Atlas of the Hillforts of Britain and Ireland 9781474447140

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ATLAS OF THE HILLFORTS OF BRITAIN AND IRELAND

ATLAS OF THE HILLFORTS OF BRITAIN AND IRELAND GARY LOCK and IAN RALSTON

with contributions by W. Derek Hamilton, Jonathan A. Horn, Sophia Adams, Kathleen McCaskill, Sophie McDonald and Simon Maddison

Cartography by Paula Levick Based on data assembled by Ian Brown, Paula Levick and Stratford Halliday and information on Ireland provided by William O'Brien, James O'Driscoll and Alan Hawkes

Edinburgh University Press is one of the leading university presses in the UK. We publish academic books and journals in our selected subject areas across the humanities and social sciences, combining cutting-edge scholarship with high editorial and production values to produce academic works of lasting importance. For more information visit our website: edinburghuniversitypress.com © Gary Lock and Ian Ralston, 2022 Edinburgh University Press Ltd The Tun – Holyrood Road 12 (2f) Jackson’s Entry Edinburgh EH8 8PJ Typeset in Kuenstler by R. J. Footring Ltd, Derby, UK, and printed and bound in Malta by Melita Press A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 1 4744 4712 6 (hardback) ISBN 978 1 4744 4714 0 (webready PDF) ISBN 978 1 4744 4715 7 (epub) The right of Gary Lock and Ian Ralston to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498). Copyright statement for all maps: Contains OS data © Crown copyright and database right 2020; Contains Irish Public Sector Data (Ordnance Survey Ireland) licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence; Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0; GEBCO Compilation Group (2019) GEBCO 2019 Grid (doi:10.5285/836f016a-33be-6ddce053-6c86abc0788e); CCM River and Catchment Database © European Commission - JRC, 2007, Vogt, J.V. et al. (2007): A pan-European River and Catchment Database. European Commission - JRC, Luxembourg, (EUR 22920 EN) 120 pp. The maps in Chapter 9 and Appendix 3 made use of data provided by the Historic County Borders Project.

Contents

List of figuresvi List of tablesxiii Acknowledgements and a note on supporting online resourcesxvi An introduction to the Atlas 1 Finding, cataloguing and mapping hillforts: a brief history 2 Methodology and some headline counts 3 Hillforts in their landscapes 4 Size and vallation 5 The architecture of enclosing works 6 Hillfort interiors 7 Dating hillforts: two approaches 8 Using Atlas data: the significance of selected clusters of hillforts in Britain 9 Some aspects of British and Irish hillforts in the light of the Atlas: retrospect and prospect

1 6 29 55 101 160 245 312 369 394

Appendix 1 Publications directly related to the project 427 Appendix 2 Scottish vitrified forts: a detailed case study 429 Appendix 3 Hillfort numbers by historic counties ranked across Britain and Ireland439 Notes448 Bibliography451 General index471 Index of places, people and organisations475

Figures

1.1 1.2

An extract from David Christison’s 1898 map 9 An extract from the Ordnance Survey Map of Southern Britain in the Iron Age, published in 1962 13 1.3 James Forde-Johnston 17 1.4 Distribution by James Forde-Johnston of hillforts of his Types VIII–XI 19 1.5 Distribution by James Forde-Johnston of Wessex hillforts by size and vallation20 1.6 A. H. A. Hogg during a visit to Y Breiddin in 1977 21 1.7 A. H. A. Hogg’s maps of hillforts in Britain based on size and – to a limited degree – vallation 23 1.8 Dennis Harding’s maps of hillforts in Britain using the OS 1962 size categories25 1.9 Barry Raftery’s preliminary distribution map of Irish hillforts, completed in 1969 27 2.1 Hillforts in England, Scotland and Wales recognised as cropmarks that were non-scheduled as of 2016 35 2.2 Hillforts contained within the Atlas. (A) Confirmed. (B) Not confirmed (including sites with irreconciled issues) 41 2.3 Atlas confirmed forts with evidence of excavations in their interiors 44 2.4 Hillforts with excavations in their interiors as a percentage of confirmed forts in that country 45 2.5 Atlas confirmed forts with evidence of excavations of their enclosures 46 2.6 Hillforts with excavations on their enclosures as a percentage of confirmed forts in that country 47 2.7 Atlas confirmed forts with evidence of excavations of their enclosures and their interiors 48 2.8 The proportions of confirmed hillforts by country with evidence for excavations on both their enclosures and their interiors 49 2.9 Numbers of instances of excavation, regardless of location or scale, by decade at hillforts in England and the Isle of Man 50 2.10 Numbers of instances of excavation, regardless of location or scale, by decade at hillforts in Ireland (both the Republic and the North) 51 2.11 Numbers of instances of excavation, regardless of location or scale, by decade at hillforts in Scotland 51

FIGURES

2.12 Numbers of instances of excavation, regardless of location or scale, by decade at hillforts in Wales 52 2.13 Cumulative totals for the numbers of instances of excavation, regardless of location or scale, by decade at hillforts across Britain and Ireland53 3.1 Hillforts wholly or partially on arable land 57 3.2 Hillforts which are ‘likely destroyed’ in their entirety 59 3.3 Hillforts located at less than 50 m, not including coastal promontory forts  66 3.4 The highest 100 hillforts 67 3.5 The idealised principal types of hillforts identified within the Atlas 79 3.6 Contour forts with an enclosed area of 1.21 ha or less 81 3.7 Partial contour forts 82 3.8 Coastal promontory forts 85 3.9 Inland promontory forts 88 3.10 Hillslope forts 93 3.11 Multiple-enclosure forts 95 3.12 Level-terrain forts 97 3.13 Marsh forts 98 4.1 Atlas population of small forts ( 6.07 ha) as defined by the Ordnance Survey108 4.4 Atlas data deployed to map Forde-Johnston’s ‘standard size’ hillforts 111 4.5 Rank-size diagram of the 3,266 confirmed hillforts with area data 113 4.6 Hillfort numbers up to 5 ha in size across Britain and Ireland by 0.2 ha steps115 4.7 Hillforts in Britain and Ireland from 1 ha to 5 ha by 0.2 ha steps 115 4.8 The internal areas of the hillforts of Britain and Ireland above 1 ha to 20 ha in extent by hectare steps 117 4.9 The internal areas of the hillforts of Britain and Ireland above 5 ha to 85 ha in extent by 5 ha steps 117 4.10 Hillforts with an internal area smaller than 0.2 ha 119 4.11 Sites of less than 0.2 ha in Britain and Ireland described as occupying coastal promontories 121 4.12 Hillforts between 0.2 ha and 0.49 ha in extent 122 4.13 Partial or complete bi- or multivallation in small hillforts of between 0.2 ha and 0.49 ha in internal area 123 4.14 Hillforts between 0.5 and 0.99 ha in extent 125 4.15 Small hillforts in the 0.5–0.99 ha size category with complex vallation (ranging from partial bivallation to complete multivallation) 126 4.16 Hillforts between 1 and 4.99 ha in extent 128

