Wilmington Long Man - November 2002

Some of you were involved in a small project to excavate a trench below the Long Man at Wilmington over the first weekend of November. This was carried out in conjunction with a TV company and Martin Bell of Reading University. TV cameras were present, and the results were shown in a programme on the chalk landscapes as part of a new series "Landscape Mysteries" with Aubrey Manning on BBC2 on October 2nd 2003 at 7:30pm.

The idea behind the project was to see if it was possible to date the Long Man by looking at the hill-wash deposits that had accumulated below the hill figure. We opened at trench measuring 15 x 1.5 metres, which was initially excavated by machine, and then the section was excavated by hand a further 0.5 metres with all the artefacts being recorded three dimensionally. The section was then drawn and photographed, and samples taken for mollusc analysis.

The results and conclusions of this project are yet to be published.