In the autumn of 1949 when ploughing was taking place on a south-eastern spur of Steyning Round Hill (Map Ref. 51/166099), fig. 1, two schoolboys D. Atkinson and M. J. Manetta found the remains of nine Late Bronze Age urns with cremated bones just under the surface of the plough soil. They lay in a circular area roughly 30 feet in diameter covered with large flints. Most of these urns were wisely left in situ until the Steyning Grammar School Archaeological Society under the direction of the Headmaster, Mr J. Scragg, and Mr W. Gardiner, assisted by Messrs N. E. S. Norris, G. Mason, and the writer, members of the Brighton and Hove Archaeological Society, undertook a methodical exploration. Our grateful thanks should be recorded to the farmer, Capt J. T. Mackley, who permitted the excavation and to all who helped in the work and dealt with the finds, as well as to Mr D. C. Tutt for kindly drawing the plan and pottery.

In the years between the two World Wars considerable research was done by Sussex archaeologists on the Late Bronze Age settlements of the South Downs (figs, 1 and 30). Several habitation sites were partly excavated, notably Park Brow near Worthing by Mr Garnet R. Wolseley in 1924, New Barn Down, Harrow Hill near Worthing by Dr E. Cecil Curwen in 1933, and Plumpton Plain, near Brighton, by Dr E. Cecil Curwen and Mr G. A. Holleyman in 1934, and an analysis of the pottery from these sites by Professor C. Hawkes has provided a typological and chronological basis for subsequent research.

After World War II the authors, inspired by the work of Dr J. F. S. Stone on the Deverel-Rimbury Settlement on Thorny Down and of Dr G. Bersu at Little Woodbury, decided to strip completely a small group of earthworks of probable Late Bronze Age date on Itford Hill near Lewes. In the spring of 1949 the site, together with the adjacent linear earthwork and group of lynchets, was surveyed by Mr E. W. Holden and Mr G. A. Holleyman. Excavations were carried out for each of five seasons (1949–1953) by means of volunteers and with the financial backing of the Brighton and Hove Archaeological Society.