A blog for the Heritage Lottery Funded Whitehawk Camp Community Archaeology Project. This 5,500 year old Stone Age monument, located on Whitehawk Hill, East Brighton, is a rare type of ritual monument (predating Stonehenge by around 500 years) and marks the emergence of Britain's first farming communities.
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Jane, one of the Museum volunteers, came into the Museum wanting to know what these unusual spherical flint-like objects were - found on her Whitehawk allotment. Having discussed whether they could...
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Our street is a cul-de-sac, overlooked by a steep wooded hill. If you walk to the end of our road, you'll find houses which have spread out benches and tomato grobags and laundry-airers, and children who play out, because cars don't disturb them. You'll also find a small gap in the…
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To finish off the Whitehawk packing task, the ‘packers’ were given an introduction to the analysis of human remains by Paola Ponce of Archaeology South East (UCL) using the four complete Whitehawk burials for reference.
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It’s going jolly well.
The Whitehawk Project has moved on from repacking pottery and flint work and will soon be starting to repack the animal bone.
The volunteers have packed some interesting scored chalk blocks along the way and have even added to their numbers.
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Whitehawk at the Solstice
Happy Summer Solstice! While thousands may have gathered at Stonehenge today we know from experience that very few would have been up at the Whitehawk Causewayed Enclosure today to see the sunrise. That's a shame because for most of the year you get some pretty amazing views of the horizon and, this time of year, a sunrise
to the north east. But did the Neolithic people who used the hill set up the monument in any way to mark the movement of the sun?
The late stone age circles at Whitehawk are much older than even the earliest phases of Stonehenge and proving an astronomical alignment would be significant. But we also imagine it would be pretty hard to demonstrate.
As you can see in this reconstruction, the banks, ditches, causeways and post holes in the monument would pretty much give you an opportunity to claim any number of calendrical or astronomical alignments and without total excavation and understanding the way the site grew over time in detail you'd have to be a very brave or foolish archaeologist to make the claim.
But that's not to say marking the passing of the seasons was unimportant and hopefully in the future our research might give indications of what time of year the site was used by other means such as careful study of the animal bones. For now its true to say that the hill offers a great view of dawn over the South Downs and, in mid-winter, of the sun rising from the sea.
This solstice weekend come and meet us and learn more about our project investigating Brighton's ancient stone age circles at the Sussex Festival of Nature.
http://www.brighton-hove.gov.uk/content/leisure-and-libraries/sussex-festival-nature
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The Whitehawk Project volunteers are still going strong.
This time members from Brighton and Hove Archaeological Society and community volunteers came in to aid the repacking of finds.
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As the archaeology volunteers start to unearth more about Whitehawk, you can download the material for free over on our Image Store.
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Tuesday 27th May the first group from BHAS started working on the finds from Whitehawk Hill. They re-packed artefacts that had been handled before, and commenced scanning in artefacts details, drawings and other newspaper cuttings from the 1920's and 1930's. It has proved such a popular activity that Andy from the museum has had to create a rota for those involved. There are some great pictures on the Whitehawk Hill website.
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About 12 members of the Brighton and Hove Archaeological Society volunteered for the Brighton Museum Whitehawk Hill project. Andy Maxted from the museum described the activities which included packing and re-packing the artefacts, and creating and adding details to new data sheets. The team started work in earnest the following week, last Tuesday
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The Whitehawk Project volunteers start repacking finds from the site.
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Last night we built this. It's a terrain model of the landscape between Brighton and Seaford.
Exploring landscape on foot and digitally is important if you are going to understand prehistory, and the landscape of Brighton and the nearby hills is spectacular.
In this model I've exaggerated the details of the landscape by increasing the vertical scale, so that every tiny valley is readable. On the left is the huge valley system that runs through Brighton (you cna clearly see the flat ground of the Old Steyne, towards the right is the wide floodplain of the River Ouse.
Between Brighton and Newhaven you can see the dry valleys of Whitehawk Bottom, Roedean, Ovingdean, Rottingdean, Saltdean and Portabello meeting the sea at the Chalk cliffline.
Whitehawk has a view over, and is visible from, big areas of this spectacular coastal Downland. The Downs provided farmland, grazing, wood and flint for the Neolithic people there, the coastal areas provided fish and shellfish which were and important foods. Water would have still been flowing in the stream now lost under the Old Steyne.
On this sunny day, get up and visit Whitehawk Hill, and try to see the beautiful Downland of the Brighton area with stone age eyes.
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Friday Teaser. What's this? What's your favorite archaeological diorama? or museum model? Who remembers this in Brighton Museum?
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So far this is our earliest image from Whitehawk Hill, found today in the collections of Brighton and Hove Museum.
"Brighton, View from the Race Hill" by Edward Fox, showing sheep and shepherds in the foreground. In the middle distance Attree’s Villa and the Pepper Pot can be seen. 1846."
The horizon shows the hills of Highdown, Cissbury and Chanctonbury.
In the foreground are two bucolic shepherds contemplating their flock. The hill still offers dramatic views and a place to get away from the city and enjoy your own Downland idyll.
In the future we may see sheep grazing again on the Down.
