Sussex was home to mammoth hunters

6:46pm Sunday 25th May 2008

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Woolly mammoths were once hunted in the hills and valleys of Brighton, an archaeological dig has found.

The excavations on playing fields at Woollards Field in Brighton are taking place before the land is developed to house the new East Sussex county records office.

A team from Archaeology South East, based at University College London, was asked by East Sussex County Council to dig several four metre deep trenches on the site.

Digging through the years to more than 50,000 years ago, the finds have included struck flints that Neanderthals could have used to hunt mammoths and rhinoceroses.

At the top of the strata lies the more recent evidence of human existence - burnt-out mopeds and litter.

The trenches delve down to the chalk bedrock at the base of the valley, up through layers of gravels and silts to the present ground surface.

The layers show that a soil which formed around 10,000 years ago was subsequently buried by stones and earth from the surrounding hills, possibly as a result of over farming during the Bronze Age or Iron Age around 5,000 to 2,000 years ago.

This buried soil contained charcoal and pieces of burnt flint - evidence of human activity nearby - and were in turn buried by more gravel and the present day top soil which bears vegetation.