Excavations at Wolstonbury Later Bronze Age hilltop enclosure.

Abstract

In 1995 a team from Bournemouth University excavated three trenches across the hilltop earthwork enclosure systems of Wolstonbury Hill. Results suggest that the main enclosure, first excavated in 1929 and previously interpreted as either an anomalous Iron Age stock pound or an Early Bronze Age henge monument, is actually a Later Bronze Age enclosure of ‘Rams Hill’ type, representing one of the earliest hillforts to be constructed on the South Downs. Samples for land snails taken from ditch fills and buried soils have provided a detailed environmental background for the monument and its immediate setting whilst the two inner enclosures recorded from the hill have now been identified as the remains of prehistoric field systems of probable Iron Age date.