From next week Brighton Museum & Art Gallery are exhibiting a site-specific film all about Brighton’s Whitehawk Hill, one of the UK’s oldest Neolithic sites.
WHITE HAWK HILL is a new work by environmental artists Red Earth (Catlin Easterby and Simon Pascoe) and filmmaker Anna Lucas. Created as a three-screen installation and filmed over twelve months, it evokes this forgotten hinterland and the people who experience it, both today and in the prehistoric past.
The film was made in partnership with local archaeologist Matt Pope, who grew up exploring Whitehawk Hill and abandofbrothers, who are a 'rites of passage' mentoring charity for young men (founded in Whitehawk)
“On the hill lie traces of an ancient ritual monument known as Whitehawk Camp.” explained Red Earth’s Simon Pascoe, “Older than Stonehenge but now dominated by a mobile phone mast and cut by road and racecourse, 5,500 years ago this Neolithic enclosure was a communal focus for gatherings, feasting and burial”.
“Imagine four huge white chalk walls encircling the summit of the hill. In low light some of these earthworks are still clearly visible.” said Red Earth’s Caitlin Easterby, describing the Neolithic site. “Excavations in the early 20th century revealed pottery, flint tools, animal bones and carved chalk. But it’s the human burials that bring our ancestors closest to us: a 40 year old man, a young boy, and two young women in their twenties. One of the women was buried with her unborn baby, a carved chalk pendant and fossilized sea urchins laid by her side. These are poignant personal details echoing across five thousand years to touch our imagination.”
Simon continued “For one year we recorded the hill through the changing seasons, running events with the band of brothers community, exploring the hill’s neolithic past as a place for gatherings, rituals and feasting.”
“Working with abandofbrothers was central to the film’s concept. Life for a twenty-year-old in Neolithic times would have been very different to young people’s experience today. Average life expectancy was around thirty. The young men and women who gathered here would have been skilled and respected members of their community.
In contrast, a twenty-year-old in today’s society can feel alienated and marginalised, excluded rather than included. With abandofbrothers we wanted to explore this contrast and give young people the chance to make a personal connection with the past.”
Caitlin sums up the project “WHITE HAWK HILL pays homage to thousands of years of uninterrupted human interaction with this extraordinary place, connecting archaeology, myth and contemporary life to reveal a landscape shared by two communities over 5000 years apart”.
WHITE HAWK HILL was made in association with CAA/UCL’s Dig Whitehawk programme, and Red Earth received support from local archaeologists based at Archeology South East, with help from Paul Gorringe from Brighton and Hove Ranger Services, Donna Close, ex-Brighton and Hove arts officer, and the Brighton Archaeology Group.
Funded by Arts Council England, One Planet Living, and the Centre for Applied Archaeology (UCL) through the Heritage Lottery Fund, with support from Brighton & Hove City Council, Brighton Museum & Art Gallery, and De Montfort University.
Whitehawk Camp is situated on Whitehawk Hill, a portion of chalk downland on the east of Brighton overlooking the coastal plain, and rising above the Whitehawk Estate. It is a world-class heritage site, a rare type of ritual monument and of considerable national importance.
Whitehawk Camp is the second largest Neolithic causewayed enclosure in Britain and, at 5,500 year-old (predating Stonehenge by around 500 years), one of the oldest Neolithic sites in the country - and yet it is only just beginning to gain recognition. At one time an important strategic meeting point for the local community and visible for miles, it is now a hidden and broken landscape, divided by a road, a racecourse and a housing estate.
The monument comprises four concentric rings of ditches, broken up by numerous causeways. Its survival is remarkable: it is now surrounded by the city and development has crept up to its edges. Despite neglect over recent decades earthworks are still visible on parts of the monument.
Excavations in the early 20th century revealed pottery, flint tools, animal bones, chalk carvings and four poignant human burials, a 40 year old man, a young boy and two women in their twenties: one buried with her unborn baby, a carved chalk pendant and fossilised sea urchins laid by her side.
Most of the hill remains unexcavated.
From the available archaeological evidence of human occupation, multitudes of pottery shards, flint tools and the intriguing human burials, activity at Whitehawk Camp commenced around 3650BC. The inhabitants of the camp were probably using it periodically, to meet and carry out ritual activities including feasts and ceremonies.
Causewayed enclosures like Whitehawk lie on the historic boundary between hunter/gathering and farming-based lifestyles, and therefore represent one of the most significant cultural transitions in human history.
More at http://www.redearth.co.uk and
http://brightonmuseums.org.uk/brighton/what-to-see/coming-soon/white-hawk-hill/
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