Hillforts in Britain

Hillforts in Britain refers to the various hillforts within the island of Great Britain. Although the earliest such constructs fitting this description come from the Neolithic British Isles, with a few also dating to later Bronze Age Britain, British hillforts were primarily constructed during the British Iron Age. Some of these were apparently abandoned in the southern areas that were a part of Roman Britain, although at the same time, those areas of northern Britain that remained free from Roman occupation saw an increase in their construction. Some hillforts were reused in the Early Middle Ages, and in some rarer cases, into the Later Medieval period as well. By the early modern period, these had essentially all been abandoned, with many being excavated by archaeologists in the nineteenth century onward.

There are around 3,300 structures that can be classed as hillforts or similar “defended enclosures” within Britain. Most of these are clustered in certain regions: south and south-west England, the west coast of Wales and Scotland, the Welsh Marches and the Scottish border hills. British hillforts varied in size, with the majority covering an area of less than 1 ha (3 acres), but with most others ranging from this up to around 12 ha (30 acres) in size. In certain rare cases, they were bigger, with a few examples being over 80 ha (200 acres) in size.

Various archaeologists operating in Britain have criticised the use of the term “hillfort” both because of its perceived connection to fortifications and warfare and because not all such sites were actually located on hills. Leslie Alcock believed that the term “enclosed places” was more accurate, whilst J. Forde-Johnston commented on his preference for “defensive enclosures”.

Bronze Age hillforts

British hillforts, as now recognised, first appeared in the Late Bronze Age. Archaeologists Sue Hamilton and John Manley believed they were a part of “…substantial landscape and social reconfigurations at the start of the first millennium “, that coincided with the change of three characteristics of British Bronze Age society: “…disappearance of an archaeologically visible burial rite, … increased deposition of prestige metalwork in rivers, … and the demise of a middle Bronze Age settlement format of groups of round houses set within enclosures.” They went on to note that “Accrued place-value may have been important in the establishment of the earliest hillforts. These are often in locations with conspicuous traces of previous ritual monuments. This may have been a means of validating new social practices through making links with the past”. This idea was examined in more depth by ethnologist J. Forde-Johnston, who made note of how a number of Iron Age hillforts had been built close to earlier Bronze Age barrows. Commenting on the fact that both types of monument typically were constructed in high locations, he said, “It is not surprising that the two features should coincide in several dozen cases.” He added that it was possible that hillforts had been intentionally sited near barrows for defensive protection from the “…sacred associations of the burial place.”

Iron Age hillforts

The Iron Age hillforts have remained dominating features in the British landscape: as ethnologist J. Forde-Johnston noted, “Of all the earthworks that are such a notable feature of the landscape in England and Wales few are more prominent or more striking than the hillforts built during the centuries before the Roman conquest.” He continued, describing them as an “eloquent testimony of the technical ability and social organization of the Iron Age peoples.” On a similar note, the English archaeologist J. C. D. Clark remarked that ” Hillforts are at once among the most impressive and informative of our prehistoric antiquities. They impress by their mere size, by the height of their ramparts, by the depth of their ditches, by the extent of the areas they enclose, and frequently by their commanding position.”

There was “immense variation subsumed within the class of monuments called hillforts”, and those of the British Iron Age have been characterised as belonging to four different types. The main two are contour and promontory forts, and the lesser two are hill-slope and plateau forts. Contour forts are those “…in which the defences cut off the upper portion of a hill from the ground below by following, more or less, the line of the contours encircling it.” Promontory forts are typically defined by “…an area to which the approach is limited, to a greater or lesser extent, by natural features such as cliffs, very steep slopes, rivers etc. Where such features exist little or nothing in the way of man-made fortification is required.” Hill-slope hillforts, rather than “enclosing the hilltop in the manner of contour forts, are situated on the sloping ground on one side of it, overlooked by the crest”, whilst plateau forts “face level ground on all sides, regardless of their elevation above sea-level”; these final forts then are often, although by no means always, located in plateaus, hence their name.

Iron Age hillforts made use of both natural and man-made defences, with the former including such geographical features as cliffs, steep slopes, rivers, lakes and the sea, and the latter largely consisting of banks and ditches. There were actually two forms of banks built at such sites: revetted and glacis. Revetted banks present “a vertical or near-vertical outer face to the enemy. This outer face or revetment is normally of timber or dry stone walling, or a combination of the two, and retains the core of earth, chalk, clay etc., derived in most cases from the outer ditch.” Glacis banks on the other hand “are usually triangular in cross-section and at their simplest consist of a single dump of the material excavated from the ditch.” The number of these such ramparts differs in Iron Age British hillforts; some, which are known as univallate, are single-rampart only, whilst others, known as multivallate, are multi-rampart forts. Commenting on their distribution across southern Britain, Forde-Johnston stated that “roughly one-third of the Iron Age forts in England and Wales have multivallate defences, the remaining two-thirds being univallate.” It has been suggested that only the innermost rampart would be manned with the other ones serving more to make space and breakup charges.

Purpose

The reason for why British Iron Age peoples built hillforts is still under dispute. One school of thought, dominant amongst archaeologists in much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, holds that they were primarily defensive structures built in an era of intertribal warfare. However, in the late twentieth century, various archaeologists began to challenge this assumption, claiming that there was not sufficient evidence to back it up. As Mark Bowden and Dave McOmish remarked, “there is a tendency to assume that they were all built for similar purposes and are all performing similar functions”, something that they note may well not have been true. Taking a similar stance, archaeologist Niall Sharples noted that “It is clear from analysis of the sequence at Maiden Castle, and by comparison with other sites, such as Danebury, that hillforts do not have a single function. A variety of different activities can be associated with these sites and with time the importance or perhaps the emphasis of certain activities changed dramatically.”

Defensive usage

It has been traditionally assumed that hillforts were constructed for defensive purposes in the Iron Age. Describing warfare of the period, archaeologist Niall Sharples stated that war was such an integral part of all agricultural human societies that it was possible “to believe a priori that after the introduction of agriculture warfare was a constant feature of the prehistoric societies of the British Isles.” It was in this context, he believed, that hillforts were constructed as defensive positions.

Writing in 1948, J.G.D. Clark commented that hillforts’ “defensive character cannot be stressed too often.” Another archaeologist to hold a similar viewpoint, Barry Cunliffe, a specialist in the Iron Age, believed that hillforts from this period were defensive settlements.