
Last Wednesday in
Brighton & Hove there was a news item about the date of the chalk figure, the Longman of Wilmington. In a search for more information, I found the excellent article,
New work overturns date for chalk Long Man of Wilmington (October 2003, University of Reading).
There's been a lot of speculation about the origin of the three well-known chalk figures -- the Longman in Sussex, the Uffington White Horse, and "the great phallic Cerne Abbas Giant" in Dorset.
Of the Longman,
Christine at Mirabilis.ca says
Carved into a steep slope on the South Downs in Sussex, the imposing figure has been claimed as an Anglo Saxon warrior, a Roman folly and an Iron Age fertility symbol.
The University of Reading archaeological team, assisted by local archaeologists from the Mid Sussex Archaeological Group, found, to the contrary, that this possibly 5,000-year-old figure was actually created in the 16th or 17th century CE, as was the Cerne Abbas Giant. Most other hill figures in the area date to the 18th or 19th centuries, with the exception of the Uffington horse which is the only truly ancient chalk figure in the area, dating to the Late Bronze Age.
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