The Burnswark Hill controversy: the artillery evidence

SummaryThe first part of this paper is a discussion of the basic pattern of land use on the South Downs from the Middle Bronze Age to the early Pre-Roman Iron Age. In the second part, the impact upon this pattern of a group of Bronze and Iron Age stock enclosures is considered, and it is argued that these developed directly into a number of small hill forts. A contemporary group of larger, early Iron Age, hill forts is also defined, and it appears that these too grew up upon an economic basis of stock raising. The social and cultural implications of these developments are discussed, and tentative contrasts are drawn with the nature of later hill forts in the region.

Hillforts are conventionally regarded as a phenomenon of the Late Bronze Age and Iron Age of temperate Europe, with some sites being constructed or reoccupied in the post-Roman Iron Age or Early Medieval period. In broad chronological terms, 1000 BC to AD 1000 covers the two millennia of the ‘long Iron Age’ in which hillforts are a major field monument. The concept of enclosure nevertheless has a much longer ancestry, from at least the earliest Neolithic. Some enclosed sites of the Neolithic and earlier Bronze Age in central Europe may be located on elevated ground or on promontories and may involve palisades or earthworks around their perimeter, just like Iron Age hillforts, so that the question arises whether these should not qualify as hillforts. To argue that their topographic location, or the scale or layout of enclosure, is not indicative of a primarily defensive purpose will not do, because some Iron Age hillforts seem to be compromised on these criteria. Nevertheless, by not entirely rational convention, hillforts as a regular class of field monuments are generally recognized from the Late Bronze Age, when their appearance in central and western Europe coincides with an intensification in the quantity and number of types of weaponry and defensive armour associated especially with the Urnfield culture. There are a number of hillfort sites in Britain where there is underlying evidence of Neolithic occupation, including occupation that was originally defined by enclosing works of earth or stone. There is no question of claiming continuity of occupation from Neolithic to Iron Age, but since the earlier earthworks would almost certainly still have been visible—at Maiden Castle, for instance, where the earliest Iron Age hillfort follows almost exactly the extent of the Neolithic enclosure—there is every reason to suppose that the existence of earthworks that would have been recognized as ancient, even if they were not formally venerated as places of ancestors, may have encouraged choice of these sites. An alternative interpretation would be simply to assume that the same advantages of location that commended themselves to Neolithic communities coincidentally satisfied equally the requirements of their Iron Age successors. But in that event the earlier monuments, like the Hambledon Hill long barrow or the Foel Trigarn cairns (Plate 14b), would hardly have been accorded the respect by later occupants that their condition indicates they were.

The Iron Age hill fort at Burrough Hill, Leicestershire, eastern England, lies in a lowland landscape of Mesozoic sedimentary rocks comprising mudstones with thin limestone units, sandstones and ironstones, which are blanketed by Pleistocene till. During the late Iron Age the hill fort was an important central place; permanent occupation probably began in Early–Middle Iron Age and continued into the Roman period. A variety of materials in archaeological contexts from the site, including clay rampart bonding and the clay linings of storage pits and floors, are found to yield characteristically mixed microfossil assemblages of Early to Late Jurassic ostracods and foraminifera, together with foraminifera from the Late Cretaceous. These provide a unique microfossil signature that indicate provenance from the local till. Microfossils can also be recovered from Middle to Late Iron Age potsherds at Burrough Hill, and these too suggest a local glacial source for the clay. Our analysis demonstrates the power of microfossils to provenance clay materials used for construction and manufactures at an Iron Age site, where a detailed baseline understanding of the local geology is firmly established.

The Iron Age in Central Europe is defined as a transformative time in local populations' lives including dietary patterns. Stable isotope analysis has become a valuable tool for investigating paleodietary and paleomobility patterns in ancient societies using samples of human and animal skeletal remains from individual burials. This is an isotopic study of collagen and apatite from Iron Age Liburian burials seventh to first century BC from Nadin‐Gradina, Croatia. Sixty human samples include 40 teeth and 20 bones. Fifteen individuals with paired tissues (teeth and bone) are used to explore differences between early and later life isotope compositions. Zooarchaeological remains from the site help approximate local dietary baselines of domesticated and hunted animal sources (n = 22 bones). Samples produced excellent collagen and uncontaminated carbonate yields to measure isotope ratios of carbon (13C/12C) and nitrogen (15N/14N). Overall, the dietary indicators are quite uniform,δ13C average −19.1 ± 0.6‰ andδ15N average +9.8 ± 0.6‰ for bone and almost identical values for sectioned crown and root tooth dentin. This suggests a consistent lifetime diet with strong reliance on C3plants such as wheat, oats, and other vegetables and that there was a moderate amount of animal protein, but unlikely including marine sources. This isotopically homogeneous dataset suggests that Iron Age hillforts and agricultural settlements in this region had relatively stable diets that were distinct compared with other nearby inland sites where millet was more prevalent. This research expands our understanding of a shift toward more localized subsistence strategies in the region and Nadin‐Gradina itself.

During European prehistory, hilltop enclosures made from polydisperse particle-and-block stone walling were exposed to temperatures sufficient to partially melt the constituent stonework, leading to the preservation of glassy walls called ‘vitrified forts’. During vitrification, the granular wall rocks partially melt, sinter viscously and densify, reducing inter-particle porosity. This process is strongly dependent on the solidus temperature, the particle sizes, the temperature-dependence of the viscosity of the evolving liquid phase, as well as the distribution and longevity of heat. Examination of the sintering behaviour of 45 European examples reveals that it is the raw building material that governs the vitrification efficiency. As Iron Age forts were commonly constructed from local stone, we conclude that local geology directly influenced the degree to which buildings were vitrified in the Iron Age. Additionally, we find that vitrification is accompanied by a bulk material strengthening of the aggregates of small sizes, and a partial weakening of larger blocks. We discuss these findings in the context of the debate surrounding the motive of the wall-builders. We conclude that if wall stability by bulk strengthening was the desired effect, then vitrification represents an Iron Age technology that failed to be effective in regions of refractory local geology.

