CHAPTER FIVE
FORTIFICATIONS AND
DEFENCE
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Ian Ralston
A
mongst the most conspicuous remains datable to later prehistoric times in many
of the varied landscapes of temperate Europe are the enclosures which define
hill-and promontory-forts. Generally set on elevated or other locations conferring
natural defensive advantages, their complete or partial circuits envelop areas varying
from less than one hectare to, in extreme cases, in excess of 1,000 ha. Compared to
the internal structures within such sites, often now difficult to discern at ground level
without excavation, the walls and ramparts which surround them are frequently
readily appreciable, even where they are now cloaked in woodland, as is more
commonly the case in continental Europe than in the British Isles (Audouze and
Biichsenschiitz 1992).
The crop mark aerial photographic record, however, provides intimations of works
in the arable lowlands which may have been of similar strength initially, but which
have since been entirely eradicated as above-ground, three-dimensional monuments.
One of the most fully excavated examples in such a location in the United Kingdom
occupied a slight knoll on the coastal plain at Broxmouth near Dunbar, East Lothian
(Hill 1982). On the Continent, the most thoroughly examined of the massive late
iron age enclosures, at Manching in Bavaria, Germany, equally sits (untypically for
such sites) in a lowland setting, close to a tributary of the Danube (Maier 1986, with
earlier literature). Thus, whilst man-made works normally enhance a naturally
defensive location, this is not invariably the case; the topographic settings of some
sites often classed with hill-forts may confer little or no altitudinal advantage. There
is thus, particularly in the absence of excavation evidence, considerable scope for
haziness at the interface between the classification, in English usage, of 'fort' (with
its implications of defensive considerations) and 'enclosure', where the enveloping
works are not interpreted in this way (Avery 1976).
Some of these constructions represent the most visible surviving testimony
of large-scale civil engineering effort on the part of iron age communities.
Conventionally, their enclosing features may be considered in terms of requirements
for defence; but their characteristics, including the variety in their scales, detailed
topographic settings (especially the emplacement of the earthworks relative to the
configuration of the hill on which they sit) and architectural forms, suggest that this
need falls far short of providing a wholly adequate raison d'etre for all of them
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