A HISTORY OF SUSSEX objects to every one who knows this coast. Their weather-worn fissures extend for considerable distances into the rock, and generally speaking are sufficiently broad to serve as galleries along which one can walk. In a few places they are wide enough to accommodate several people. It is remarkable that the suitability of such a place as this for a primitive rock-shelter should not long ago have occurred to the minds of archsologists ; but the general impression seems to have been that the weathering and disintegration of the sandstone of which the rocks are composed advanced at a much greater speed than has actually been shown to have been the case, and that as a consequence the deep ravines, fissures, and channels as we now see them could never have served as shelters for prehistoric man. About the year 1878, however, Mr. R. Garraway Rice found among the loose sand at the bottoms of the fissures numerous flint implements of a neolithic character and fragments of pottery. From that time onward both he and other antiquaries, particularly Mr. W. J. Lewis Abbott, F.G.S., have continued to find evidences of an extensive neolithic population at this point. A little before the year 1895 the latter gentleman made a careful exploration of the ground just round Castle Hill. Upon removing the superficial layer of washed or blown-sand, about a foot thick, ' the middens,' writes Mr. Abbott,' ' are reached ; probably about nine-tenths of the material is dirt, the rest, relics of man's occupation, which therefore occur in bushels. They embraced the whole para- phernalia of the life of the period, and consisted chiefly of shells of molluscs, bones of animals, birds and fishes, stone and bone implements and pottery.' It is noteworthy that the bones of such animals as the small ox (Bos longifrons) and the wild boar [Sus scrofa), which were found in all sizes, had always been split open for the sake of the marrow, and in two cases Mr. Abbott found a flint wedge still fixed in the bone as it had been left by prehistoric man. It would be difficult to find a more convincing proof of the neolithic age of this site than is affiorded by the use of flint wedges for a purpose for which metal implements, had they been obtainable, would have served so much better. The other bones found consisted of those of the sheep or goat (in abundance), the roe, the fox, the badger, three kinds of birds, about six species of fish, and shells of many kinds of shell fish. The flint implements which have been found in great numbers are divisible, in Mr. Abbott's^ opinion, into three groups. First, there was a minor group of the ordinary neolithic forms, such as are found practically all over the country. Secondly, there was a large group containing forms identical both in general appearance and detail of secondary work with those found in the French caves. Thirdly, there was a group of minute and highly specialized forms. The last group includes some very small fragments of delicately chipped flint, possibly intended for the barbs of fish-hooks, and other purposes.
- Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xxv. 124. ^ Ibid. p. 126.
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