- Fortifications and Defence -
complexity, designed to confer advantage to the defenders, as at Danebury, Hampshire,
and again at Maiden Castle. Cells or chambers, set on the margins of entrance passages,
are another feature of a restricted number of sites and are assumed to have housed
guards (Cunliffe 1991; Forde-Johnston 1976).
Additional external protection is offered at a few sites by the emplacement of
offset rows of vertical stones (or, on rare occasions, timbers) outside the defences in
arrangements termed chevaux-de-frise (Harbison 1971). Seemingly designed to break
up frontal assaults on defences, the locations of some examples in fact square ill with
a primarily military purpose, manifestly at Dun Aengus on the Aran Islands
(Co. Galway, Eire; Raftery 1991), but also at Spanish Celtiberian examples, as at
Chamartin de la Sierra, in the province of Avila (Cabre 1950), where a chevaux-de-
frise occurs in the interior in the vicinity of one of the gates.
The presence of towers or bastions attached to the enceinte has normally been
taken to be indicative of Mediterranean influence, if not the presence of a southern
architect. The most celebrated instance is provided by the serried bastions attached
to the clay-brick wall - itself an unusual constructional material this far north
- erected on a stone footing and forming one phase of the defensive sequence at the
late Hallstatt Heuneburg in Baden-Wiirttemburg, Germany (Bittel et al. 1981). The
replacement of this innovative defensive work was marked by a return to a more
traditional wall incorporating horizontal timberwork. Towers surmounting ramparts
remain difficult to discern archaeologically, although timber-built examples occur at
Altburg-bei-Bundenbach near Trier and on the late La Tene wall of Mont Vully, near
La Tene, Switzerland (Kaenel and Curdy 1988), and have been surmised from
tumbled material at Mont Boubier, in Wallonia, Belgium (Papeleux et al. 1988,
fig. 43) (Figure 5.7). Further instances are recorded in the Lausitz province. In
general, archaeological evidence for the arrangements on the wall-heads does not
survive; parapets and breastworks are likely, but few walls preserve the necessary
evidence to allow generalization. In the United Kingdom, arguably late examples of
stone-built parapets are evidenced at Tre'r Ceiri (Caernarvonshire, Wales) (Hogg
1975) and the Mither Tap o'Bennachie (Gordon District, Grampian Region,
Scotland). At Crickley Hill, Gloucestershire, stone paving on the top of the period
3 defences may provide a rare secure indication of their original height (Dixon 1976);
and Wheeler (1943) identified a palisade line, presumably for a breastwork, near the
summit of one of Maiden Castle's dump ramparts.
Generally speaking, the lines of fortification conform to the topography of the
terrain on which they are set. Thus, in contour forts, the enceinte usually occupies a
narrow altitudinal band around the hill, only departing from this in cases where not
to have done so would leave dead ground, not capable of surveillance from the
enceinte, in its immediate vicinity, because of the changing convexity of the external
topography for instance. Such military common sense is not, however, universal. In
extreme cases, a contrary arrangement prevails, in which the form of the enclosure
appears to have been dictated at least partially by the materials employed. Examples
include some of the seemingly gateless, oblong forts of eastern Scotland north of the
Forth-Clyde isthmus, such as Finavon, Angus and Tap o'Noth, Gordon District
(Figure 5.8). The subsequent vitrification of these is a good indication that these con-
structions originally contained straightish lengths of timber in quantity.
71