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ATLAS OF THE HILLFORTS OF BRITAIN AND IRELAND

4.17 Hillforts between 1 ha and 4.99 ha in extent which are classed as contour forts 4.18 Hillforts between 1 and 4.99 ha in extent which are classed as contour forts and have partly or wholly multivallate enclosing works 4.19 Hillforts of at least 5 ha in extent 4.20 Hillforts of 10 ha or over in extent 4.21 Hillforts of 20 ha and over in extent 4.22 Hillforts of 30 ha or over in extent 4.23 Hillforts (both reliability of interpretation confirmed and unconfirmed) of 30 ha and over in extent 4.24 (A) Univallate and (B) partially univallate forts, across Britain and Ireland, on their current morphology 4.25 Forts which have previously been (A) univallate or (B) partially univallate but are not so according to their current morphology 4.26 Sites of confirmed hillforts in Britain and Ireland which are wholly or partially univallate 4.27 (A) Bivallate and (B) partially bivallate forts, across Britain and Ireland, on current morphology 4.28 Forts which have previously been (A) bivallate and (B) partially bivallate but are not so according to their current morphology 4.29 Hillforts with all their known configurations wholly or partially bivallate, or where the most elaborate part of their circuit is bivallate 4.30 (A) Multivallate and (B) part-multivallate forts, across Britain and Ireland, on their current morphology 4.31 Forts which have previously been (A) multivallate or (B) partmultivallate but are not so according to their current morphology 4.32 Forts with annexes in Britain and Ireland 5.1 Hillforts with timber-laced walls in Britain 5.2 Hillforts with timber-framed walls (including ‘box ramparts’) in Britain 5.3 (A) Palisades recognised from surface inspection. (B) Palisades recognised from excavated evidence. (C) Palisades recognised from both surface inspection and excavation 5.4 Vitrified mass, inner enclosure, Carradale Point, Argyll [2452] 5.5 Hillforts in Britain with evidence for vitrifaction included in the Atlas. (A) Surface evidence only for vitrifaction. (B) Excavation evidence only for vitrifaction. (C) Both types of evidence 5.6 Hillforts with surface evidence of at least one enclosure with a drystone wall 5.7 Hillforts with excavation evidence of at least one enclosure that is a dry-stone wall 5.8 Hillforts with excavation evidence for the presence of one or more unretained earthen banks 5.9 The upright stones of the chevaux de frise outside the tumbled stone walls of Cademuir Hill 2, Peeblesshire [3653] 

129 130 131 133 134 136 137 145 147 148 150 151 152 154 155 158 165 168

172 176

178 183 184 191 193

FIGURES

5.10 Hillforts with chevaux de frise195 5.11 Simplified plans of entrance types as used in data collection for the Atlas 208 5.12 Hillforts with one or more simple gap entrances 210 5.13 Hillforts with one or more oblique entranceways 213 5.14 Hillforts with one or more inturned entrances 216 5.15 Hillforts with one or more out-turned entrances 217 5.16 Hillforts with an entrance that has one side inturned and the other out-turned219 5.17 Hillforts with one or more passageway/corridor entrances 221 5.18 Hillforts with one or more hornwork entrances 224 5.19 Hillforts with one or more overlapping entrances 225 5.20 (A) Hillforts with entrance outworks. (B) Hillforts with barbicans. (C) Hillforts with both 228 5.21 Reconstruction of the barbican entrance at Crickley Hill, Gloucestershire [0748]  229 5.22 Hillforts with at least one blocked entrance 231 5.23 Examples of guard chambers: (A) Titterstone Clee, Shropshire [0091]; (B) The Wrekin, Shropshire [0090]; (C) Moel Hiraddug, Flintshire [1154]; (D) Rainsborough Camp, Northamptonshire [0778] 235 5.24 Hillforts with at least one guard chamber 237 5.25 Hillforts with evidence for gang-working 241 5.26 Hillforts where the enclosing works have been interpreted as unfinished from (A) surface inspection. (B) Interpreted as unfinished from excavated evidence. (C) Interpreted as unfinished from both types of evidence 242 5.27 The rampart at Fin Cop, Derbyshire [2969], showing where two adjoining wall segments display the use of stones derived from different geologies, suggesting gang-working 243 6.1 Hillforts with (A) evidence for roundhouses from geophysical survey. (B) With evidence from excavation. (C) With evidence from both 248 6.2 Cropmarked hillforts with internal aerial photographic evidence for roundhouses255 6.3 Reconstructed roundhouses at Castell Henllys, Pembrokeshire [1888]  257 6.4 Simplified diagram of different forms of penannular negative components of roundhouses 258 6.5 Hillforts with any internal evidence for roundhouses 264 6.6 Hillforts with other forms of surface evidence for roundhouses 265 6.7 Hillforts with surface evidence for curvilinear platforms 268 6.8 Hillforts with surface evidence for circular stone structures 272 6.9 Hillforts with evidence for rectangular structures from (A) surface evidence. (B) With evidence from oblique aerial photography. (C) With evidence from both.  275

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ATLAS OF THE HILLFORTS OF BRITAIN AND IRELAND

6.10 Hillforts with evidence for rectangular structures from excavated evidence276 6.11 (A) Hillforts with internal evidence for Iron Age four-post structures. (B) With internal evidence for ‘possible’ four-post structures 279 6.12 Hillforts with internal evidence for Iron Age rectangular buildings (excluding four-posters). (A) Probable evidence. (B) Possible evidence 281 6.13 Hillforts with internal evidence for Roman and/or Romano-British rectangular buildings 283 6.14 Plan of a Pictish rectangular building within Barflat hillfort, Aberdeenshire [2941]  285 6.15 (A) Hillforts with internal evidence for Early Medieval rectangular buildings. (B) Hillforts that are ‘possible sites’ of rectangular buildings 286 6.16 Hillforts with internal evidence for pits from (A) excavated evidence. (B) With geophysical survey evidence. (C) With evidence from both 289 6.17 Hillforts with evidence for quarry hollows from surface evidence 292 6.18 Hillforts with evidence for quarry hollows. (A) Excavated evidence. (B) Geophysical survey. (C) With evidence from both 293 6.19 Hillforts with evidence for an internal water source. (A) Wells/cisterns. (B) Springs.  297 6.20 Hillforts with evidence for (A) trackways. (B) With evidence for hollow ways. (C) With evidence for both 300 6.21 Hillforts with evidence for pottery 306 6.22 Hillforts with evidence for metal-working 307 6.23 Hillforts with evidence for metal artefacts 308 6.24 Hillforts with evidence for (A) animal bones. (B) Human bones. (C) Both 309 7.1 The reliability of dating. (A) High. (B) Medium. (C) Low 316 7.2 Hillforts in Britain and Ireland dated by four-century blocks 317 7.3 Hillforts (A) with any pre-1200 bc dating evidence. (B) With evidence of high reliability 320 7.4 Hillforts (A) with any dating evidence for the period 1200 bc to 322 800 bc. (B) With evidence of high reliability 7.5 Hillforts (A) with any dating evidence for the period 1200 bc to 800 bc for de novo construction. (B) With evidence of high reliability 323 7.6 Hillforts (A) with any dating evidence for the period 800 bc to 400 bc. (B) With evidence of high reliability 326 7.7 Hillforts (A) with any dating evidence for the period 800 bc to 400 bc of de novo construction. (B) With evidence of high reliability 327 7.8 Hillforts (A) with any dating evidence for the period 400 bc to ad 50. (B) With evidence of high reliability 328 7.9 Hillforts (A) with any dating evidence for the period 400 bc to ad 50 of de novo construction. (B) With evidence of high reliability 329 7.10 Hillforts (A) with any dating evidence for the period ad 50 to ad 400. (B) With evidence of high reliability 332

