Linear boundary 310m north west of the Tansley Stone on Bow Hill

Reasons for Designation

Beneficial land use over the years has enabled Bow Hill and Kingley Vale to support one of the most diverse and well preserved areas of chalk downland archaeological remains in south eastern England. These remains are considered to be of particular significance because they include types of monument, dating from the prehistoric and Roman periods, more often found in Wessex and south western Britain. The well-preserved and often visible relationship between trackways, settlement sites, land boundaries, stock enclosures, flint mines, ceremonial and funerary monuments in the area gives significant insight into successive changes in the pattern of land use over time. Linear boundaries are substantial earthwork features comprising single or multiple ditches and banks which may extend over distances varying between less than 1km to over 10km. They survive as earthworks or as linear features visible as cropmarks on aerial photographs or as a combination of both. The evidence of excavation and study of associated monuments demonstrates that their construction spans the millenium from the Middle Bronze Age, although they may have been reused later. The scale of many linear boundaries has been taken to indicate that they were constructed by large social groups and were used to mark important boundaries in the landscape, their impressive scale displaying the corporate prestige of their builders. They would have been powerful symbols, often with religious associations, used to define and order the territorial holdings of those groups who constructed them. Linear earthworks are of considerable importance for the analysis of settlement and land use in the Bronze Age; all well preserved examples will normally merit statutory protection. The linear boundary on Bow Hill survives well and can be expected to retain archaeological remains and environmental evidence relating to the monument and the landscape in which it was constructed. The linear boundary is one of a series of linear earthworks partly enclosing the three limbs of the Y-shaped hilltop and The Devil's Humps round barrow cemetery, and is situated c.260m south west of, and shares the same alignment with, an associated linear boundary. These monuments are broadly contemporary and their close association will therefore provide evidence for the relationship between land division and funerary practice during the period of their construction and use.

Details

The monument includes a linear earthwork running along the slope from south west to north east below the crest of a hill of the Sussex Downs. The earthwork is a ditch 440m long, up to 10m wide and 0.5m deep flanked on the downslope side by a bank 0.5m high and up to 5m wide. The south western end of the earthwork is formed by a distinct rounded terminal, while to the north east, the boundary gradually fades into the steep hillside.

MAP EXTRACT The site of the monument is shown on the attached map extract. It includes a 2 metre boundary around the archaeological features, considered to be essential for the monument's support and preservation.

Legacy

The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System number:

24391

Legacy System:

RSM

Sources

Books and journals
Curwen, EC, Prehistoric Sussex, (1929), 140
Curwen, E, EC, , Sussex Archaeological Collections in Sussex Archaeological Collections, Vol. 59, (1918), 49-50

End of official list entry

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