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From frank h

I'm still not with you, Frank. As far as I'm aware, a borough/burgh/bury is a fortification or 'castle'. What do you mean by the burys that "seem to have been placed strategically around each fort"? Villages/towns with borough/burgh/bury in the name?

On the current atlas each identified Hill fort has at least one bury, ie. fortified place located 5 to 15 miles distant, and more commonly pairs of burys which may be indicative of one on guard at any given time. The map positions imply that as each Hill fort was overcome the next available fort similarly typically had a pair of burys established nearby, and so on until all the forts had gone. Several lines of progression can be observed starting from coastal inlets.

Is the relationship not that the villages (or "sectors" of villages) were named (or renamed) for the forts?

Maybe so, but the modern name presumably has retained the original meaning of fortified place.

Are you saying there is evidence, albeit circumstantial, of an invasion that forced the abandonment of the hillforts? All the hillforts, Cornwall and Wales included? Are there any other indications of such an invasion?

The archaeology indicates the Hill forts were attacked, e.g.sling shot evidence, rampart strengthening, etc., and each was eventually abandoned post 400BC. The burys are reasonable candidates for their demise in so far as the archaeology of excavated sites of the period indicates ditch and stockade-type defence with dwellings inside.

In contrast the Hill forts of Cornwall and coastal Wales do not have bury names alongside (when these were abandoned has not yet apparently been determined), presumably because the topography is hilly/mountainous and little good farmland was available to exploit and therefore of little interest, although some supposed Irish activity is reported in the archaeology. The exceptions being the marches which all have burys nearby up to the hill/mountain line border.

I'm all for Saxons, or Danes or anyone else in the frame being at large in Britain before or during the Roman era -- Was Boudicca a Celt? -- but what is the evidence for anyone in particular? The Anglo-Saxons may have been about, but they don't have a special presence until after the Romans, do they? What is the evidence for the Belgae like, before (or during?) the Romans?

There is no archaeological evidence as far as I am aware of an invasion post the Roman period, only Gildas' vague historical commentary.

Since the term bury is Germanic and the theoretically identified lines of bury progression imply intrusions from coastal inlets, speculatively the likely builders originated from different parts of the nearby continent, ie.the so-called 'Anglo-Saxons'.

While perhaps not massive forces, nevertheless according to my proposed model, they each possessed successful strategies sufficient to overcome the individual Hill fort leaderships and open up the land and local labour for exploitation.

DPCrisp

In: Bedfordshire

On the current atlas each identified Hill fort has at least one bury, ie. fortified place, located 5 to 15 miles distant

Are you saying that fortified places existed where (perhaps were pin-pointed where) villages/towns are called borough/ burgh/ bury, regardless of whether any physical remains of the fortifications survive?

And that since they have English names, they are likely to be distinct from (indeed, antagonistic to) the Celtic hillforts?

It's just that 5 - 15 miles seems a long way for any kind of siegeworks... but a very reasonable distance between hillforts. If memory serves, there are something in the region of a thousand hillforts in England and Wales (58000 square miles), so that's about 7 or 8 miles between them on average. (If there were only 700, that's still one every 9 miles.) Roman villas and Norman motte-n-bailies are similarly scattered, I believe: sort of one per reasonable sized village or town. (And some sites were re-used by successive rulers.)

Several lines of progression can be observed starting from coastal inlets.

I look forward to seeing your results -- and I look forward to seeing whether these lines correspond to roads leading to/from the ports. (It'd be hard for them not to.)

the modern name presumably has retained the original meaning of fortified place.

Note that the New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary gives the "Old English" word as referring to "a fortress, a castle, a citadel; a court, a manor-house."

What if the hillforts were the equivalent of manor houses?

In contrast the Hill forts of Cornwall and coastal Wales do not have bury names alongside

The pattern you describe amounts to "borough/burgh/bury is a common placename throughout England, but not in Celtland".

This is consistent with a military invasion some time in the BC's that established the places with those names, but if you want to link it in any way with the arrival of English, you still have to address all the anomalies that face the AD Anglo-Saxons, as Mick discusses in THOBR.

There is no archaeological evidence as far as I am aware of an invasion post the Roman period

Yeah, that's what Francis Pryor has been banging on about, but his main beef is with the exterminationist story of Anglo-Saxons slashing and burning everywhere. What is the evidence of invasion by the Goths, Vandals, Franks et al, or even the Romans, Vikings or Normans? And how can we tell that the slingstones were not hurled at the hillforts in the civil wars that Caesar wrote about?

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From frank h

I'm not aware that any archaeological work has been done on occupied villages with the bury place name. However the non-hillfort site of Little Woodbury of the Iron Age period was excavated to show post holes and ditches.

And that since they have English names, they are likely to be distinct from (indeed, antagonistic to) the Celtic hillforts?