FIGURES

7.11 Hillforts with dating evidence for the period ad 50 to ad 400 of de novo construction 333 7.12 Hillforts (A) with any dating evidence for the period ad 400 to ad 800. (B) With evidence of high reliability 335 7.13 Hillforts (A) with any dating evidence for the period ad 400 to ad 800 of de novo construction. (B) With evidence of high reliability 336 7.14 Hillforts (A) with any dating evidence for the period post ad 800. (B) With evidence of high reliability 339 7.15 Hillforts with dating evidence for the period post ad 800 of de novo construction340 7.16 Relative chronology of types of brooches found at hillforts in Britain 346 7.17 Comparison of the calibrated radiocarbon dates on bulk charcoal samples submitted to Harwell in the 1980s (HAR) and the more recent single-entity samples taken from the returned Harwell excess material in the Danebury archive (SUERC) 354 7.18 Chronological model for Hascombe Camp 357 7.19 The span of dated Iron Age activity at the hillfort of Hascombe Camp 358 7.20 Chronological model for Y Breiddin 361 7.21 The span of dated Iron Age activity at Y Breiddin hillfort 366 8.1 The 15 largest hillfort clusters in Britain at percolation radius values of 6 km and 12 km 370 8.2 East-central Scotland, the main hillfort clusters at 5 km percolation radius, hillforts in proportion to enclosed area 375 8.3 Hillforts in east-central Scotland, showing morphology, with sites sized in proportion to enclosed area 376 8.4 The main hillfort clusters in central Wales and the Marches at 6 km, hillforts plotted in proportion to enclosed area 378 8.5 The main hillfort clusters in central Wales and the Marches at 6 km, with other Iron Age settlement sites 379 8.6 Hillfort cluster in the Chilterns at 13 km radius, hillforts scaled by enclosed area and showing dating evidence 381 8.7 Hillfort cluster in Cornwall at 13 km percolation radius, plotted in proportion to enclosed area, also showing known Roman forts 384 8.8 Hillfort clusters in Cornwall at 9 km percolation radius, with other Iron Age settlements, overlaid on topography and the Medieval Cornish hundreds 385 8.9 Hillfort clusters in south-west Wales, at 5 km percolation radius, plotted with Iron Age settlements 387 8.10 Hillfort clusters in South West Wales at 9 km percolation radius, plotted with Iron Age settlements, and overlaid on land classification and geological coalfields 389 2 9.1 The density of confirmed hillforts in Britain and Ireland per 100 km within historic counties 400

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9.2 9.3 9.4 9.5 A2.1 A3.1 A3.2 A3.3 A3.4

ATLAS OF THE HILLFORTS OF BRITAIN AND IRELAND

The density of hillforts of 1 ha or over in extent per 100 km2 within historic counties 403 The density of hillforts of 5 ha or over in extent per 100 km2 within historic counties 405 The total enclosed areas in all confirmed hillforts per 100 km2 within each historic county, ranked in quartiles 407 Percentages of historic counties with 1 ha or over of enclosed space within hillforts per 100 km2409 The 77 hillforts in Scotland with secure evidence for vitrifaction, ranked by internal area 433 Numbers of confirmed hillforts by historic counties ranked by quartiles 440 Numbers of confirmed hillforts of 1 ha or over by historic counties ranked by quartiles 442 Numbers of confirmed hillforts of 5 ha or over by historic counties ranked by quartiles 444 Total enclosed areas within confirmed hillforts by historic counties ranked by quartiles 446

Tables

I.1

Country codes employed in the Atlas for constituent parts of Britain and Ireland  3 I.2 The format for the information on individual sites included in distribution maps made available on the Edinburgh University Press website3 1.1 Hillforts by historic county included in the OS 1962 map of southern Britain, with an analysis of the proportions of multivallate (M) and univallate (U) forts present by size category  14 1.2 Barry Raftery’s 1972 classification of Irish hillforts 26 2.1 The reliability of interpretation and of data within the Atlas 32 2.2 A breakdown of scheduled and non-scheduled hillforts 34 2.3 Citizen science returns by country 38 2.4 Citizen science returns by groups 38 2.5 Counts of hillforts in the Atlas compared with counts in previous major hillfort publications (not including the island of Ireland) 42 2.6 Counts of hillforts in Ireland 42 3.1 Counts of hillforts according to current land use 55 3.2 The condition of hillforts 56 3.3 Hillforts in varying conditions of survival  58 3.4 Hillforts displaying a single condition state across their whole footprint 58 3.5 The altitude of hillforts 65 3.6 The prevailing aspect of hillforts 69 3.7 Amalgamated counts for aspect to produce views 70 3.8 Types of hillforts 77 3.9 The topographic positions of hillforts 78 3.10 The cross-tabulation of hillfort type by topographic position 80 4.1 Sizes of enclosed areas for small, medium and large hillforts as deployed by the Ordnance Survey 102 4.2 Counts of hillforts by OS size categories 103 4.3 The numbers of hillforts up to 5 ha by 0.2 ha steps 114 4.4 The internal areas of hillforts up to 20 ha in internal area by hectare steps116 4.5 The internal areas of hillforts by 5 ha bands up to 130 ha 116

xiv



4.6 4.7 4.8 4.9 4.10 4.11 4.12 4.13 4.14 4.15 4.16 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 5.7 5.8 5.9 5.10 5.11 5.12 5.13 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5

