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. 



312 



