Opening of the Dyke Road, or Black Burgh Tumulus, Near Brighton, in 1872

SHORTLY after the close of the meeting of the British Association at Brighton, in 1872, I opened a tumulus on the road from Brighton to the Devil's Dyke, which, as the contents were remarkable, and the record of it has not yet been published, it appears desirable I should bring the matter before the Institute.I had nioted this barrow for examination some years before, and, as the meeting of the Association afforded a good opportunity, I applied to the owner of the farm, MIr.Martin Robinson, of Saddlescombe, from whom I received liberal permission to dig there.The tumulus is about a mile from the Devil's Dyke, and about fifty yards to the west of the road, a short way to the north of the spot where it branches off from the road to Saddlescombe.It is in a line due north, and about two miles distant from the spot in which the well-known amber cup, now in the Brighton Museum, was found in 1856, in a tumulus in Hove Fields.It will be remembered that the contents of this tumulus consisted of the amber cup, a bronze dagger, a double-headed stone axe, and a whetstone, in association with a burnt body, all of which are now in the Brighton Museum.The mound now to be described was not very conspicuous from the road, to vhich fact it probably owed its preservation; but was nevertheless known to the peasantry of the neighbourhood from timne immemorial as the Black Burgh.After taking a careful section with a spirit-level, in a linc rulning north and south through the centre, the result of which is given in P1. xiii., in order that the shape of the mound before I touched it may be recorded, I commenced a trench 20 feet wide near the foot of the mound at its southern extremity, digging down until the hard chalk floor was reached, at about a foot and a half beneath the surface, and then northward towards the centre, being careful to lay bare the chalk floor everywhere. One of the first things discovered was a vertical cylindricalThis content downloaded from 185.44.79

Archaeology · Geography · Archaeological Research and Protection · Geology

• We Seem to be Working in the Same Line’

  Open Access•Alice Stevenson•Bulletin of the History of…•2012

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