ATLAS OF THE HILLFORTS OF BRITAIN AND IRELAND

Maximum internal areas of hillforts ranked by size into octiles  The internal areas of hillforts in ascending quintiles A. H. A. Hogg’s views on examples of hillforts of 30 ha in size or greater compared with results in the Atlas database Current vallation of hillforts by Atlas size categories distinguishing univallate, bivallate and multivallate forts The number of ditches per hillfort  The current morphology of hillfort enclosures in terms of vallation regardless of size Hillforts with enclosing works that do not form a complete circuit Percentages of univallate and partially univallate forts by country The proportions of hillforts which are partially or wholly bivallate Hillforts ranked by whether the most complex earthworks on any part of their circuit are uni-, bi- or multivallate The altitudes of hillforts with annexes compared with that of the general population of hillforts by octiles Numbers of vitrified forts and duns in Scotland presenting acceptable evidence for the phenomenon Vitrifaction discovered on the surface or through excavation: Atlas data Vitrified forts recognised in England, Isle of Man and Wales Hillforts including at least one dry-stone faced wall known either from surface inspection or excavation Hillforts with evidence for dry-stone walling and rubble banks Hillforts with at least partial excavation of their enclosures which show evidence for one or more dump ramparts  Total numbers of entrances by country, with mean number of entrances per site Entrance statistics for hillforts: (A) sites with recorded entrances, (B) sites with no recorded evidence for an entrance  Entrance orientations as recorded by direction: numbers of recorded entrance positions A comparison of hillfort entrance orientations Hillforts with complete circuits of the vallation type indicated against numbers with at least one simple gap entrance Numbers of hillforts with at least one postern gate Numbers of hillforts with at least one entrance of ‘another form’, that is, a form which could not readily be fitted into the Atlas classification The number of sites showing evidence for internal features from excavation, geophysics and aerial photographs Hillforts with aerial photographic evidence for roundhouses Different forms of surface evidence for roundhouses Numbers of hillforts with house platforms, by altitude and size Hillforts with evidence for internal water sources

116 118 138 140 142 144 144 146 149 153 157 177 177 179 182 185 190 202 203 205 206 212 233 238 246 254 257 269 296

xv

TABLES

6.6 6.7 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5 7.6 7.7 7.8 8.1 8.2 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 A2.1 A2.2 A3.1 A3.2 A3.3 A3.4

Hillforts with evidence for trackways 299 Evidence for finds within hillforts 304 Hillforts with dating evidence of any quality 314 Dated hillforts in each of the three reliability categories 315 Dated hillforts 318 Hillforts that continue between periods and de novo sites 319 Hillforts with evidence for pre- and post-hillfort activity 341 Iron Age brooches found at hillforts 348 Radiocarbon dates from Hascombe Camp, Surrey 356 Radiocarbon dates from Y Breiddin, Montgomeryshire 362 Atlas summary classification of land use 374 The settlement zones of south-west Wales 388 The historic counties with the highest number of confirmed hillfort 401 sites, regardless of size, per 100 km2  The historic counties with the highest number of confirmed hillfort 402 sites over 1 ha in area per 100 km2 The historic counties with the highest number of confirmed hillfort sites over 5 ha in area per 100 km2406 The historic counties with the largest enclosed areas within confirmed 408 hillfort sites per 100 km2  The 80 confirmed forts where vitrifaction has been reasonably reliably observed430 Sites with evidence of vitrifaction which do not meet the Atlas criteria for confirmed hillforts and are usually classed as duns 433 The top 10 historic counties ranked by numbers of confirmed hillforts regardless of size 439 The top 10 historic counties ranked by numbers of confirmed hillforts of 1 ha or over 441 The top 10 historic counties ranked by numbers of confirmed hillforts of 5 ha or over 443 The 16 historic counties ranked by total areas enclosed within confirmed hillforts with areas in excess of 100 ha 447

Acknowledgements and a note on supporting online resources Acknowledgement Many people contributed to the completion and the success of the Atlas. Not least is the team funded by the AHRC: Stratford Halliday, Dr Ian Brown, Dr Paula Levick and the two postgraduate students – Dr Jessica Murray and Jonathan Horn. Our invaluable colleagues in Ireland were Dr James O’Driscoll, Dr Alan Hawkes and Professor William O’Brien, University College Cork. The IT work underpinning the Atlas, both for data collection and for online presentation, was carried out by Jeremy Worth and Dr John Pouncett, School of Archaeology, University of Oxford. Several friends and colleagues (individually acknowledged in the captions) have generously made images available to us. We would also like to thank the many citizen scientists, members of archaeological and other societies and other members of the public who collaborated with the project and provided us with many new insights. Mike Collins and the Communications Team at the AHRC were responsible for making the launch of the online Atlas a national (and international) media event. The Marc Fitch Fund generously funded a large part of the map production. A final and special thank you goes to Dr Paula Levick, who, with great skill and patience, has produced the maps and diagrams for this volume. Gary Lock would like to acknowledge his debt of gratitude to the late Stanley Thomas, who first introduced him to hillforts and inspired him to continue.

Supporting online resources The online Atlas contains supplementary information and data on all individual sites identified in the text by a four-digit code in square brackets. It is accessible at: https://hillforts.arch.ox.ac.uk The ‘EUP website Tables’ noted in the figure legends are Excel spreadsheets identifying the sites included on individual maps. They can be accessed at: https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/hillfort Further information is included in the Introduction here (pp. 1–5).

An introduction to the Atlas

This project ran from 2012 to 2016 with funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, which is gratefully acknowledged. The co-investigators were the present writers and the project was a collaboration between the Universities of Edinburgh and Oxford, with assistance from Professor William O’Brien and colleagues at University College Cork for Irish material. A key outcome of the project is the online Atlas, which has been freely accessible at https://hillforts.arch.ox.ac.uk since 2017, and from which it is possible to download data which, with due acknowledgement, can be freely redeployed for research and academic publication. Given its scope, it is undoubtedly the case that far more information and conclusions about hillforts in Britain and Ireland are yet to be extracted from the database than can be made available in the present volume, which is intentionally selective. It was hoped from the very beginnings of the project that the Atlas would provide an impetus for a renewed interest in and more research into hillforts. Two aspects of the potential of the Atlas database are illustrated by the guest contributions to this volume. The first is written by Simon Maddison, who has applied new approaches and techniques concerning the spatial relationships of hillforts at different scales of analysis to downloaded Atlas data (Chapter 8); the second is by Derek Hamilton and colleagues, who take a detailed look at the evidence for radiocarbon dating together with dating by brooches for Iron Age forts (Part II of Chapter 7). A selection of Atlas data is also available for individual sites directly from Historic Environment Scotland’s CANMORE website;1 there is also a link for Irish sites via the Heritage Council’s Heritage Maps.2 The purpose of this Introduction is to acknowledge some of the parameters and constraints which have applied to our consideration of the data in this Atlas. These notes in some measure repeat, but also complement, the User Guide which accompanies the online version.3 Data collection, which was overwhelmingly desk-based, took place between 2012 and October 2016, and thus the contents of the database reflect what was accessible to Atlas team members over this period. The database has not been updated since then, and there is presently no means to do so. It thus stands as a monument to its time; and national and local monument records should be consulted for current information if this is of critical interest, for example concerning development control applications. In preparing this publication, however, errors

