GC23YVV Whitehawk Camp (Traditional Cache) in South East England, United Kingdom created by Orlando's Rat

This cache has been archived.

Orlando's Rat: I can no longer cache due to physical health problems and medical advice to continue to shield. So I'm archiving this cache. Thank you to everone who visited and logged a find (or a DNF).

Hopefully someone else will fill the void left by this archiving.

GC23YVV ▼

A cache by Orlando's Rat Message this owner

Hidden : 2/14/2010

Difficulty:

Terrain:

Size: Size: micro (micro)

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Geocache Description:

I have adopted this geocache from brightonrob, who has (regretfully) now moved away from the area. Hopefully I can fulfill his trust in allowing me to take on some of his caches.

Whitehawk Prehistoric Causewayed Enclosure

Whitehawk Camp is one of Britain's earliest stone age monuments. The hill was chosen some 5,000 years ago as the site for a series of circular ditches and banks which marked the hill as an area for feasting, burials and other activities of a ritual nature. Up to five of these circular ditch rings have been traced on the hill and these have been shown to have regular interruptions in their courses. Similar arrangements are known from other sites in Britain, all dating from the late stone age. This curious and obviously non-defensive arrangement gives these sites their name: causewayed enclosures. They represent the earliest ritual circles in northern Europe and pre-date later stone age enclosures like Stonehenge and Avebury by up to 1,000 years. They all appear to have been built around 3,500BC.

The people of Neolithic Sussex were probably the descendants of hunter-gatherer groups who had occupied the landscape since the end of the last ice age. Their llives were in the process of going through major changes including an increasing reliance on domestic livestock, cultivated plants foods and a more stable pattern of settlement. This shift towards an agricultural way of life was reflected in an increasingly visible expression of ritual activity; first through the construction of long burial mounds and then through the creation of causewayed enclosures, of which there are six in Sussex.

Archaeologists have explored only a small portion of Whitehawk Camp. Within the fill of the surviving ditches the remains of four complete burials have been found alongside huge numbers of stone age flint tools, pieces of pottery and the bones of ox. cattle, pig, deer and other fragmentary human remains. These suggest the consumption of large amounts of meat as part of the activities which took place on the hill. The site was important enough to become the final resting place of members of the local tribes and these included the bodies of an eight year old child and a young woman buried alongside the remains of her new-born child. The details of Neolithic religion are largely unknown, but the archaeology suggests an emphasis on seasonal gatherings, the importance of the ancestors, tracking of the seasons through astronomical observation and the marking of territorial ownership.

Whitehawk hill, with its commanding position and excellent views would have been pivotal in the lives of the area's Neolithic farming groups and survives today as a monument to an ancient culture which began the process of developing complex agricultural societies in Britain.

In 2014 additional archeology started in the area. More information can be found against the following link. http://www.ucl.ac.uk/caa/whitehawk-hlf

Best to park on Manor Hill, near just down from the racecourse around N50 49.657 W000 06.759.

Please note: Whitehawk Hill Road is NOT useable as a road, despite appearing on nearly all maps.

Additional Hints (Decrypt)

Ebpx (onfr bs cbfg)

Decryption Key

A|B|C|D|E|F|G|H|I|J|K|L|M
-------------------------
N|O|P|Q|R|S|T|U|V|W|X|Y|Z

(letter above equals below, and vice versa)