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Ploughing
on Steyning Round Hill destroyed the evidence of at least three round
barrows in 1952. Modern farming methods, using deep ploughing, have
accelerated the loss of our ancient heritage across the South Downs.
Fortunately,
something was already known about Steyning Round Hill before 1952. One
of the mounds was disturbed in 1826, when it was partly dug out to
extract some flint. At the time it was reported that a skeleton emerged
and was hastily reburied. Later, in 1949/50, archaeologists
investigated nearby and identified a Bronze Age urn field burial site.
All
this was confirmed by Steyning Grammar School Archaelogical Society
during its excavation of the site during the years 1950 to 1952. The
burial mound was described as low, 100 feet across and surrounded by a
ditch. It is marked on the map above as the central burial mound, next
to a cross-dyke. Many disturbed human bones were found. Pupils from the
school also discovered part of a Bronze Age urn, Roman coins of the 4th
Century AD and four buckles, one bronze and three iron.
Considered
together, these finds suggest that there was a cemetery begun in the
Bronze Age and that the burial site was used repeatedly for maybe two
or three thousand years. Roman coins were either hidden or ritually
placed in the grave and the buckles were Anglo-Saxon. Round barrows
elsewhere were also in active use from the Bronze Age to Anglo-Saxon
times.
The
long barrows of the Neolithic seem to have had a similar purpose to the
later round barrows. Building them must have employed vast efforts of
labour but their cultural significance endured for up to five thousand
years. Strangely, modern archaeology is still uncertain why they were
built, given that some do not not contain burials, and what their
prominent positions in the landscape might signify.
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