Five main excavations and a number of smaller ones were undertaken in
advance of the construction of the A27 Westhampnett Bypass near
Chichester, West Sussex, in 1992. This volume presents the evidence for
settlement and related evidence that spans 11,000 years from the Late
Upper Palaeolithic to the medieval. The sites examined included a Late
Upper Palaeolithic palaeosol, two early Mesolithic residential base
camps, isolated Early and Late Neolithic pits, an Early Bronze Age
barrow and a Middle Bronze Age settlement, a Middle Iron Age settlement,
an unusual Romano-British enclosure of unknown function, perhaps a
shrine, and an Anglo-Saxon Sunken-Featured building. These excavations
provide the first archaeological transect across part of the West Sussex
Coastal Plain and provide a useful contrast to the well-explored Sussex
Downs immediately to the north. The Iron Age, Romano-British and
Anglo-Saxon cemeteries are published in volume 2.