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Excavations at Mount Caburn Camp, Near Lewes, Conducted in September and October, 1877, and July, 1878

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Excavations at Mount Caburn Camp, Near Lewes, Conducted in September and October, 1877, and July, 1878 XXI.—Excavations at Mount Caburn Camp, near Lewes, conducted in September and October, 1877, and July, 1878. By Major-General AUGUSTUS LANE FOX, F.B.S., F.S.A. Read June 20, 1878. ALTHOUGH many places from their extent may have possessed greater import- ance in early times, no British camp is perhaps better known to ourselves than Mount Caburn. Situated, not in the midst of a deserted heath as some of them are, but in the centre of a populous district, a very conspicuous feature from the town of Lewes, and close to the junction of the railways from Eastbourne and Newhaven, it has necessarily attracted the attention of all who pass that way. Various conjectures have been hazarded in local histories as to its origin and uses, and more numerous by far must have been the unrecorded speculations of the curious during the long period that Lewes has figured in history. To put such speculations to the test, and determine by means of any relics that might be discovered the date of so interesting a monument, appeared to me a matter worthy of the attention of archaeologists, and I therefore applied to Mr. Brand, the Speaker of the House of Commons, who is the owner of the property, for permission to dig, which he kindly granted, and the excavations were com- menced on the 2nd September, 1877, and continued during the greater part of the month. Mount Caburn Camp is situated at the south-eastern corner of a block of hills detached from the range of the Southdowns by means of two valleys, through which flow the Ouse and its tributary from Glynde. It appears to be generally admitted by all writers on this district that the valley of the Ouse formed an arm of the sea in prehistoric times, and that the water extended up the fork formed by the two valleys as far as Glynde on the east, and Hamsey above Lewes on the west; and as the whole district to the north was occupied by the dense and at that time probably impassable forest of Anderida, the Caburn range must have VOL; XLVI. 3 I 4LL4< Excavations at Mount Caburn Camp. been favourably situated for defence on all sides. An irregular oval, two miles in length and one in breadth, having a ridge of lofty hills all round the outside, and a sheltered valley in the middle which opened into the Ouse valley on the south- west, and afforded easy access to what was then the sea, this position appears to have been in every way adapted to be the home of an independent tribe. Numerous traces of early habitation and of terrace cultivation are to be seen in the central valley; and the bounding ridge of hills on the south side, overlooking the Ouse, is defended by two camps, the larger one, which I have named Rans- combe Camp to distinguish it, because situated on the farm of that name, above Southerham, and the smaller one, properly termed Mount Caburn, or the Caburn, which is the subject of the present communication, situated at the south-eastern corner of the range in question, and commanding an extensive view of the whole. The presence of two camps in such close proximity has afforded matter for speculation. The Rev. T. W. Horsfield, in his History of Lewes, supposes the western camp to have been thrown up by the Romans, and that the smaller camp on the east may have been occupied by the Regni, who possessed the whole of this region at the time of Vespasian's expedition.11 In my paper on the hill forts of Sussex, published in the Archceologia* I adopted the view of Mr. Horsfield; at the same time suggesting, however, that the two camps might be of different dates. Sub- sequent examination, when the crops were off the ground, has confirmed me in the opinion that the western earthworks are certainly the ramparts of a distinct camp, the defensive line of which can be traced all round, but of British origin, and that it has none of the characteristics of a Roman camp. Another writer, the Rev. E. Turner, supposes that the eastern work, that is Mount Caburn, was not a camp but a place of druidical worship, and he supposes that the hill round which the ramparts are drawn was of artificial construction.0 This we might perhaps assume from the lay of the land to be an error, even had not the natural formation of the hill been proved conclusively by my recent excavations. Lest however I should be supposed to approach the subject with a professional bias in favour of camps, I prefer to quote the authority of the Rev. W. De St. Croix, vicar of Glynde, who in commenting on Mr. Turner's theory a The History and Antiquities of Lewes and its vicinity, by the Rev. T. W. Horsfield, F.S.A. vol. i. p. 37, 1824. b Examination of the Hill Forts of Sussex, by Col. A. Lane Fox, Arcluvologia, vol. XLII. p. 35, 1869. 