Valley Sediments as Evidence of Prehistoric Land-use on the South Downs

Abstract

Recent years have seen a shift of archaeological focus away from the confines of the individual site and towards broader issues of land-use and landscape history. Hence a need for archaeological and palaeoenvironmental evidence which tells us about the area utilized from sites rather than about the environment on the site itself. Valley sediments are one possible source of this evidence and this paper considers their potential with specific reference to sediments in chalkland valleys on the South Downs. It also attempts to confront some more specific problems of landscape history. One aim was to assess the extent of erosion and valley sediments within defined study areas and to establish to what extent climatic and land-use factors were responsible for changes in the pattern of sedimentation. It was also hoped that detailed work on land-use sequences would provide a framework for considering long-term settlement trends on the chalk. Why, for instance, do we have dense concentrations of archaeological sites on land which is today somewhat marginal, and how were the valley bottoms utilized in prehistory?