The feasibility of vitrifying a sandstone enclosure in the British Iron Age

Population history and palaeoenvironment in the Skomantai archaeological site, West Lithuania: Two thousand years

This paper reviews some ceramic and metallic objects stored in the National Archaeological Museum (Madrid) which share their supposed or proved provenience from Las Cogotas site (Cardenosa, Avila) and their generic chronological attribution to the beginnings of the Iron Age. The lot is important as it characterizes the diffuse occupation at that period in the hillfort acropolis, despite the difficulties involved in its study due to the lack of information about their context. It is assumed that the selected materials are a significant sample that helps to qualify the apparent gap between the well-known stages of the end of the Bronze Age ('Cogotas I Culture') and the Late Iron Age. The joint analysis of the materials and their territorial contextualization allows to strengthening the hypothesis of the existence of this intermediate stage, in a site whose occupation was uninterrupted, according to our knowledge of other contemporary sites.

The purpose of this paper is to show to the scientific community the ceramic materials, in the main unpublished, obtained during the archaeological excavations of the sixties at the “low neighborhood” of the San L.luis’s hillfort (Allande, Asturias, North of Spain). These materials indicate unequivocally the existence of levels of the second Iron Age. Also we propose a theoretical reflection on the study of the ceramic technology, thanks to the application of anthropologic concepts, applying the Technologicall Operative Chains (TOC) and overcoming definitively the typologics analyses. All that allows us to present the ceramic basic types and technologies from the IVth century B.C. in the western of Asturias. The union of the TOC and of the contextual analyses allows to raise hypothesis of social processes, which in our concrete case of study we present in key of gender.

Widely regarded as major visible field monuments of the Iron Age, hillforts are central to an understanding of later prehistoric communities in Britain and Europe from the later Bronze Age. With such a range of variants represented, no single explanation of their function or social significance could satisfy all possible interpretations of their role. While they are conventionally viewed as defence settlements or regional centres controlled by a social elite, this role has been challenged in recent years, and instead hillforts are being considered primarily as expressions of social identity with strong ritual and cosmological associations. Current hillfort interpretations are in danger of reflecting contemporary social sensitivities more strongly than any recognizable Iron Age priorities, and the need for critical analysis of basic archaeological evidence is paramount. Critically reviewing the evidence of hillforts in Britain, in the wider context of Ireland and continental Europe, the volume focuses on their structural features, chronology, landscape context, and their social, economic and symbolic functions, and is well illustrated throughout with site plans, reconstruction drawings, and photographs. Harding reviews the changing perceptions of hillforts and the future prospects for hillfort research, highlighting aspects of contemporary investigation and interpretation.

SummaryThe results of the excavations at the Iron Age hillfort at Danebury between 1977 and 1980 are briefly discussed. The main features include a number of Iron Age round houses found in stratigraphical sequence in the lee of the ramparts, rectangular buildings in the centre of the fort which may have had a religious function, and other occupation traces including pits and post-holes. Among the finds discussed are a Late Bronze Age/Early Iron Age bronze hoard, bronze horse trappings, and a scrap iron hoard containing cauldron hooks. Excavations are continuing.

Human activity and the environment during the Late Iron Age and Middle Ages at the Impiltis archaeological site, NW Lithuania

Warfare made up a complex and vital part of the dynamics of Viking-Age society. At the core of Viking-Age warfare was the retinue, a long-lived institution which adds a considerable dimension of history to Viking-Age recruitment. In this chapter, my aim is to explore how weapon types and weapon combinations, as well as the geographical distribution of weapon graves and hill forts, might illustrate central developments in the practice of warfare and the principles of recruitment in central Norway, from the Early Roman Iron Age to the Early Viking Age. The design and combinations of weapons, as well as the distribution of weapon graves and hill forts, suggest that warfare demanded a great deal of resources in terms of both economy and manpower during the Roman Iron Age. Weapon equipment indicates that large fighting units were mobilised. Fighting units seem to have become smaller and with more specialised warriors during the Migration Period, and the need for manpower seems to have fallen. Instead, defence in the form of hill forts became more frequent. During the transition to the Merovingian Period, the practice of warfare changed profoundly. From now on warfare concentrated on the individual, with an emphasis on the horse, and on surprise, speed and improvisation. The individual warrior and the retinue became focal points in warfare and politics. In the Early Viking Age, weapon equipment and the distribution of weapon graves in the landscape indicate that larger armies were mobilised once again, but now with close historical ties to the retinue and its central position, which was established in the Merovingian Period.

Some time ago, divided walls were discovered in some Asturian hill forts. Locally, these were called modular walls and were described as local in origin. More recently, they have been dated to the 6th and 5th centuries BC or even earlier, based on the Campa Torres excavations and the proposed chronology for other settlements. This paper, however, maintains that this type of construction forms part of what is conventionally known as drawer walls, which appeared across the Peninsula during the second Iron Age. At the same time, work in hill forts in the ria de Villaviciosa allows the dating of the Campa wall to be questioned, reinterpreting its stratigraphy while evaluating references to other hill forts. Finally, it is suggested that these walls in Asturias should for now be dated at the 4th and 3rd centuries BC on.

A guide to rates of tooth wear in English lowland sheep