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ATLAS OF THE HILLFORTS OF BRITAIN AND IRELAND

which have been spotted by the authors have been rectified in producing the distribution maps of particular features of hillforts included here, and the accompanying lists of sites (see below) have also been modified. The database has not been adjusted, however; nor have discoveries made since the autumn of 2016 been incorporated, or those which have become available to the writers over the intervening period. The writers’ view, mainly driven by funding constraints, was that, in trying to assimilate the mass of data available, it was preferable to operate a fixed cut-point than to strive for the illusion of a completely up-to-the-minute presentation. With over 4,000 sites considered and some 120 fields of information on each, despite the best efforts of the Atlas team, there will assuredly be errors in the database on which the contents of the Atlas draw. In numbers of cases, it was necessary to make a judgement on particular issues for individual sites based on less than certain evidence. In such cases, particularly when the judgement necessitated ticking or leaving blank a tickbox (from which data can be drawn to produce distribution maps) we have preferred to tick the box, while making reservations plain in text. The outcome is that some maps will be judged to be ‘maximising’ interpretations of the available evidence. Our defence is that it will be easier for future scholars to ‘weed’ information as newer and better data emerges than retrospectively to insert older information which has been disregarded in the compilation of the Atlas. As noted above, it is entirely open to others freely to download our data, amend it and add to it, and thus provide new configurations of evidence. Rather than comply with a standard formulation, the chapters below have been structured differently, to take into account what were in our judgement rather varied starting points in terms of our prior knowledge of a range of sub-fields within British and Irish hillfort studies. In addition to this, particular sub-fields have in some instances attracted varying degrees of earlier attention in different areas within these islands. For example, there is a much more substantial literature on the architecture of ramparts than on entrance plans, and so various components of Chapter 5, which deals with both of the above, are launched from different bases. A linked issue concerns the datasets we have used in the compilation of individual maps and tables. As is explained in greater detail elsewhere, the characteristics which assist in the definition of hillforts form a polythetic set, so that certain arbitrary decisions have to be made as to which sites should be included. Unless the figure or table caption or the accompanying text makes it plain, the reader should assume the dataset under consideration in any presentation of detailed information on hillforts is the suite of sites where their interpretation as members of the hillfort class is deemed to have been confirmed in terms of the selection criteria we have operated; this gives a total of 3,354 sites for Britain and Ireland excluding the Channel Islands. In most instances our analyses work on data for the current configuration of each site, but, where this is made explicit, we have also used for example a summation of evidence for other known states of particular sites. Further information on the mechanics of site selection is provided in Chapter 2. Where data is broken down by country, the abbreviations used are as summarised in Table I.1.

3

AN INTRODUCTION TO THE ATLAS

Table I.1  Country codes employed in the Atlas for constituent parts of Britain and Ireland Code

Region

EN IoM IR NI SC WA IR + NI

England Isle of Man Ireland (the Republic of Ireland) Northern Ireland Scotland Wales The island of Ireland

The great advantage of distribution maps of archaeological data such as are presented in this Atlas is that they furnish a general overview of a particular set of sites in which the reader is interested. They thus provide a form of cartographic control over a population of sites amongst which the reader may know relatively few from first-hand inspection or detailed familiarity with the literature. A disadvantage is that often it is hard to know exactly which sites have been included in a particular map. It would of course not be possible to list all sites in a caption or table title, and so we have generally contented ourselves with specifying, in the format N = XX, the total number of sites included together with a breakdown by country. To allow the reader to know unambiguously which sites are included on a particular map, with great assist­ ance from Dr Paula Levick, we have made this information available as a series of Excel files on the Edinburgh University Press website at . Here can be found lists of sites. These furnish the basic information that allows the reader to know which sites we have included on particular distribution maps, in the form outlined in Table I.2. A substantial majority of the maps included in this volume have been produced by Dr Levick with ArcGIS software from downloaded Atlas data in csv format. In site designations and for comparison purposes, we have elected to use the historic counties of Britain and Ireland as the principal areal building blocks to be used

Table I.2  The format for the information on individual sites included in distribution maps made available on the Edinburgh University Press website Category

Details

Atlas number

The basic number series used in compiling the Atlas. This is particularly useful for disambiguating sites with shared names. These are also included in the Atlas itself: they appear here as four-digit numbers within square brackets See Table I.1 The site name employed in the Atlas. Alternative names (a frequent occurrence) are accessible in the online database See the discussion in the text

Country code Site name Historic county

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ATLAS OF THE HILLFORTS OF BRITAIN AND IRELAND

for identification and analysis. The online database of course also provides modern designations (alongside Historic Environment Record codes and Scheduled Ancient Monument numbers etc.) but our assessment was that historic counties provided, on the one hand, familiar geographical designations for sites (through Royal Commission inventories and other county-based compilations) and, on the other, a stable suite of well known geographical units equally applicable to the island of Ireland as to Great Britain. They also allow sub-division of the biggest present-day local authority areas in Britain. The administrative area of Highland Council on the north Scottish mainland is over 25,000 km2, for example – over 11% of the land area of Britain and about a fifth larger than Wales. Historic counties, although not perfect, at least eliminate the largest of such units, although it is accepted that they leave some very small ones. There are other departures from usual practice here which merit some explanation and justification. Of key importance is the citation of earlier literature. As iconic and much-discussed monuments, hillforts have accrued a very substantial literature since they began to attract antiquarian attention well over two centuries ago. While a certain amount of that literature has been geographically wide-ranging, much more of it has been at the level of the constituent countries of Britain and Ireland, and still more of it yet more local in its geographical reach. In citing published sources in this account, we have had to restrict ourselves to significant items (for a variety of reasons) which make up a small selection of the synthetic and specialist literature available. In the case of individual sites, the publications mentioned are supplemented by more extensive lists of sources included as part of individual site entries in the online database. Any wide-ranging study of this kind draws directly on the work of numbers of other archaeologists, both professional and amateur, whose research in the field and the library and whose assiduous record-keeping we have drawn on. We provide fuller individual acknowledgement below, but here brief mention may be made of some very important groups. These include the Atlas team at Oxford, Edinburgh and Cork, staff of our partner organisations, notably the various National Monuments Records and many regional or local Historic Environment Records across Britain and Ireland, the many citizen scientists who rallied to our aid (see Chapter 2), members of the Project Steering Group, drawn from the Hillfort Studies Group and our partner organisations – Dr Eileen Wilkes, Mark Bowden, Dr Toby Driver, Graeme Guilbert, Ken Murphy, John Sherriff and Robin Turner – whose advice was invaluable, and individual researchers who provided advice and guidance on hillfort records in particular areas, including Dr Kate Waddington (north-west Wales) and Professor Harold Mytum (Isle of Man). This volume complements numbers of public presentations and lectures to conferences on the Atlas made by team members during the project’s lifespan and since. Publications directly related to the project are listed in Appendix 1. We were fortun­ate to have been able to draw our colleagues at University College Cork into this endeavour at the same time as they were compiling an overview of the Irish evidence. Several

