- The Early Celts in Wales -
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Figure 35.3 Moe! y Gaer, Flint.: the western defences and internal structures: (a) Phase Ij (b)
Phase 2j (c) Phase 3. (Sources: Guilbert 1976, 1982.)
The general tendency for these community settlements to be abandoned suggests
that social stress may have been transient and/or spasmodic. Nevertheless, they seem
to have been the harbinger of a need to enclose and protect communities; hence
the hierarchy of defended settlements which is the hallmark of the PRIA. Despite
the apparent sharp breaks exhibited in the settlement record some of the essential
components of MBA/LBA settlement, especially structural and artefactual, continue,
though economic strategies were changing in response to the prevailing conditions,
whilst in the emergence of a more markedly hierachical social system we can discern
one of the dominant forces of the PRIA.
Climatic amelioration after c. 450 b.c. allowed communities to establish an