ABSTRACT
The demonstration of 'cultural continuity' is now a fashionable exercise dominating much current writing in British archaeology. Gray classified English field systems on a regional basis for the first time, and explained their origins largely in terms of their supposed association with various groups of invaders entering the British Isles. As Haggett explains, the regular geometrical shape that most closely retains the advantages of the circle is the hexagon; and the packing of 'circular territories' into a uniform area would produce a regular hexagonal pattern of territories. In the case of south-central Sussex, it has been possible to discuss the earliest post-Roman namsites, defined by place es in-ingas, with supplementary evidence from pagan Saxon burials. A very large number of the Middle and Late Bronze Age sites have also yielded Early Bronze Age or even Neolithic pottery in small quantities, suggesting that they were established in roughly the same areas as had been exploited in earlier times.
