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Ringed by imposing earthworks and often crowning lofty vantage points, hillforts would have been dominating features of the Iron Age landscapes in which they stood. They remain impressive landmarks today – but what were they for? These sites are often interpreted as defensive in design, but archaeological evidence presents a more nuanced picture, demonstrating that their enclosed interiors hosted a diverse range of domestic, creative, social, and ceremonial activities. While our understanding continues to evolve, however, the overall picture remains patchy: hillforts are unevenly distributed across Britain, and some regions – such as south-west England and the Welsh Marches – have seen much more intensive research than others. The East Midlands, for example, is home to only a handful of known hillforts, and few of these have undergone substantial, systematic archaeological exploration.
There are important exceptions, however. Burrough Hill and Breedon Hill, both in Leicestershire, have produced finds that speak of high- status individuals and far-reaching trade connections, and shed vivid light on the lives of their inhabitants. While (as we will explore below) their archaeological journeys have been rather different, both hillforts appear to have been regionally significant places. Their stories are currently being told in Life at an Iron Age Hillfort: investigating Breedon Hill & Burrough Hill at the University of Nottingham Museum (see ‘Further information’ on below). Drawing together artefacts loaned by Leicestershire County Council Museums, the exhibition is the museum’s first to focus specifically on the Iron Age. Its displays bring 2,000-year-old experiences vividly to life, and highlight how much hillforts still have to teach us about this period of prehistory. ‘It has been wonderful to be able to display these regionally important objects, and to be able to collaborate so closely with ULAS, Leicestershire County Council Museums, and specialists like Robert Hurford to bring the exhibition together,’ commented Dr Clare Pickersgill, the museum’s Keeper.
Iron Age insights
Located on a steep-sided promontory near Melton Mowbray, Burrough Hill’s ramparts enclose a trapezoidal area of some 5ha (12 acres). Between 1935 and 1971, small-scale excavations revealed evidence of Iron Age and Roman activity on the site, including a detailed look at the hillfort entrance, which included a small room in the rampart, interpreted as a guard chamber. Today, Burrough Hill appears to stand in picturesque isolation, but excavations across Leicestershire since the 1990s have shown that hillforts formed just part of a busy Iron Age landscape of farms, settlements, and ceremonial centres. The new evidence highlighted that Burrough Hill was poorly understood in comparison to the ever-increasing record of more extensively excavated settlements, and to rectify this, in 2010 University of Leicester archaeologists launched a five-year project carrying out comprehensive geophysical surveys and targeted excavation on the hillfort itself.
This project, which is described in more detail in CA 301, completely transformed our understanding of how Burrough Hill had been used. Its interior was densely scattered with pits, boundary ditches, and the circular gullies that would have once surrounded roundhouses. These dwelling spaces produced few artefacts, leading the project co-director John Thomas, who also curated the current exhibition, to describe the site as a ‘house-proud hillfort’ in the feature that he co-authored for CA. Nearby refuse and storage pits, however, were packed full of finds that testified to a wide range of activities, from the industrial (notably pottery production, spinning, weaving, smithing, and bone- and antler-working) to rare echoes of leisure activities, which included bone gaming counters and dice, as well as more enigmatic practices.
Some of the pits appear to have been used for more ‘special’ deposits: one contained a cache of iron tools and weaponry (CA 280), while another, located close to a roundhouse, was dubbed the ‘house-clearance pit’ because of the sheer quantity of domestic refuse and objects that it produced, including loom-weights and a rotary quern that had been deliberately smashed. Given how difficult such objects would have been to break – and the effort required to create one in the first place – this act seems significant, as does the fact that the roundhouse appears to have been abandoned soon afterwards, with another deposit of pottery, ash, and animal bone filling a slot that appears to have deliberately blocked its entrance. Might these collections represent a closing gesture, John wonders, possibly votive in intention? Or were they a reaction to some kind of crisis within the house – perhaps an outbreak of disease or the death of its owner – which prompted the community to strip out its contents, remove them from circulation through burial, and permanently decommission the structure, too?
Behind this same roundhouse, another deep, oval pit produced the project’s most-striking finds: ornately decorated pieces of bronze comprising harness fittings as well as D-shaped terret rings (rein guides) and linchpins from an Iron Age chariot. Thought to date to the 3rd or 2nd century BC, the Burrough Hill hoard appears to have been carefully arranged in a box or other container that was then placed on a bed of cereal chaff at the base of the pit and set alight. Fortunately, the ash produced during this destructive act had actually helped to preserve the objects and their decorative motifs. Those adorning the chariot fittings are reminiscent of similar items excavated from Arras culture burials in East Yorkshire, highlighting how far objects and traditions could travel at this time (other items from the site have also made long journeys, such as querns made of millstone grit from the Peak District).
