The stone-age people of Sussex were probably the descendants of hunter-gatherer groups who had occupied the landscape since the end of the last ice age.
Their lives were in the process of going through major changes including:
- an increasing reliance on domestic livestock
- cultivated plant foods
- a more stable pattern of settlement
This shift towards an agricultural way of life was reflected in an increasingly visible expression of ritual activity; first through the construction of long burial mounds and then through the creation of causewayed enclosures, of which there are 6 in Sussex.
Archaeologists have explored only a small portion of Whitehawk Camp. Within the fill of the surviving ditches, the remains of 4 complete burials have been found alongside:
- huge numbers of Stone Age flint tools
- pieces of pottery
- the bones of ox, cattle, pig, deer
- other fragmentary human remains
These suggest the consumption of large amounts of meat as part of the activities which took place on the hill.
The site was important enough to become the final resting place of members of the local tribes and these included the bodies of an 8-year-old child and a young woman buried alongside the remains of her newborn child.
The details of Stone Age religion are largely unknown, but the archaeology suggests:
- an emphasis on seasonal gatherings
- the importance of the ancestors
- tracking of the seasons through astronomical observation
- the marking of territorial ownership