The English Hill forts got their names at various times and would presumably originally have related to the languages spoken by the people who built them. But later after abandonment, if reoccupied (e.g.Roman invasion) as a stronghold, then bury, but maybe castle for an old disused fortification or whatever the locals wanted to call them. Similarly the Welsh Hill forts are named dinas or castell.

It's just that 5 - 15 miles seems a long way for any kind of siegeworks... but a very reasonable distance between hillforts. If memory serves, there are something in the region of a thousand hillforts in England and Wales (58000 square miles), so that's about 7 or 8 miles between them on average. (If there were only 700, that's still one every 9 miles.) Roman villas and Norman motte-n-bailies are similarly scattered, I believe: sort of one per reasonable sized village or town. (And some sites were re-used by successive rulers.)

Most Hill forts were abandoned pre-400 BC or thereafter strengthened to form the 100 or so developed Hill Forts, i.e. massive ramparts and ditches, which I've adopted for creating the fort/bury maps.

Maybe, but they seem to have been defensive surviving in the upland areas on subsistence farming. The more advanced agriculture evolving on the continent at this time needed good soils for ploughing, which presumably formed the basis for stronghold manor houses possibly developed from some of the burys, or even better sites later on. This I assume was the driving force in seeking new resources for exploitaion by the new social groups.

Yeah, that's what Francis Pryor has been banging on about, but his main beef is with the exterminationist story of Anglo-Saxons

My theory only requires progressive removal of the Hill fort chiefdom, presumably leaving plenty of local labour on hand to be absorbed and integrated by the incoming new elite, who offered a better way of life in the areas opened up? Indeed our genetic mix apparently suggests this to be the case.

DPCrisp

In: Bedfordshire

Most Hill forts were abandoned pre-400BC or thereafter strengthened to form the 100 or so developed Hill forts, i.e.massive ramparts and ditches,which I've adopted for creating the fort/bury maps.

Might not the bury names then correspond to the pretty-much-erased "forts" scattered among the too-big-to-be-easily-obliterated ones?

What if the hillforts were the equivalent of manor houses?

Maybe, but they seem to have been defensive surviving in the upland areas on subsistence farming.

Lost me again. The greatest concentrations of hillforts are in Cornwall and Wales, but the rest of England isn't exactly short of them. "Up on hills" is not the same as "in upland areas" (not that all hillforts are actually on hilltops: they give them various classifications according to location), as Maiden Castle exemplifies. I can't see anything that implies subsistence farming was going on around any hillfort I've been to.

I gather there is some dispute over whether hillforts were defensible in practice, but with palisades atop the embankments I've been to, I don't see why it should be questioned. Nevertheless, while defence may or may not have been a primary concern, ramparts of any size are certainly grand.

The more advanced agriculture evolving on the continent at this time needed good soils for ploughing

You mean the best soil was not already under cultivation?

This I assume was the driving force in seeking new resources for exploitation by the new social groups.

Your vision is full of change, isn't it Frank? The vision presented in THOBR and elaborated in discussions amongst us lot is largely of constancy, in which one of the constants is change.

There are roughly speaking two social strata: people are always milling about, but the general, peasant population more-or-less stays put while the fortunes and transience of the ruling class of the movers-and-shakers is linked to military strength, commercial wealth and (above all?) technology. The leaders fight each other, the leaders come and go. The peasants get new masters and new jobs to do every now and then. Economic factors are intimately linked to geography and the best places to live and work, having been established long ago, pretty well continue to be the best places to live and work. (Some new places have proved successful; some old places gave up the ghost; the vast majority of places are on record as being the same as they were a thousand years ago.) Within the 'framework' of the hoi polloi, the big nobs have their personal and civic building projects... and then the next lot rub some things out and reinforce others...

Now, does your new, Iron Age, resource-exploiting social group replace the previous population or merely ride over it?

You envisage people chanting "Need new land. Need new land." to themselves and migrating, going to war to get it? Or just people going to war in the usual way and then having things done their way in their new territory, in the usual way, whether that differed from before or not? (If it's new technology that drives their success, there will be something to change.)

My theory only requires progressive removal of the Hill fort chiefdom

I'm still missing the part that suggests the burys and the hillforts are separate things.

presumably leaving plenty of local labour on hand to be absorbed and integrated by the incoming new elite, who offered a better way of life in the areas opened up?

"Absorbed and integrated"? Why not just "ruled"? Do you think the peasant class would up and leave to follow their vanquished former leaders unless the new lot had something good to offer them? Do you think the peasant class ever had that level of devotion to their foreign leaders? Or any hope of continuing life-as-they-knew-it in a new location?

DPCrisp

In: Bedfordshire

Do you mean to say borough/burgh/bury denotes a different style of enclosure, exemplified by Little Woodbury, even though we don't have the physical evidence to link the two?