AN INTRODUCTION TO THE ATLAS

papers from the Irish work have now appeared, including the monumental series of new site reports and synthetic overview provided in O’Brien and O’Driscoll (2017). The present volume is dedicated to those – antiquaries and archaeologists – across Britain and Ireland whose researches have made possible information to be mapped and questions about hillforts to be tackled on the broad scale attempted here. Their contributions are considered more fully in the following chapters, but undoubtedly the doyen of the subject remains Dr A. H. A. Hogg, founder of the Hillfort Study Group over 60 years ago. Also commanding our greatest respect for his fieldwork and meticulous scholarship concerning hillforts is James Forde-Johnston and we would like to thank his family for insights into his remarkable dedication. These authors wrote fundamental works in the 1970s which underpin this Atlas.

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CHAPTER 1

Finding, cataloguing and mapping hillforts: a brief history

Introduction In some instances, forming very visible and iconic monuments in the landscapes of Ireland and Britain, hillforts have been recognised as a key site type since antiquarian times. The evidence provided by their locations and, at wider scales, distribution, as well as the architectural, artefactual and ecofactual data recovered piecemeal from within them, have long been central to the interpretation of insular later prehistory and, to a lesser extent, the archaeology of the Early Medieval period. Hillforts – to be defined more fully in Chapter 2 – are ‘defended places, surrounded by one or more circuits of banks and ditches, and generally placed on hilltops, ridges, spurs or promontories’ (Historic England 2018: 4) and, as such, form only one category of enclosures amongst the many varieties known in Britain and beyond from the Neolithic period onwards; papers in previous studies (e.g. Harding et al. 2007) provide a good indication of the diversity present. At the outset of the project, our estimate was that perhaps 4,000 individual monuments would merit inclusion in the Atlas (Ralston 2019), but others have proposed higher figures – Sir Barry Cunliffe, for example, in assessing the importance of the threatened site at Old Oswestry in 2015, suggested 5,000 hillforts in the country.1 We were then unaware that the figure of 3,840 forts had recently been advanced for Britain (Wileman 2014: 30). In this chapter, selected inventories of these sites at a variety of ‘national’ scales, and of the maps that (not universally) accompany them, are reviewed. In earlier papers, the present writers and the Atlas team have rehearsed elements of the topics here considered in more detail, and space precludes extensive repetition of points made there (Halliday 2019; Lock and Ralston 2017, 2019a, 2019b, 2020; O’Driscoll et al. 2019; Ralston 2019). In terms of geographical coverage, the scope of this Atlas is Great Britain and Ireland, here termed ‘Britain and Ireland’, echoing modern Irish Gaelic usage (Éire agus an Bhreatain Mhór). While often referred to as the ‘British Isles’, this term is here eschewed, as is ‘United Kingdom’, which we consider not to be of archaeological use in the present context. For the avoidance of doubt, the Channel Islands are excluded from consideration, and the principal ‘national’ geographical units employed are given in Table I.1 (p. 3). The major contributions which form the central background to the Atlas are the Ordnance Survey Map of Southern Britain in the Iron Age (Ordnance Survey 1962,

FINDING, CATALOGUING AND MAPPING HILLFORTS

reprinted with minor corrections in 1967) and its northern equivalent published in The Iron Age in Northern Britain (Rivet 1966). There is, however, a tradition rooted in the later nineteenth century of producing thematic or other hillfort maps at county or greater scales, which will be outlined selectively. Concurrently with exercises in mapping, gazetteers have been compiled. In terms of inventorying (rather than mapping) the whole of Britain, major contributions were made in particular by A. H. A. Hogg (see especially Hogg 1979) and his work is considered as a key predecessor of this study. The tasks involved in compiling gazetteers and distribution maps are made more complex because there have been different histories of recording and describing hillforts in the constituent parts of Britain and of Ireland. Issues of classification lie behind much of what is written in this volume, and substantially condition what can be presented. For example, hillfort studies and mapping developed relatively late in Ireland, where the tradition has been to consider forts set on coastal (but not inland) promontories wholly separately, whereas in Britain relevant enclosures on promontories have been subsumed within hillfort studies. There, however, they have been differently labelled, with, for example, ‘cliff castle’ being a preferred designation in south-west England. In general, given the scope of the present work, we have attempted as far as possible to reduce such regional distinctions in determining which physical remains have been accepted as representing hillforts, but they have not been wholly eliminated. Finding and recording hillforts, more particularly their upstanding earthworks, was for long essentially the province of fieldworkers, beginning with early antiquaries and developing recurrently thereafter. A major development, particularly after the Second World War, was the application of remote sensing. The successes of oblique aerial photography in the identification of, in particular, cropmarked sites in the arable lowlands of Britain (especially in lowland Scotland but much less so in Ireland) from around 1950 onwards changed both the known numbers and the geographical patterning of hillforts. Their assimilation into the corpus is considered in Chapter 2. Indeed, while hillforts have traditionally been known predominantly from the uplands, where the survival of upstanding archaeological sites has been much more extensive, the relatively few lowland sites still apparent on the surface have been complemented by the discovery of others visible only in suitable circumstances from the air. The range of technologies applicable to site detection continues to expand, from different ground-penetrating geophysical techniques to LiDAR, with results which are likely further to transform the data presented below. Ready access to high-resolution satellite imagery also has the potential to allow further discoveries.

