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Jaime
Kaminski
Sussex Archaeological Society
Barbican House
169 High Street
Lewes
BN8 1YE
A small excavation was carried out on a section of âthe Devil'â's Ditchâ at Halnaker. This ditch-and-bank entrenchment has generally been interpreted as part of a series of dykes enclosing a c.1st century BC territorial oppidum at the western edge of the Sussex coastal plain. However, previous campaigns of excavation have produced ambiguous dating evidence, leading to some suggestions that the monument is actually of medieval date. Although there were some indications of Roman and/or medieval re-cutting of the ditch, OSL dating of the primary fills produced date ranges falling entirely within the 1st millennium BC. The most significant finding is that the earliest fills of the ditch had started to accumulate by c.80 BC at the latest. This evidence essentially disproves the theory that the ditch was first established as boundary to a medieval deer park but it also poses questions about whether the entrenchment could have been founded before the Late Iron Age.