Episode 1992
Offham Hill
Tue, 2022-Oct-18 00:46 UTC
Length - 2:58
Direct Link
Welcome to featured Wiki of the Day where we read the summary of the featured Wikipedia article every day.
The featured article for Tuesday, 18 October 2022 is Offham Hill.
Offham Hill is a causewayed enclosure, near Lewes in East Sussex. Causewayed enclosures were built in England from shortly before 3700 BC until about 3300 BC; they are characterized by the full or partial enclosure of an area with ditches that are interrupted by gaps, or causeways. Their purpose is not known; they may have been settlements, meeting places, or ritual sites. The site was first identified as a possible causewayed enclosure in 1964, by a member of the Sussex Archaeological Society. The Ordnance Survey inspected the site in 1972 and recommended an excavation, which was carried out in 1976 by Peter Drewett.
The site was badly damaged by ploughing by the time of Drewett's excavation, which limited his ability to draw conclusions from finds in the ploughsoil. Drewett mapped what appeared to be ditches, banks, and causeways before beginning to dig, and then cleared about half the site down to the chalk, confirming the location of the ditches and causeways. The majority of Drewett's finds came from the ditches, including about 7,000 worked flints, nearly 300 sherds of pottery, a human burial, other human bone, and animal remains. Most of the pottery was identified as Neolithic, and radiocarbon dating of charcoal found in one of the ditches confirmed that the enclosure dated to the Neolithic. A reanalysis of the radiocarbon dates in 2011, along with further radiocarbon dates from the human remains, concluded that the enclosure was constructed in the mid-fourth millennium BC. Further ploughing after the 1976 excavation led to the complete destruction of the site, in Drewett's opinion. The site was designated a scheduled monument in 1954.
This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 00:46 UTC on Tuesday, 18 October 2022.
For the full current version of the article, see Offham Hill on Wikipedia.
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