen concentration low, these data have very limited potential for environmental reconstruction. The poor pollen preservation is likely to be the result of the calcareous nature of the sediments, which is confirmed by the presence of tufa and freshwater molluscs.
