Offham Hill Causewayed Enclosure

No-one can say with any certainty what the purpose was for a causewayed enclosure. Ritual space, cattle pen, meeting point, burial ground, trading post or settlement; all have been offered as theories for these enigmatic Neolithic sites. They generally comprise a central area surrounded by a series of concentric ditches and banks interspersed with a radial arrangement of entry paths (causeways). Despite this enduring mystery, what we can say with absolute certainty is that the enclosure located at the summit of Offham Hill, East Sussex, is all but eradicated.

What ploughing did not erase was obliterated by 19th century chalk quarrying for lime production. Quarrying removed the entire eastern side of the site to a depth of 40m. Driven to desperate measures by the guarantee of further, terminal, damage by agriculture, archeologists undertook radical measures in the 1970s and scraped back most of the extant site to the chalk bedrock in order to sift the topsoil and recover whatever artefacts and remains that might be hidden in the soil. To preserve, they destroyed.

As a consequence of these successive depredations, any surviving structures are so faint as to be no longer visible to the untrained eye. Offham Hill Causewayed Enclosure has been transformed, over time, into a place with a distinctive hybridity; partly invisible, part void, and part archive.

This work is presented as a diptych, paired prints made from images taken in the same week, late winter 2024.