Keymer Burial Ground - by Chris Butler

On the 26^th and 27^th February MSFAT carried out an assessment excavation at Keymer, on the site of a proposed new burial ground. This is located opposite the church, and may have originally been on the Medieval road frontage.

Three machine cut trenches were excavated, and revealed a number of features. Close to the road frontage a feature produced Medieval pottery, animal bone and a Medieval copper-alloy strap end. There were also a number of small un-dated features. However, the most interesting feature was a large prehistoric ditch orientated north-south, which was located in all of the trenches, although at the south end it had been largely truncated.

The ditch was 5m wide and almost 1m deep in the central trench, and produced prehistoric flintwork, fire-fractured flint, a few sherds of pottery and a single animal tooth. The pottery has provisionally dated the ditch to the first half of the first millennium BC (i.e. Late Bronze Age to Early Iron Age).

We shall probably return to the site in the near future to excavate in advance of the construction of an entranceway into the field. A full report will appear in a forthcoming newsletter.