Subscribe now for full access and no adverts
REVIEW BY GARY LOCK
The Baltinglass area has rightly been called ‘Ireland’s Hillfort Capital’ due to the 13 or so large enclosures on hilltops surrounding the modern town. The area has been intensively studied by a team from University College Cork since 2011, led initially by O’Brien and then O’Driscoll. This volume follows on from the first major publication of results in 2017, O’Brien and O’Driscoll’s Hillforts, Warfare and Society in Bronze Age Ireland. Together, the two volumes provide a seminal study of Irish hillforts in general, with a special focus on those of the Wicklow Mountains.
The emphasis is on hillforts within their landscapes, using the full range of techniques to place the excavations within a physical and environmental setting. Excellent use is made of aerial photographs, drone imagery, LiDAR, and geophysical survey together with GIS manipulation and presentation to provide interesting interpretations and excellent explanatory images. Pollen analysis from cores taken at a local bog, together with a series of radiocarbon dates, show environmental changes through the Holocene, with a peak in pastoral and arable agriculture occurring in the Middle Bronze Age.
One important element of this work is the identification of Neolithic origins for several of these hillforts. Excavations at Rathcoran, Hughstown and Spinans Hill I, backed up by a suite of radiocarbon dates, have shown that surrounding banks were first constructed in the 4th millennium BC. Limited excavations, with more radiocarbon dates, at Rathnegree, Sruhaun, and Tinoran show that these were first enclosed in the Middle/Late Bronze Age, seen as a time of social and economic expansion. This new fieldwork is discussed within a wider context of hillforts in the Baltinglass area, including an interesting new analysis of house platforms at Brusselstown Ring. Discussion moves on to consider other Neolithic and Bronze Age hillforts in Ireland, before locating them within a wider UK context.
Overall, this work has produced a complex picture of construction, use, and change over a long period of time that has significantly added to our understanding of Irish hillforts. The book is well-written and beautifully illustrated, and is essential for any prehistorian’s bookshelf.
Baltinglass and the Prehistoric Hillforts of Ireland
James O’Driscoll, Alan Hawkes, and William O’Brien
Wordwell, €50
ISBN 978-1916742086