Little Woodbury turns out to be a rather singular choice.

Extracts from British Archaeology, Issue no 54, August 2000, Great sites: Little Woodbury: http://www.britarch.ac.uk/ba/ba54/ba54feat.html

There is nothing much to see here now - no walls, no earthworks, not even a sign to tell the curious visitor what lies under the ploughsoil.

Not surprising, since it's a small site in good farmland close to the river.

The excavations that took place here in the summers of 1938 and 1939 changed the look of prehistoric Britain. It is hard to imagine that before this site was dug, no one thought of Iron Age or Bronze Age farms as containing roundhouses or surrounded by a bank and ditch. Incredibly, most people had actually assumed that people in pre-Roman Britain lived in holes in the ground rather than houses - that is, in what have now been identified as storage pits.

Then all of a sudden, everyone thought of Iron Age or Bronze Age farms as containing roundhouses and surrounded by a bank and ditch; and vice versa. Little Woodbury is the archetype.

The site was discovered by the aerial archaeologist OGS Crawford in the years after the First World War, its circular boundary ditch showing up as a dark cropmark from the air.

So the name Little Woodbury must have been applied later, when it was determined that it had been little and bury with things made of wood.

Bersu was one of the first to realise that prehistoric houses were made of timber, leaving behind postholes as evidence of their existence.

I wonder whether Bersu himself thought that prehistoric houses were made of timber leaving behind postholes as evidence of their existence; as opposed to realising that prehistoric timber buildings would leave behind postholes as evidence of their existence. And I wonder how much attachment to his interpretation stems from the fact that he fled the Nazis.

he eventually uncovered the complete plan of Little Woodbury's large roundhouse and excavated many other features.

NB. Just the one roundhouse.

This is not to say that Bersu got everything right. His conception of what a roundhouse actually looked like was - to modern eyes - decidedly eccentric. At first, he saw it as a curious multi-gabled affair, then later as a kind of wigwam with no walls and a relatively flat roof. It was all a far cry from the simple conical roof supported on a low circular timber wall that has been the accepted norm ever since Peter Reynolds completed his reconstruction experiments at Butser Ancient Farm in Hampshire a couple of decades ago.

So again, the ubiquitous vision of Iron Age settlement all over Britain comes down to acceptance of a single reconstruction. Hmm.

Not that they can't be right on their own -- vid. The History of Britain Revealed and The Economy of Cities -- but whether the people fully acknowledge the status of the foundations of their work is another matter.

frank h

Might not the bury names then correspond to the pretty-much-erased "forts" scattered among the too-big-to-be-easily-obliterated ones?

Recapping on points to date, my position is as follows:
The archaeology indicates that in southern, western and NE parts of England and E Scotland, from early in the first millennium BC, defended settlements began to spread. By 600 BC those on hill-tops and similar promontories were defended by ramparts and by 400 BC were either abandoned or elaborated and extended to form 100 or so large, developed hill forts centres defended by multiple ramparts. Scattered widely around the hill forts were enclosed villages and hamlets, which by 200 BC had become open settlements. The northern uplands of England more typically had defended homesteads. In the Midlands and eastern England hill forts are rarer but, for example, in Essex it has been suggested that they are close enough for one to have possibly been replaced the other (PJ Drury). Here settlement is dominated mostly by unenclosed hamlets and farmsteads and, in the case of Essex, individual houses typically ceased to have trenches by 100 BC. The interpretation of this period by archaeologists is one of aggression and unrest.

I have merely plotted the 100 or so defended hill forts and upland regions against the currently occupied bury place-names (a Germanic term meaning stronghold/fortified place). The results seem interesting, insofar that the bury place-name occurs near every developed hill fort, 5-15 miles distant, and there appears to be a progressive pattern of bury building in relation to a similar matching pattern of possible fort abandonment. I doubt the bury places were named by much later occupiers since they would likely have been ploughed over and so not readily visible.

Unfortunately there is no archaeological evidence, yet, to demonstrate that modern day bury towns and villages were indeed such strongholds, and so my map presentation is obviously theoretical.

Ishmael

In: Toronto

frank h wrote:

The archaeology indicates that in southern, western and NE parts of England and E Scotland from early in the first millennium BC, defended settlements began to spread. By 600BC those on hill-tops and similar promontories were defended by ramparts and by 400BC were either abandoned or elaborated and extended....

Set your watch by that do you?

frank h

Set your watch by that do you?

You may be right, I gather only some of developed Hill forts have been well dated to this period, many remain to be fully investigated. So I imagine that their building and abandonment progressed over the second half of the first millennium BC, which would suit my model fine given the constructed maps appear to indicate coastal bridgeheads as the start points.

