[Stones] Long Man of Wilmington

[David Staveley]

I was involved with the excavations/geophysics with Chris, and can 
provide a bit more info on the dating.

The OSL dating was done on some soil from a horizon which included a 
large number of angular chalk
lumps, which at the time they thought were from the excavation of the 
Long Man. In the same layer,
there were also some of the brick fragments which TL dated to around 
the same time. When they dug
him, there was little, if any, cut into the chalk. Where did these 
chalk blocks come from then? My theory
is they came from the quarry above his head, and the people who dug 
the quarry dug the Long Man.
Looking at one of the sections of the excavation, you could see the 
(roughly V shaped) cut of the original
monument in the soil, but it didn't quite reach down to the chalk. 
It's a pity really, I was hoping for a
prehistoric date like Uffington.

At 13:11 20/07/2007, you wrote:
>Chris Butler has recently commented on the CBA's Britarch mailing 
>list that the Long Man was never a conventional chalk hill figure.
>
>He was involved in excavations which showed that the Long Man was 
>not re-cut in the 19th century because it had never been cut in the 
>first place. They found that it had been an outline in bricks from 
>its original construction in the 16th century. At the end of the 
>19th century, during one of its many reinstatements, an attempt was 
>made to see if it could be cut into the chalk, but it didn't work 
>and they simply relaid the figure using bricks.
>
>There will be an excavation report from Sussex Archaeological 
>Society in due course.
>
>Andy N
>
>
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-----
David Staveley (SCHWA) -- Sussex Archaeology & Folklore
http://www.homeusers.prestel.co.uk/aspen/sussex/
EMAIL: david at staveley.org or schwa at aspen.prestel.co.uk