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Plan, with ditches in grey and trenches in yellow or blue

Barkhale Camp is a causewayed enclosure, a Neolithic archaeological site on Bignor Hill, on the South Downs of West Sussex, England. English causewayed enclosures, built from around 3700 BC until at least 3500 BC, are enclosed with ditches interrupted by gaps, or causeways. They may have been settlements, meeting places, or ritual sites. Barkhale Camp was identified by John Ryle in 1929 and surveyed the following year by E. Cecil Curwen, who listed it as a possible Neolithic site. A small trench was dug in 1930 by Ryle, and more extensive excavation was undertaken by Veronica Seton-Williams between 1958 and 1961, which found a characteristically Neolithic assemblage of flints. Peter Leach conducted another excavation in 1978, examining several mounds and attempting to find the line of the ditch and bank along the southern boundary. No material suitable for radiocarbon dating was recovered, but Leach suggested that the site was constructed in the earlier Neolithic, between 4000 BC and 3300 BC. (Full article...)

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On this day

July 26: Independence Day in Liberia (1847)

King Edward VIII unveiling the statue Canada Bereft on the Vimy Memorial

1759 – French and Indian War: Rather than defend Fort Carillon, near present-day Ticonderoga, New York, from approaching British forces, French brigadier general François-Charles de Bourlamaque withdrew his troops and attempted to blow up the fort.
1936 – The Canadian National Vimy Memorial (unveiling pictured), dedicated to the Canadian Expeditionary Force members killed in the First World War, was unveiled in Pas-de-Calais, France.
1968 – After coming second to Nguyễn Văn Thiệu in a rigged presidential election, Trương Đình Dzu was jailed by a South Vietnamese military court for illicit currency transactions.
2016 – A former employee carried out a mass stabbing at a care home for disabled people in Sagamihara, Japan, killing 19 people and wounding 26 others.

George Bernard Shaw (b. 1856)
Asif Ali Zardari (b. 1955)
Kate Beckinsale (b. 1973)

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Today's featured picture

The diamond firetail (Stagonopleura guttata) is a species of estrildid finch that is endemic to Australia. The species generally inhabits drier forests and grassy woodlands west of the Great Dividing Range, and can be distinguished by a black band on a white breast. Their flanks are black with white spots with a scarlet rump and a black tail. This diamond firetail was photographed in Glen Alice, New South Wales.

Photograph credit: John Harrison

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