Hillfort cartography Hillforts are not a ubiquitous feature of British, let alone Irish, later prehistoric landscapes. Key maps, such as Sir Barry Cunliffe’s interpretive generalisation of regional

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ATLAS OF THE HILLFORTS OF BRITAIN AND IRELAND

variations in settlement in the earlier parts of the pre-Roman Iron Age, presented in the standard overview of Britain in those centuries (Cunliffe 2005: fig. 4.3), highlight their density in the Southern Uplands and Anglo-Scottish Border, and in the Welsh Marches extending southwards from there into Wessex. Contrastingly, some areas have very few if any examples, emphasising the fact that hillforts were not an essential site type for all Iron Age communities. Even if some of the variability is explicable by issues of survival and detection, this is far from universally the case. Cunliffe’s generalising map is underpinned by a long tradition of using types of settlement evidence in the determination of regional patterning within the British Iron Age. This approach reached an apogee in the 1950s and 1960s in the publications of Christopher Hawkes (1959) and Stuart Piggott (1966) (see also Feachem 1966). The appearance of these overviews with their inbuilt frameworks of ‘provinces’ and ‘regions’ coincided chronologically with the publication, overseen by Leo Rivet, then Assistant Archaeological Officer of the Ordnance Survey (OS), of the most significant single map of British Iron Age evidence yet published, the Ordnance Survey Map of Southern Britain in the Iron Age (Ordnance Survey 1962). This map has had a long-lasting effect on the mapping of hillforts and will be used here as a key horizon in the developing consideration of these monuments. From the inception of the OS, its surveyors had taken an interest in the depiction of antiquities in their cartography. Hillforts – often conspicuous and imposing earthworks – drew early attention to themselves. The pioneering endeavours were by General William Roy, whose study of the military antiquities of the Romans in Britain (1793) led him to include surveys of some hillforts in his researches. Thereafter, early OS one-inch (1:63,360) maps of southern England from the years after 1800 include some hillforts; this was probably, as Seymour (1980) speculated, largely because they remained conspicuous landscape features and of interest to important landowners. William Mudge, Director of the Survey for two decades (until his death in 1820), issued a short memorandum in 1816 to the effect ‘that the remains of ancient Fortifications, Druidical Monuments, vitrified forts, and all Tumuli and Barrows shall be noted in the Plans wherever they occur’ (quoted by Seymour 1980: 63). The memorandum’s brief listing of major monuments includes two categories of site which remain central to the present study. At this time, too, archaeological mapping, as exemplified by the survey work and research undertaken or sponsored by Sir Richard Colt Hoare for The Ancient History of Wiltshire (1812), began alongside OS work in the same county. This collaboration is shown by the increasing numbers of antiquities appearing on the official one-inch map. Numerous archaeological sites were shown on OS maps thereafter, especially on the large scale (‘six-inch’: 1:10,560) maps produced from early Victorian times onwards, with the encouragement of the national and local archaeological societies then coming to the fore (Seymour 1980: 173–5). These exercises ultimately bore fruit in the production of archaeological maps, including the national distributions of interest here. By the late nineteenth century, the impact of large-scale OS maps which depicted a wealth of archaeological information

FINDING, CATALOGUING AND MAPPING HILLFORTS

Figure 1.1  An extract from David Christison’s 1898 map

can be appreciated in the colour map2 inserted opposite p. 386 in David Christison’s (1898) national survey (of Scottish evidence), published four years after his Rhind Lectures, delivered to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, on the early fortifications of the country. His approach, initiated 10 years earlier on sites in Peebles-shire (Christison 1887) – and its graphic support – owed a great deal to the progress of OS large-scale mapping, with cover for Scotland completed by 1882. But the absence from Christison’s published map of sites in the north-west mainland and on the

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Hebrides is puzzling, as his text makes plain that he was well aware of forts in the Highlands (1898: 118–22), albeit scattered and unevenly distributed. The distribution of forts recognised by Christison was overprinted on a detailed topographical map (with a scale of 1 inch to 10 miles; 1:633,600) of the country by the Edinburgh mapmaker Bartholomew (Figure 1.1). In sum, by the 1890s Christison knew of 1,079 forts in Scotland, which were distributed primarily south of the Forth (729 sites). The 350 examples enumerated ‘north of the Forth’ included a large group on mainland Argyll; amongst sites on islands only those on Arran and Bute were included in his calculations (Christison 1898: 121). Thomas Westropp’s map of Irish forts from the following decade, covering the whole island, offers a complete contrast (1901: 144). Despite the early effectiveness of the OS in Ireland, notably under Thomas Colby (Seymour 1980), which is apparent in the site plans included in Westropp’s study, the accompanying map is a hand-drawn affair by the author himself. It depicts major ‘cahers, raths, motes and . . . promontory forts’ (Westropp 1901: 145), including coastal examples of the latter, whereas more recent Irish tradition regards these as a separate class of monument of essentially Medieval date (O’Driscoll et al. 2019). Contrastingly, although linked to the Committee on Ancient Earthworks and Fortified Enclosures (of which he was a member), Hadrian Allcroft’s wide-ranging Earthworks of England (1908) made little use of maps. The sole example, of the South Downs (Allcroft 1908: opp. p. 640), illustrated its only regional study. Allcroft’s work was primarily organised according to the classificatory system for defensive earthworks of the aforementioned committee (ibid. p. 21). Variants of this classification were more widely used at the time, for example in the Victoria County History of ­Oxfordshire (Page 1907). The work of the Committee, already underway when the three Royal Commissions for Scotland, Wales and England were set up in the last years of Edward VII’s reign, and which continued until 1939, is worth recollecting as an early effort at the collaborative systematic collection of information on earthworks and fortifications, much more wide-ranging in its scope than the current project. Allcroft’s overview was organised by site type, with successive chapters devoted to promontory forts (Class A), contour forts (Class B) and so on. But, although he was aware that in England some types were more numerous than others (Allcroft 1908: 74), Allcroft made no efforts at quantification or at distribution and his principal chapters (3–5) on the kinds of sites considered in the Atlas consist primarily of a succession of descriptions and plans of individual sites. Before the Second World War, new national distribution maps of hillforts were produced. Their authors were able to profit from the advancing inventory work of the Royal Commissions as well as renewed interest within the OS following the appointment in 1920 of O. G. S. Crawford – his Oxford geographical training leading to early advocacy of distribution maps (e.g. Crawford 1921: 132–53) – as its first Archaeology Officer. Christopher Hawkes’s seminal paper of 1931 included three southern British maps (figs 1 [Iron Age A], 9 [B] and 14 [C]) in accord with the cultural scheme then favoured. Each depicted hillforts with relevant excavated dating evidence, carefully

