On the summit of Caburn are the remains of an Iron Age hill fort. The hill fort has been repeatedly excavated, by Augustus Pitt Rivers, the Curwens, the Curwens again, and the Sussex Archaeological Society. It may have the most excavations per site in Britain, with 170 trenches. Pollen records indicate that prior to 2000 BC the hill was covered with dark yew woodlands. The fact that a single Neolithic leaf-shaped arrowhead is the only pre-Bronze Age find on Caburn, despite the extent and duration of excavations, suggests that there was little permanent occupation then. The summit was initially enclosed in the middle Iron Age, with a deep V-shaped ditch and a bank of dumped spoil. Originally the ditch was 8m wide at the top, 2.7m deep, and enclosed an area of 1.9 ha. Since before the first excavations, it has been assumed that this enclosure was defensive, making a conventional hill fort. However the most recent excavators have challenged this assumption, arguing instead that the site was a religious enclosure, rather than a military fort or fortified farmstead. They point to the contents of the small pits, the insubstantial rampart, and its weak defensive attributes. There are over 140 burial pits on Caburn: some are circular, some triangular and some rectangular. Each pit was found to be full of artefacts. Deposits included weapons, tools, pottery, coins, querns, and disarticulated human and animal bones. The most recent excavators argue that these are not random, or mere domestic rubbish, but are structured deposits and appear "ritually charged". The NE corner of the enclosure seemed to have special significance, because the high-status objects were mostly deposited there. Outside the original rampart, on the northern side, there is a great ditch cut into the chalk. This is the side most vulnerable to attack. This outer ditch has long been assumed to be a late Iron Age fortification, perhaps in response to the threat from Rome. That assumption has now been disproved. The excavation of trenches through the chalk dump and a small internal bank turned up Romano-British pottery. Therefore the outer ditch is Romano-British or later, perhaps a Saxon measure against Viking raids.
Use
Caburn has only been reoccupied sporadically since the great northern ditch was built, at the Norman Conquest and during Stephen's reign. It appears that the Caburn was densely grazed during the Roman period, when the hill slopes around were a patchwork of rectangular ploughed fields. Then the hill probably returned to scrub, but by the Norman Conquest the Caburn was heavily grazed again and the hill slopes were ploughed into strips. Both the Roman rectangular fields and the medieval strips are still visible today. Over later centuries the dominant agricultural activity became sheep grazing. It was on Caburn and other local pastures that John Ellman reared his famous breed of Southdown sheep. During the Second World War two slit trenches and a three-sided Bren position were dug into Caburn as part of a 'stop-line' to defend against invasion.
In fiction Caburn appears as Wealden Hill in the novel of the same name by Graeme K Talboys. Caburn also features prominently in the novels and short stories of John Whitbourn. Caburn also appears in the children's story Elsie Piddock Skips in Her Sleep by Eleanor Farjeon. It is mentioned in Kipling's poem "The Run of the Downs."
Name
It has only been called Mount Caburn since the end of the 18th century. The origins of the name are disputed.
It has long been suggested that Caburn may come from Caer Bryn, though this is widely discredited
A rival explanation is that it was originally Calde burgh, then Mount Carbone.
Some local accounts allege that by the 18th century it was called Carber, and before that it was called Calborough Hill.
