The Atlas of Hillforts of Britain and Ireland project (2012-2016) compiled a massive database on hillforts by a team drawn from the Universities of Oxford, Edinburgh and Cork. This volume outlines the history of the project, offers preliminary assessments of the online digital Atlas and presents initial research studies using Atlas data.
This is the first project to study hillforts in relation to warfare and conflict in Bronze Age Ireland. This project combines remote sensing and GIS-based landscape analysis with conventional archaeological survey to investigate ten prehistoric hillforts across southern Ireland.
This volume sets out the results of a detailed programme of non-intrusive geophysical survey conducted across hillforts of Dorset (UK), generating detailed subsurface maps of archaeological features, in the hope of better resolving the phasing, form and internal structure of these iconic sites.
The earthwork forts that crown many hills in Southern England are among the largest and most dramatic of the prehistoric features that still survive in our modern rural landscape. The Wessex Hillforts Survey collected wide-ranging data on hillfort interiors in a three-year partnership between the former Ancient Monuments Laboratory of English Heritage and Oxford University. These defended enclosures, occupied from the end of the Bronze Age to the last few centuries before the Roman conquest, have long attracted archaeological interest and their function remains central to study of the Iron Age. The communal effort and high degree of social organistation indicated by hillforts feeds debate about whether they were strongholds of Celtic chiefs, communal centres of population or temporary gathering places occupied seasonally or in times of unrest. Yet few have been extensively examined archaeologically. Using non-invasive methods, the survey enabled more elaborate distinctions to be made between different classes of hillforts than has hitherto been possible. The new data reveals not only the complexity of the archaeological record preserved inside hillforts, but also great variation in complexity among sites. Survey of the surrounding coutnryside revealed hillforts to be far from isolated features in the later prehistoric landscape. Many have other less visible, forms of enclosed settlement in close proximity. Others occupy significant meeting points of earlier linear ditch systems and some appear to overlie, or be located adjacent to, blocks of earlier prehistoric field systems.
The Habitats and Hillforts of Cheshire’s Sandstone Ridge Landscape Partnership Project was focussed on six of Cheshire hillforts and their surrounding habitats and landscapes. It aimed to develop understanding of the chronology and role of the hillforts and encourage local interest and involvement in their maintenance.
This book, organised into 14 well-crafted chapters, charts the archaeology, folklore, heritage and landscape development of one of England's most enigmatic monuments, Old Oswestry Hillfort, from the Iron Age, through its inclusion as part of an early medieval boundary between England and Wales, to its role during World War I.
Sling accuracy at a hillfort is measured here for the first time, in a controlled experiment comparing attack and defence across single and developed ramparts.
Moel-y-Gaer (Bodfari) is the northernmost of a series of hillforts atop the Clwydian hills in Wales. Nine seasons of survey and excavation reveal details of Moel-y-Gaer’s ramparts, entrances and interior. Discussion situates the site within the later prehistoric settlement record for north-eastern Wales paying particular attention to hillforts.
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.
