Jewell Few archaeological projects set out with the intention of running for decades. The committee of the Experimental Earthwork project, however, developed an elaborate programme from 1960 until well into the 3rd millennium AD, designed to study the long-term processes of earthwork construction and change. Paul Ashbee and the late Peter Jewell present their personal view of the aims, experiences and some results of this project. Sadly Peter Jewell died on 23 May 1998, and this paper is a fitting tribute to his major role in the enterprise.
Significant numbers are on the chalklands which have largely cradled present-day prehistory.
It is only during the past century that there has been attention to the fact that such monuments are, as they appear today, a product of complex natural processes, weathering and denudation, in other words change and decay. From the outset of systematic archaeological excavation it was realized that these mounds and banks were spread, smoothed and rounded while their attendant ditches and pits, beneath their mantle of turf and mould, were infilled with chalk from their reduction and erosion. Appraisals of the time-scales involved in these processes were, despite enlightened incidental observations, inexact, although it was tacitly agreed that initially they may have been speedy. Experimental controls, or contrived replication, that would give precision to interpretation was clearly a necessity. To this end two experimental earthworks were built, the first on chalk downland and the second on a gravel heath.