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XIV.—On Flint Workings at Cissbury, Sussex

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2012

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Extract

In 1868 Colonel A. Lane Fox, F.S.A. contributed a paper to this Society, on the Sussex Hill Forts, and on the principles of castrametation which a most careful examination of the whole series led him to conclude had been adopted by the tribes who had constructed them.

In the course of his inquiry, and in the description of the seventeen earthworks that line our Sussex downs, he mentioned the occurrence, in several places, of various pits in and about the camps. The instances are at Wolstanbury, Highdown Hill, Mount Caburn, and Cissbury—most notably the latter.

This paper was shortly followed by another, giving a detailed account of the extensive excavations carried on by him at Highdown and at Cissbury. In this communication he dwells at length on the pits situate within the latter camp, their character and contents; the flint implements especially are elaborately classified and fully described by him. The examination of about thirty pits resulted in the following information,—to which I may be permitted briefly to refer in order to be intelligible. That they were from 20 to 70 feet wide, and of a depth of from 5 to 7 feet below the surface. That they contained a great quantity of flint implements, a few bones, dead land-shells, charcoal and fragments of coarse pottery distributed in layers of red clay and chalk rubble, the pottery being only found immediately beneath the turf.

In considering the object and use of these pits, Colonel Lane Eox states that he believes them to have been for the purpose of obtaining flint for manufacturing implements, and subsequently to have been used for habitations.

I hope to add confirmatory evidence of both of these theories.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1880

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References

page 337 note a Archæologia, xlii. 27—52.

page 337 note b Archæologia, xlii. 53—76.

page 338 note a See a memoir “On the opening of Grime's Graves, in Norfolk,” by the Eev. William Greenwell, M.A., F.S.A. in the Journal of the Ethnological Society of London, 1870, vol. ii. p. 419.

page 338 note a The communications between this pit and those around it hare since been demonstrated by the subsequent excavations mentioned in the Supplemental Note at the end of this communication.

page 338 note a It will be remembered by those who heard Canon Greenwell describe his labours at Grime's Graves, or who have since read that description in the Journal of the Ethnological Society, that he therein states that “the workmen at Brandon engaged in extracting the flint use the same form of tool in wood and iron at the present day.”

page 348 note a Vol. v. p. 357; vi. p. 263, 430; vii. p. 413.