0 On the Military Earthworks of the South Downs, by the Rev. E. Turner, Sussex Archaeological Collections, vol. iii. p. 183. YaL.3foVI.Pl XXII. RANSCOtKBE CAMP MAP OF MOTHSTT CABTJHN sg AND RANSCOMBE CAMP SECTION OF MOUNT CABURN ON LINE OF EX CAVATIONS.F. A.E. Puhlishedj by, th& Soaefy of Antiquaries of LoruLoru, 1881. Excavations at Mount Caburn Camp. 425 says,a" No one with an eye for a defensive position could have failed to appreciate the natural advantages for defence afforded by Caburn." The place in fact has all the recognised characteristics of a British fortress (Plate XXII.). Its nearly round form is given to it by the roundness of the hill. A single line of rampart and ditch surrounds the hill on all sides, but on the northern side, where the natural defences are weakest, the rampart is heightened, and an additional rampart and ditch added on the outside. Moreover the rampart at the entrance is thrown back so as to give a cross fire on the approach, in the same manner as at one of the entrances at Cissbury and many other British entrenchments. Mr. Turner, following out his idea of a place of worship or burial, derives the name of the place from Carnbrauh, but there can be little doubt, I think, that the derivation given by Mr. De St. Croix is the correct one, viz. Caerbryn, or fortified hill, and, as he says the addition of the word mount is mere tautology, it should be designated "The Caburn," and it appears that it was so called by some of the older inhabitants even in his own time. In 1819-20, Dr. Mantell, the well-known geologist of Sussex, opened several tumuli on the hill near the Caburn, and as the whole of this range sometimes goes by the name of Mount Caburn it has been supposed that he excavated in the camp. This however is a mistake. I have taken pains to ascertain all that had been done previously to my commencing operations on the 2nd September, 1877, and I find that undoubtedly the camp itself bad never been touched. The tumuli opened by Dr. Mantell were of two kinds;b the larger ones con- tained interments by cremation, the bones being preserved in rudely-baked urns and accompanied by beads of jet and amber, green glazed pendent ornaments, bone circlets, amulets of flint, chalk, pottery, and sandstone, and flint celts and chisels. Some of the beads and pottery have been deposited in the British Museum ; these, Dr. Mantell, together with the Rev. James Douglas, author of Nenia Sritannica, who accompanied him, attributes to the earliest Gaulish colonists of this country. Whether the term Gaulish can properly be applied to these earliest tumuli may be questionable. The other sort were for the most part small tumuli in clusters. An oval space surrounded by a row of large flints appeared to have been cleared in the chalk rock, within which the body was placed full length, an iron spear on one side, a sword on the other, a knife in the hand, a The Parochial History of Glynde, by the Rev. W. De St. Croix, Sussex Archaeological Collections, vol. xx. p. 47. b A Day's Ramble in and about Lewes, by Dr. Mantell, p. 133. Horsfield, History of Lewes, p. 46. 3 i 2 426 Excavations at Mount Caburn Camp. and a shield between the legs. The earth was heaped over the body and the tumulus covered with turf. One tumulus to the north of " Ox Settle Bottom," the name given to the central valley above mentioned, contained interments both by cremation and inhumation. Mr. De St. Croix afterwards assisted in the opening of other tumuli on the hill, under the direction cf a Committee of the Sussex Archaeological Society, but nothing was found beyond ashes, and a few human teeth." He also gives an account of a discovery made near the limeworks beyond Glynde, at a place called Gill's Graves,b in which some iron knives were found; these are now in the Lewes Museum, and appear to be Saxon in their form. The graves here were cut east and west, and the skeletons appear to have been extended, sometimes with the legs crossed: no warlike implements were found. This, so far as I can ascer- tain, is the sum total of all that had been discovered in the immediate vicinity of the camp, and it is not very conclusive. We have evidence of people of the bronze and iron ages, but to what precise period or race the latter belonged we derive no exact information from any records that have been preserved.
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