The Hillforts of Iron Age Wales

This article is from Current Archaeology issue 406

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REVIEW BY IAN RALSTON

This monograph on Welsh hillforts is by a man who knows them well. It builds on Driver’s innovative doctoral examination of those in Ceredigion, and his general book on Cardigan Bay, to consider the entirety of the Welsh evidence. His scope extends backwards to the late Bronze Age and forwards, summarily at least, to the recourse to such sites in the Romano-British and early medieval periods. He also considers lesser enclosures, farms, hut-groups, and houses – all important components of the Welsh settlement record.

Chapter 1 examines the initial recognition of hillforts and their developing academic study from the Victorian period through more extensive 20th-century excavations and surveys. Results from very recent projects that deployed the newest technologies are incorporated, too. A brief outline of key Welsh place-name elements and of terminologies for related site categories (for example, raths) concisely navigates potential minefields. A particular strength – fully matched in subsequent chapters – is the judicious selection and quality of the illustrations, numbers of which are due to the author, either as a painter of interpretative reconstructions or in his day job as Royal Commission aerial photographer. Extended captions are surefooted (but what is a ‘boxed annexe’, referred to in Fig 1.18?), enhancing the reader’s comprehension of these.

Iron Age Wales is placed briefly in wider cultural and geographical contexts in Chapter 2. The discontinuous development of southern, ultimately Mediterranean, contacts, culminating in the violent decades of the Roman conquest in the 1st century AD, is rehearsed. Evidence for late Iron Age tribal groupings is succinctly presented. Two components particularly attracted me: links westward to Ireland potentially recognisable in large maritime promontory forts; and the stress placed on the seaways for long-term coastal cabotage and trading.

Chapters 3 to 5 provide the book’s kernel: the consideration of major aspects of the hillfort record. They give insights into a huge range of issues, from their landscapes (and the potential significance of incorporating unusual geological phenomena) and settings in regard to agricultural and other (including mineral) resources to patterns of landholding. Social dimensions, from chieftains to evidence for slavery, are aired. Chapter 4 focuses on weaponry and conflict (including with Rome), evidence still generally in short supply: votive finds help, but a conspicuous absence in Welsh records seems to be indications of destruction by fire of hillfort defences. Their design and construction occupy the next chapter, the book’s pièce de resistance. This succinctly outlines Driver’s earlier contention that enclosures often incorporate elements to impress adversaries psychologically rather than to be militarily effective: as well as strongly defensive sites there are others – in his felicitous phrase, ’family hillforts ”built on a budget”’ – and many gradations in-between. Discussion of various individual defensive features, and of the significance of entranceways, includes well-made observations. As elsewhere, boxed text on specific issues highlights novelties of various kinds in the record. Here, following the discovery of the Pembrokeshire chariot, prospects for burial and ceremonial evidence near, as well as within, hillforts are considered.

A final chapter explores coastal promontory forts. Matters of practical living and possible importance as ports-of-trade are juxtaposed with more liminal, ritual dimensions of recourse to these places at the hem of land and sea. Some have eroded significantly, and this reviewer wonders whether certain features proposed as portals to the otherworld and other cult interpretations – as at Flimston Bay – might be results of post-occupation collapse.

A guide to ten key hillforts, demonstrating the range of their characteristics, concludes the volume. Alongside the fundamentals of access and visible evidence, this is much enhanced by the author’s ruminations and speculations on their potential meanings.

This well-illustrated and competitively priced account is accessibly written for a wide readership. Its usefulness is enhanced by good indexing, a thorough bibliography, and helpful advice. It is a welcome addition to the literature on later prehistoric Wales, and on hillforts more generally.

Toby Driver
Logaston Press, £20
ISBN 978-1910839676