, a contour hillfort at
Herefordshire Beacon The Iron Age hillforts have remained dominating features in the British landscape: as ethnologist J. Forde-Johnston noted, "Of all the earthworks that are such a notable feature of the landscape in England and Wales few are more prominent or more striking than the hillforts built during the centuries before the Roman conquest." He continued, describing them as an "eloquent testimony of the technical ability and social organization of the Iron Age peoples." There was "immense variation subsumed within the class of monuments called hillforts". Those of the British Iron Age have been characterised as belonging to four different types. The main two are
contour and
promontory forts, and the lesser two are
hill-slope and
plateau forts. Contour forts are those "...in which the defences cut off the upper portion of a hill from the ground below by following, more or less, the line of the contours encircling it." Promontory forts are typically defined by "...an area to which the approach is limited, to a greater or lesser extent, by natural features such as cliffs, very steep slopes, rivers etc. Where such features exist little or nothing in the way of man-made fortification is required." view of Camp Knowe Iron Age hillfort in Northumberland view of
Badbury Rings Iron Age hillfort in Dorset view of
Caer Caradoc (Chapel Lawn) Iron Age hillfort in Shropshire view of
Danebury Iron Age hillfort and Celtic-like field system in Hampshire Hill-slope hillforts, rather than "enclosing the hilltop in the manner of contour forts, are situated on the sloping ground on one side of it, overlooked by the crest". Plateau forts "face level ground on all sides, regardless of their elevation above sea-level". Plateau forts are often, although by no means always, located in
plateaus, hence their name. The number of these such ramparts differs in Iron Age British hillforts. Univallate, are single-rampart only. Multivallate, are multi-rampart forts. Commenting on their distribution across southern Britain, Forde-Johnston stated that "roughly one-third of the Iron Age forts in England and Wales have multivallate defences, the remaining two-thirds being univallate." It has been suggested that only the innermost rampart would be manned, with the other ones serving more to make space and breakup charges.
Purpose The reason for why British Iron Age peoples built hillforts is still under dispute. One school of thought, dominant amongst archaeologists in much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, holds that they were primarily defensive structures built in an era of intertribal warfare. In the late twentieth century, various archaeologists began to challenge this assumption, claiming that there was not sufficient evidence to back it up. As Mark Bowden and Dave McOmish remarked, "there is a tendency to assume that they were all built for similar purposes and are all performing similar functions", something that they note may well not have been true. Taking a similar stance, archaeologist Niall Sharples noted that "It is clear from [my] analysis of the sequence [of construction] at
Maiden Castle, and by comparison with other sites, such as
Danebury, that hillforts do not have a single function. A variety of different activities can be associated with these sites and with time the importance or perhaps the emphasis of certain activities changed dramatically."
Defensive usage It has been traditionally assumed that hillforts were constructed for defensive purposes in the Iron Age. Describing
warfare of the period, archaeologist Niall Sharples stated that war was such an integral part of all agricultural human societies that it was possible "to believe
a priori that after the introduction of agriculture [in the Neolithic,] warfare was a constant feature of the prehistoric societies of the British Isles." It was in this context, he believed, that hillforts were constructed as defensive positions. In 1948, J.G.D. Clark commented that hillforts' "defensive character cannot be stressed too often." Another archaeologist to hold a similar viewpoint,
Barry Cunliffe, a specialist in the Iron Age, believed that hillforts from this period were defensive settlements. Various archaeologists have called into question the defensive capacity of many hillforts. Using the case study of the
Scratchbury hillfort in
Wiltshire, Bowden and McOmish noted that "The positioning of [the fort] suggests that it was not built for defence" because "a potential assailant is enabled to observe all the dispositions of the defence", thereby leaving it particularly vulnerable to attackers. On a similar note, archaeologists Sue Hamilton and John Manley, after investigating the forts in south-east England, noted that for this region, "It is noteworthy that most of the hillforts are univallate, and lack the in-depth perimeter elaboration which elsewhere has been ascribed a defensive role." Niall Sharples, after accepting that many British hillforts were not particularly defensible, theorised that Iron Age warfare in Britain, like much warfare around the world, did not consist purely of physical violence, but instead might have primarily "...involved ritualised display and threatening behaviour. I believe that the bulk of the evidence for warfare in the archaeological record [which included hillforts] is created as a deterrent, or to symbolise the nature of the conflict rather than actually the physical act." In this manner, hillforts would have in many respects been symbolically defensive rather than practically so, in a period when warfare was primarily about being threatening to your enemies rather than entering into open conflict with them.
Ceremonial and ritual usage In 1989, Mark Bowden and Dave McOmish noted that "The idea that some hillforts performed ceremonial functions is not a new one but discussion has concentrated on the possible existence of shrines and temples within the defences." Instead, they proposed that "The morphology and topography of the ramparts themselves may indicate ceremonial activity". In the extreme southwest, enclosed settlements, albeit on a much smaller scale, continued to be constructed, such as at
Chysauster or the '
Rounds' found in Cornwall—presumably reflecting a lesser degree of Roman influence, which continued through into
Sub-Roman Britain.
Northern Britain The
Roman Empire never occupied northern Britain, which at this time was largely the geographical equivalent to the later nation-state of
Scotland. As such, a native British Iron Age culture was able to continue here with less imperial interference. This had some bearing on the nature of hill forts in this period. Archaeologist
Leslie Alcock noted that a fort-building hiatus in the early centuries [AD] was followed by a new wave of construction—beginning in the third century, gathering momentum in the fifth, and perhaps extending through to the eighth. Out of all northern forts with radiometric dates, about half were either earlier forts that had been refurbished in the later period, or were newly constructed on virgin sites in the later period. ==Early Medieval hillforts==