Compared to the number of surviving hillforts – there are almost as many on Toby Driver’s distribution map as there are settlements in modern Wales – only a tiny handful have been excavated. As a result, there is much that we do not know about the later prehistory of Wales, or, as Toby puts it, there are ‘many dark corners that require illumination, or the spark of imagination’ if we are to piece together the lives of our Iron Age ancestors.
Hillforts, along with promontory forts, are one of the three main types of later prehistoric settlement in Wales, the other two being small, defended enclosures and hut groups/field systems. The Historic Environment Records for Wales, accessed via the online portal Archwilio, currently list 764 hillforts, 1,191 defended enclosures, and 1,332 hut groups. In parts of Montgomeryshire and Pembrokeshire, there is a prehistoric fort or farmstead for every modern farm, hinting at the density of settlement, population size, and extent of land cultivation in the period from the earliest Iron Age (around 800 BC) to the early medieval period. Although Rome occupied parts of Wales from c.AD 70, the hillforts and farms of Wales changed little as a consequence, and some that had fallen out of use under Roman rule were reoccupied after AD 410, especially those on coastal sites.
Prominent places
Hillforts are categorised by the size and strength of their enclosing ramparts, and many have elaborate gateways, marked by outworks, hornworks, and annexes. Most occupy striking natural locations, often on prominent hilltops, ridges, or plateaus, though some were constructed on low-lying knolls, ridges, and hillocks. It is more than likely that these commanding sites were regarded as significant long before they were given the additional definition of hillfort ditches and banks. Finds of worked flints and stone axes at Breiddin and Ffridd Faldwyn in Montgomeryshire, at Pen Dinas in Ceredigion, and at many of the coastal promontory forts of Pembrokeshire indicate an importance for these locations at least two millennia before they became hillforts. Neolithic causewayed enclosures have been found underlying hillforts such as at Caerau, Cardiff, where one of the later gateways is aligned on the main eastern entrance of the Neolithic enclosure, which must therefore have been visible as an earthwork when Iron Age people began work there.