It is also interesting that the terret rings represent an incomplete set: they would have been used in groups of five (set along a chariot’s yoke), but only three are present in the hoard. Perhaps the others lie buried elsewhere, or it may have been usual practice to commit only a representative sample to the ground, with the rest retained as mementoes or heirlooms. Just as enigmatic is a trio of iron tools that were found alongside the bronze items and are displayed beside them in the exhibition. Their unusual forms make it difficult to know what they may have been used for, but their association with chariot parts and harness pieces has led some to suggest a similarly equine theme, perhaps representing a curry comb for grooming horses, a curved blade for trimming hooves, and another, longer blade. Another possibility, suggested during my visit by Helen Sharp, Curator of Archaeology at Leicestershire County Council Museum, is that these tools could have been used in leather- or hide-working, which would have been another essential skill that the hillfort residents needed to employ in harness-making, or even the construction of chariots.
Recent discoveries, including the remarkable metalwork excavated at Melsonby in North Yorkshire (CA 423) and the remains of chariots recovered from burials in the East Riding of Yorkshire (CA 327 and 347), attest that some Iron Age vehicles were ornately decorated. It can be difficult to visualise them when faced with small pieces of metal, however, and to help with this, the exhibition includes a full-sized replica of an Iron Age chariot, created by Robert Hurford, an experienced craftsman who has been recreating medieval and prehistoric vehicles for 50 years. While some aspects (the use of colour, for example) are conjectural, this impressive construction really emphasises the size of Iron Age chariots and allows visitors to see how the metal parts that more commonly survive were arranged on its wooden frame.
Lost and found
With its evidence of long-distance trade, diverse industries, and the quality and quantity of objects that had been available to its population, Burrough Hill was clearly a centre of some importance which, despite the ‘fort’ name assigned to sites of this type, appears to have been as significant as a place of meeting, making, and exchanging goods and ideas as it was for any defensive role that it may have held. The other hillfort explored in the exhibition, Breedon Hill, also appears to have been a focus of prestigious and productive activities but, as the displays attest, its story requires a little more piecing together. Located close to Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Breedon Hill has connections with major figures in British archaeology – Kathleen Kenyon excavated there in 1946, and John Wacher in 1957-1966 – but the results of these investigations are not well published, and artefacts from the site are mostly held in museum stores; this exhibition represents a rare opportunity to see some of them on public display.
Kenyon and Wacher’s investigations focused more on the hillfort’s ramparts than its interior, but the objects that have been recovered from the site tell a similar story to the more detailed narrative that has emerged from Burrough Hill. As the displays demonstrate, this, too, was a place where domestic, craft, and agricultural activities all took place – but when examining bone weaving combs and needles, it is easy to stereotype the prehistoric past as a time of hand-to-mouth labour with little time for more frivolous activities. A bone die and a gaming counter from Breedon Hill offer important reminders that leisure time and ‘fun’ are not new ideas, while brooches, a colourful glass bead, and a boar’s tusk fashioned into a pendant provide tangible links to the tastes of individual inhabitants.
Our understanding of Breedon Hill is not only less complete because its main excavations were longer ago than those of Burrough Hill: the site itself is also greatly diminished from its original form. At its peak, it would have been one of the largest hillforts in the region, with ramparts enclosing an area of c.8ha (20 acres), but modern quarrying has reduced its footprint to c.3.4ha (8.4 acres). Non-invasive archaeological research has revealed that the hillfort still has many secrets to reveal however. In 2016, Christopher Whittaker carried out geophysical surveys and analysed LiDAR data as part of his undergraduate dissertation at Newcastle University. This work (published in issue 52 of the journal Internet Archaeology; see https://doi.org/10.11141/ia.52.6) demonstrated that significant archaeology still survives within the hillfort’s interior, revealing the presence of around 20 roundhouses (some overlapping, indicating multiple phases of occupation) as well as two rectangular post-built structures.
As the University of Nottingham Museum exhibition shows, while present understanding of individual hillforts, and the wider phenomenon of such sites in less-researched regions, may be murky, advances in archaeological science and future fieldwork hold truly exciting potential to bring this intriguing picture into sharper focus.
Source:
• John Thomas is Deputy Director of University of Leicester Archaeological Services (ULAS).
• Dr Clare Pickersgill is Keeper of the University of Nottingham Museum.
• Helen Sharp is Curator of Archaeology at Leicestershire County Council Museums.
Further information:
• Life at an Iron Age Hillfort: investigating Breedon Hill & Burrough Hill runs at the University of Nottingham Museum until 13 July. The museum is open noon-4pm Thursday-Sunday; entry is free. For more information, see http://www.lakesidearts.org.uk/exhibition/life-at-an-iron-age-hillfort.
• An events programme linked to the exhibition includes two upcoming talks on other aspects of Iron Age archaeology. On 11 June, Helen Sharp will speak about ‘The Hallaton Helmet: a Conquest Period mystery’, while on 3 July Dr Sophia Adams, Curator of the European Iron Age and Roman Conquest Period at the British Museum, will talk about ‘Vibrant Vestiges of Vehicles: the power of ponies in Iron Age Britain’. Further details can be found at http://www.lakesidearts.org.uk/whats-on.
All images: University of Leicester, unless otherwise stated
