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Whitehawk Camp Community Archaeology Project


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This exciting community archaeology project, based in Brighton, East Sussex, focused on Whitehawk Camp and the collection of objects excavated from the site in the 1920s and 1930s. This 5,500 year old Stone Age monument (a Neolithic Causewayed Enclosure) on Whitehawk Hill is a rare type of ritual monument (predating Stonehenge by around 500 years) and marks the emergence of Britain's first farming communities. The people who built Whitehawk Camp were Brighton's first residents! 

A series of volunteering opportunities, workshops and events ran at Brighton Museum & Art Gallery, Whitehawk Hill and other venues. Volunteers learnt how to catalogue and examine archaeological finds, undertake geophysical survey, excavate archaeological remains and undertake conservation work to the monument. A series of outreach events also examined themes such as our relationship with food, the bio-diversity of Whitehawk Hill and Whitehawk Hill's relationship with the wider Downland landscape. The results of the project have been interpreted through varied digital media and an archaeological archive report.

The Whitehawk Camp partnership, formed of the Centre for Applied Archaeology (University College London), Brighton & Hove City Council and Brighton and Hove Archaeological Society, has received £99,300 from the Heritage Lottery Fund to run this 12 month project from April 2014-March 2015. 


News and events  |  About Whitehawk Camp  | Media archive | Recommended reading | Project reports

Reconstrcution drawing

A reconstruction by Ian Dennis of the Whitehawk causewayed enclosure c. 3,600 cal BC (reproduced from Whittle, Healy and Bayliss 2011; fig. 1.3)


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