- Chapter Five -
In this treatment, the author has attempted to cast doubt on the universality with
which iron age fortifications can straightforwardly be interpreted as defensive, in the
narrowly military sense, in intent. Lacking firepower, of course, direct protection
could in any case be extended only to people and goods within their compass, and not
to facilities and resources in their vicinities. This is not to dispute that they may have
had considerable 'deterrent value' in societies where the possibility of armed conflict
(to judge, for example, from the availability of weaponry) was ever-present, an
argument cogently advanced by Sharples (1991). Equally, in the labour-and resource-
demands in terms of both construction and, importantly, maintenance they represent,
elaborate walls and massive ramparts were clearly symbols of latent power.
That power was established on bases other than simply the control of armed force
seems clear for many Celtic-speaking societies. The wish to demonstrate status, the
need to monitor access to markets, to industries, to food, or to luxuries, or the desire
to control participation in ritual activities, are amongst many factors which may
equally have contributed to the decision to erect such earthworks, as well as influen-
cing the form they took. In this regard, the kilometres-long defences of certain
continental oppida, frequently built in elaborate variants of a traditional (and,
arguably, militarily outmoded) style, and set anew - in some cases at some distance
from the preceding settlement - in formerly favoured topographic positions, like
hill-tops, seem to highlight the 'contradictions' contained in many such earthworks.
This is not to deny that the defence of forts on occasion played a substantial role
in conflict. This is most clear in the case of documented wars with Rome, but even
in such campaigns there are plentiful indications that holding defensible sites was far
from a general strategy. In northern Italy, for example, Peyre (1979, 1985) has
demonstrated that, whilst the collapse of resistance in some groups followed the
taking of their principal settlements (as is the case with the Insubres in 222 Be),
the Boii a generation later contrastingly did not defend Felsina and surrounding
fortifications, but instead dispersed into the countryside, thereby prolonging the
conflict. In the Gallic War, significant fighting certainly took place at forts
(Rivet 1971). None the less, Deyber's (1987) analysis of the conduct of the war
demonstrates the substantial extent to which resistance was based on the landscape:
the characteristics of terrain, the opportunities provided by forest, and the applica-
tion of scorched earth policies. It may be concluded that, in these admittedly special
circumstances, the existence of forts did not necessarily entail their defence.
The Early Irish literature, composed in a later and arguably different Celtic world,
and which is of such importance in discussions of the 'heroic' nature of warfare,
seemingly makes no mention of the role of fortifications therein (Avery 1976).
Contrastingly, the besieging and taking of forts is a recurrent subject in the Annals
(Alcock 1981).
In conclusion, the construction of fortifications in the Celtic world is one token
of the internal stresses that made the resort to arms a distinct possibility. That they
were the arena of armed conflict in some cases is certain; but it would be excessive
both to envisage any straightforward correlation between hillfort-building and
particularly troubled times and to consider that the existence of what contemporary
archaeologists term fortifications necessarily implied a defensive strategy founded on
them.