What they found

Thousands of years of prehistoric activity have left their mark all along the South Downs, a belt of chalk upland that stretches from the south coast at Eastbourne towards Winchester in the west. Blackpatch hill, where Time Team came for this programme, is in West Sussex, near Worthing, and it was here that the amateur archaeologist John Henry Pull first began exploring the flint mines and other ancient remains that dotted the landscape.

Pull went on to investigate at least 100 flint shafts at Blackpatch, together with a series of mounds containing burial deposits and what he identified as a range of dwelling pits. He detailed his findings in The Flint Miners of Blackpatch Hill, published in 1933. Time Team expert Miles Russell, who recently published his own book on the prehistoric flint mines of Sussex, featuring Pull's work in detail (see Further reading), described the site as potentially 'one of the most important prehistoric sites in the country'.

Unfortunately for the archaeologists, the whole area containing Pull's burial deposits and dwelling pits was extensively bulldozed and landscaped in the 1950s. This made any attempt to locate Pull's original excavations extremely difficult. Pull's drawings and other records may have been very detailed, but his maps and plans were not always to scale and even where they were, the subsequent landscaping made it very hard to retrace his excavations.

Time Team's 'geofizz' team did manage to locate the very clear signal of a round barrow originally excavated by Pull. Ploughed completely flat now, and invisible on the ground, this was excavated in its entirety by Francis Pryor and his team of diggers. They found that Pull's excavation had only been a partial one and they were able to uncover a number of cremation burials that Pull had missed.

The geophysics surveys had difficulties with the rest of the site, though, with most of their potential targets turning out to be ground disturbance from the landscaping. Phil Harding also pointed out the particular problems posed by trying to identify features in chalk. Because it is a very soft rock, it is liable to erode or rot away, leaving stains or other marks that can look remarkably like archaeological remains.

Eventually, the Team did manage to locate some of John Pull's 'dwelling pits' by careful reference to his plans, features that could still be identified on the surface and the use of Henry Chapman's surveying equipment. After excavation, however, the conclusion reached was that they were not dwellings but the pits left where trees had fallen in the past. The domestic rubbish and other items found in them by Pull could be explained by the fact that they had been used as temporary shelters or rubbish pits.

Time Team was able to confirm that Pull had been right, however, in identifying remains on nearby land as a prehistoric settlement. The notes and drawings for this site, excavated by Pull and colleagues such as his friend, the naturalist and writer Barclay Harris Wills, are no longer intact. So locating the exact site was a challenge in itself. Time Team was able to do so; and the discovery of a series of terraces cut into the hillside to provide flat bases for prehistoric dwellings demonstrated that Pull had been correct in this case.

All in all, Time Team's investigations were able to confirm the importance of the work carried out by Pull, whose efforts had often been diminished or neglected by the archaeological establishment. And the fact that John Pull's daughter and other family members had been present on site during the three days of the Time Team dig to see it done added greatly to the satisfaction of all those involved.

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