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Geophysics, spectacles and sea-mist: excerpts from John Funnell's field diary
Monday 28th April 2014
Weather:- Cool and sunny in the morning, warmer later
The Brighton and Hove Archaeological Society (BHAS) group met up with John Cook and Jon Sygrave from Archaeology South-East (ASE) at the entrance to Brighton race course. We moved into the race course complex and while sitting in the area next to the winners enclosure John Cook gave us an introduction to geophysics, and later, more specifically to magnetometry. The importance of not having any metalwork on your person was stressed. My spectacles proved to be ok, although it was later found that another member's hip replacement did affect the machine. After questions and answers we moved out into the field.
We watched as the machines were set up and put together, with the important points being emphasised. We were also shown how to zero in the machines, although the racecourse proved not to be a very ‘good’ area for a magnetometry survey, as there was too much metal work about. We had a go at zeroing in the machine and we were tested for metal content. The east/west/north and south positioning was practised.
We then set out the grids. We were divided into two groups, my group surveyed along the actual race track, as the scheduled ancient monument does cross it at several locations. The other group focused on the north/east section of the monument.
Off setting and working out the calculations was a problem, as we were not all that good at maths, but we did manage to survey six grids on that afternoon.
Tuesday 1st May 2014
Weather:- Still cool but sunny at times
This morning we set up the equipment carefully watched by both the Johns from ASE. We practised the zeroing in again and managed to complete nine partial grids down to the Manor Hill Road. The other team focused on the north east quadrant again, but later in the day moved over to the south/east section. We moved south of Manor Hill road and completed another nine gids along the race track. We used a base line along the west side of the race track and this made surveying so much simpler not having so many off-sets. John Cook started setting out and marking the grids for us in the south west section, but we could not start as the machine had reached its memory capacity.
Wednesday 2nd May 2014
Weather:- Much cooler, with sea mists wafting in from time to time.
We had to park in Monument Way today as the race course had a meeting and needed the car park, but it was no problem and was nearer where we were working. The first task of the day was to watch as the data from the previous surveying was downloaded onto a lap top. We then all moved back to our sections. The grid points were marked with blue ink so easy to find, but the surveying proved to consist of quite a number of irregular square and none of a complete nature, so lots more calculations. Today it was a little harder as the sueveying was over the very steep ramparts of the monuments, and keeping up a steady pace was quite tricky. My knee was playing up a little so Jon and Ed filled in for me a little. The terrain being contoured and irregular made the regular pattern of pacing quite a task, but our lads managed it. The cool mist was quite nice as times, as you can work up quite a sweat running up and down the lines.
Wednesday 7th May 2014
At the offices of Archaeology South-East. Cook had set up two of his computers and started showing us how to transfer the data from the magnetometer machine onto the computers. He showed how top set the machine to the correct settings and indicated as the machine figures changed as the information was moved across. The computers now had the data, but had not as yet processed it, it was still raw data.
Thursday 8th May 2014
John Cook went into great detail about the downloading process and also the data processing. He explained the various stages of tweaking and adjusting the data, and how care should be taken to avoid deleting objects or features that may have been obscur3ed by magnetic debris. We were shown the various pieces of software used including Geoplot and TerraSurveyor. The magnetometer is a Fluxgate Gradiometer, and the ‘gradiometer’ is important. The importance of magnetics fields and objects was mentioned and the measurement of nano Tesla readings. A nano reading is one billionth of a tesla which are indicated by the symbols nT.
From the imported data you could then clip and strip the images or use a number of other techniques, but it is imported to always keep the original raw data.
Archaeological features may not be recorded as they may be too deep, if over a metre.
If linear features are known running north/south angle the survey at 45 degrees so that these lines are not regarded as debris.
The grid size of 30 metres square is a good size for walking pace. Try to walk south to north on all lines if possible, but zig-zagging is the general way of doing things as this is much quicker.
Magnetrmometry will be good at metal and glass working sites, where heating has taken place and alos kilns and furnaces should produce good results.
Features and things
Bipolar images are likely to be modern pipe lines or utilities- black/white strong images, and this could obliterate archaeological features.
Watch out for warning signs about gas and electric pipes.
Dipole – Large blobs, could be metal work such as car parts or other iron or metal objects, but equally it could be a furnace, only way to know is to dig it. IT could alos be clay pipes (Therma), but drains will produce patterns on the results.
Positive linear is highly likely to be archaeology, it will have just onbe colour reading and not black/white.
Football stripes on a field could etch into the sun soil and produce results
Ridge and furrow fields could produce results
Metal fences will produce serious anomalies.
Linear features could be agricultural, plough marks
Magnetic debris is a spread of activity and may not produce good results
Negative linear anomalies could be compacted ground or buried earthworks.
Amorphus areas are likely to be geology.
Friday 9th May 2014
We had a look at the results form Whitehawk and it is a very complex picture, just happy that I don’t have to choose the digging locations. We had a revision session and then some had a hands on go at transferring the data, and always important o keep the raw data. We examined several book sbaout geophysics and John Cook answered any questions put to him about the activity.
Always keep raw data
De- spike – various options
De-spke and edit if required- various fields can be used to adjust the images.
Look at high settings
Look at low settings
Transfer Geoplot into Autocad.
It was a very enjoyable few days in the field and learning how to transfer the data, just in case the Society decides to purchase a machine. It has inspired us to organise and get a geophysics team going, even if it is resistivity with our own RM15 until we feel confident to transfer to magnetometry.
Blog post by John Funnell.
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