FINDING, CATALOGUING AND MAPPING HILLFORTS

differentiating between whether this derived from the ramparts or interior of the site under consideration. The maps were accompanied by an appendix in which the supporting information was systematically presented. They certainly broke new ground in presentational terms, but the demonstration of the general distribution of hillforts overlain on a shaded area depicting the extension of a particular culture was necessarily geographically limited and not an effort at a national distribution of the totality of the known monuments. Of broadly the same vintage is Gordon Childe’s map (1935: 274–5, map IV – Iron Age forts and refuges) in his full-scale synthesis of Scotland’s prehistory. The changed information base from Christison’s product of some 40 years earlier, considered above, is manifest, with far more sites depicted, perhaps most notably in the Hebrides (albeit Shetland is excluded). While the dominant symbol, a filled circle, was used for both forts and ‘castles’ – nowadays forts and duns – particular sub-sets of forts were also highlighted. These included vitrified forts, as well as a small number of ‘hilltop towns’ (i.e. major forts such as Traprain Law in East Lothian [3932]), and three ‘Gallic Forts’, including Burghead in Moray [2925], defined by its nailed timber-laced wall. Other Iron Age settlement categories were included on Childe’s map, particularly brochs, but also, selectively, souterrains and crannogs. Hillforts also appear on other synthetic distribution maps of Britain at this general time, although the exigencies of the circumstances of their production, c. 1940, doubtlessly restricted their formulation. Childe’s Iron Age map of that year (1940: 226, fig. 83) showed the distributions of Iron Age A and B cultures as far north as East Yorkshire, and a generalised distribution of brochs in the north of Scotland, while depicting individually currency bar hoards, chariot burials, and both vitrified and Gallic forts as well as their assumed comparators in northern England and Wales. Here, selected hillforts were being expressly used to demonstrate cultural variability within later prehistoric Britain. The system of numbers (1–23) with the inclusion of Ireland, itself otherwise blank, is not discussed in text, but seems to be a forerunner of the definition of regions and provinces that was favoured by the post-war generation of archaeologists, in the development of which hillforts played a full part. Vitrified and timber-laced ramparts continued to attract attention there­after, and Cotton provided new distribution maps (Cotton 1954: fig. 1, Scotland; and fig. 2, England and Wales, with accompanying catalogue) for these particular styles of defensive architecture.

The Ordnance Survey Map of Southern Britain and subsequent developments The next significant map was to continue to define the study of the distribution of hillforts across southern Britain for several decades after its production. This was the Ordnance Survey Map of Southern Britain in the Iron Age, published in 1962, and incorporating subsidiary maps of numismatic evidence and an essay on, as well as a detailed index of, the settlement sites depicted. This was compiled by Leo (A. L. F.) Rivet (1915–93), then the Survey’s Assistant Archaeology Officer (1950–64) (see

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Phillips 1987: 117) and later Professor of Roman Provincial Studies at Keele University. Rivet had previously overseen the third edition of the OS Map of Roman Britain (Ordnance Survey 1956), which provided the model for the Iron Age map. This was a period fairly described by Malcolm Todd (1994: ix) as ‘an Indian summer for the Archaeology Division of the OS’. The Iron Age map was envisaged as marking in cartographic terms ‘a return . . . to the borderline area between history and prehistory’ (Phillips 1980: 35), reviving the OS tradition of providing maps of archaeological evidence. In fact, it was to be the last period-based prehistoric map that the OS produced (Phillips 1980: appendix, 63). Underpinned by the Survey’s Archaeology Division records, the map of southern Britain showed a range of features, primarily categories of settlement evidence, distinguished by period through the use of colour (i.e. black for Iron Ages A and B, red for Iron Age C, and purple where C was believed to have influenced an earlier Iron Age culture). For ‘Hillforts and other Defensive Enclosures’ – the terminology used in both the map legend and in the introductory essay (which, in the British tradition, included promontory forts) – the mapping was of a sophistication not previously seen (Figure 1.2). At 1:625,000, approximately 10 miles to the inch, the coverage extended northwards across Britain as far as the north of the Isle of Man and east to approximately Scarborough on the North Yorkshire coast. Hawkes’s cultural sequence, firmly restated in 1959, was retained in the OS product. Unless demonstrably otherwise, hillforts were assumed to belong to Iron Age A and/or B. Oppida were distinguished by a different symbol and, in light of their lateness within the Iron Age, were shown in red (as C/Belgic). Probably the main – and indeed enduring – selections made were in the sub-divisions used further to categorise hillforts. Differentiation by defensive architectural type, which Childe (1935) for example had employed, is absent; instead, distinctions were drawn between univallate forts, on the one hand, and those with two or more enclosing circuits (‘multi­vallate’), on the other. No distinction was made as to whether systems of enclosure were complete or not; designation seems to have been according to the maximum number of ramparts present. Of equal importance, sites were divided into three size classes in terms of their internal areas. While this was not the first time size had been considered – Christison (1898: 384–5) for example had tabulated data for forts in Scotland3 by their extents – the three bands selected by Rivet have proved enduring, while not uncontentious, in British Iron Age studies. These are: up to 3 acres (c. 1.21 ha); 3–15 acres (1.22–6.07 ha); and 15 acres and above (6.08 ha and over). In the accompanying text (Ordnance Survey 1962: 13), these are simply stated as givens, but the background to their selection was provided by Rivet elsewhere (1961: 32–3). Arrived at by experimentation, ‘they separate off the little ring-works of Cornwall and South-West Wales on the one hand and the oppida [sic] of Wessex on the other’ (ibid. p. 33). The OS data made it clear that, even in southern Britain, small univallate forts were the most frequent variety, constituting over 40% of the total, whereas fewer than 1 in 20 forts belonged in the large multivallate category (Table 1.1). Although variations on these categories were soon proposed (e.g. Cunliffe

FINDING, CATALOGUING AND MAPPING HILLFORTS

Figure 1.2  An extract from the Ordnance Survey Map of Southern Britain in the Iron Age, published in 1962

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Table 1.1  Hillforts by historic county included in the OS 1962 map of southern Britain, with an analysis of the proportions of multivallate (M) and univallate (U) forts present by size category a County Anglesey Bedfordshire Berkshire Brecknockshire Buckinghamshire Caernarfonshire Cambridgeshire Ceredigion Carmarthenshire Cheshire Cornwall Denbighshire Derbyshire Devon Dorset Essex Flintshire Glamorganshire Gloucestershire Hampshire Herefordshire Hertfordshire Kent Lancashire Leicestershire Lincolnshire London Man (Isle of) Merionethshire Middlesex Monmouthshire Montgomeryshire Norfolk Northamptonshire Nottinghamshire Oxfordshire Pembrokeshire Radnorshire Shropshire/Salop Somerset Staffordshire Suffolk Surrey Sussex Warwickshire Wiltshire Worcestershire Yorkshire

M > 15 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 2 2 1 1 5 1 2 0 6 3 5 2 3 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 1 0 1 0 1 5 4 0 0 4 1 1 9 0 0

U > 15 2 0 3 0 3 2 0 0 1 0 2 0 0 2 2 2 0 0 8 10 8 1 1 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 3 4 0 0 0 6 2 12 1 0

M 3–15 1 0 2 6 1 4 2 3 6 1 14 4 1 20 9 1 3 7 17 5 9 0 2 2 0 1 0 0 1 0 10 5 1 2 0 2 4 1 12 12 3 1 2 2 1 8 2 1

U 3–15 0 3 10 3 6 3 3 3 2 3 18 9 2 28 12 6 1 4 22 27 4 2 0 2 1 0 1 1 2 0 3 4 3 1 0 5 5 3 6 18 3 0 4 9 5 16 3 3

M  15

M 3–15

U 3–15

M