DPCrisp

In: Bedfordshire

Thanks for that, Frank. Can I paraphrase like this?:

Defensive earthworks were pretty ubiquitous in the first half of the first millennium BC but, by the end of it, there was no longer any need for them. It looks like a long period of unrest was followed by a peaceful landscape without occupied hillforts.

You see a close correlation between the largest hillforts and 'English' burys such that the hillforts appear to have been systematically defeated in England but not in 'Celtland', which suggests an invasion remarkably similar to the (supposed) Anglo-Saxon invasion of several centuries later.

The archaeology indicates that in southern, western and NE parts of England and E Scotland from early in the first millennium BC, defended settlements began to spread.

Is this the Celtic Invasion and beginning of the Iron Age? What other evidence is there for the Celtic invasion at this time?

If defensiveness leaves its mark on the landscape as evidence of aggression, what is the direct evidence of the military operation (invasion... up-rising...?) that put paid to the occupiers of the hillforts?

...settlement is dominated...

Please don't make the archaeologist's mistake of thinking that the archaeology turned up in the gaps between where the people now live is representative of how and where the people used to live.

It is clear from the distribution of hillforts that they were Celtic -- at least, I have not been challenged on the point -- so they, like the villas and motte-n-bailies and probably the majority of the farmsteads and Grubenhauser and wotnot, represent the fluctuating fortunes of the ruling Ã©lite.

In one respect, your argument may be unaffected, since it's about one lot of rulers ousting another; but in another respect, you may need to rethink any conclusions about the language and identity of the people naming and occupying the bury villages.

The results seem interesting, insofar that the bury place-name occurs near every developed Hill fort, 5-15 miles distant

I'm still struggling with a correlation on that scale in England, Frank. Even at only 100 hillforts, that's about one every 22 miles: so is that "15 miles from this fort" or "7 miles from that one"?

Perhaps we had better say no more until we can see your results.

frank h

Perhaps we had better say no more until we can see your results

I understand that the maps will be posted on the web site, which hopefully will satisfactorily demonstrate the hill fort/bury distance relationship and perceived flow pattern.

which suggests an invasion remarkably similar to the (supposed) Anglo-Saxon invasion of several centuries later.

The results are uncannily similar to the Gildas version, maybe he was quoting folk memory from the verbal poetry still around at his time (approx 500AD), which may have not been firm on dates.

defended settlements began to spread.

I gather the settlements around the Hill forts were not new but merely strengthened in the earlier part of the 1st mil BC, presumably to provide some defence to growing threats.

Ishmael

In: Toronto



I had to clean these up from the originals as the ones I received were practically unreadable I'm afraid. I'm not sure how accurate I was in interpreting the original hand-written markings and color blotches but this is my best shot: the originals are available at the bottom of the post. Click each map for a larger version. Originals: Map 1 Map 2

DPCrisp

In: Bedfordshire



Nice work. It'll take a while to digest.

frank h

Ishmael wrote:

Click each map for a larger version.

Many thanks, Ishmael, for putting these on the web, there is also a matching map for Wales and W/SW England available.

Presumably, judging from your superimposed markings, that you were able to confirm the suggested fort/bury flow patterns.

Placing the maps into context based on earlier discussion therefore:

Proposed model for the abandonment of the Iron Age hill forts
The archaeology indicates that in southern, western and NE parts of England and E Scotland from early in the first millennium BC, settlements began to strengthen their defences. By about 600 BC those on hilltops and similar promonotories were defended by ramparts and by roughly 400 BC were either abandoned or elaborated and extended to form 100 or so large, developed Hill forts centres defended by multiple ramparts. Scattered widely around the hill forts were enclosed villages and hamlets, which by approximately 200 BC had become open settlements. The northern uplands of England, Wales and W Scotland more typically had defended homesteads.

In the midlands and eastern England hill forts are rarer but, for example in Essex, it has been suggested that they are close enough for one to have possibly been replaced the other (PJ Drury). Here settlement is dominated mostly by unenclosed hamlets and farmsteads and, in the case of Essex, individual houses typically ceased to have trenches by 100 BC or so. The interpretation of this period by archaeologists is one of aggression and unrest.

The above figures show the plots of developed Hill fort juxtaposed against the modern locations of bury/borough/burgh or worth place names. (The forts were obtained from Wikipedia and the burys etc.from the AA Big Road Atlas. The diagrams are transposed from 4 miles to the inch scale).

The Iron Age Hill fort/bury plot indicates that burys seem to have been placed strategically near each fort (5-15 miles apart, and commonly in pairs) moving progressively from one fort to the next (perhaps newly constructed fort), thus suggesting a relationship. The forts were occupied and defended, but abandoned from the mid centuries of the first century B.C. The builders of the burys presumably were the protagonists.

The direction of the projected Hill fort abandonment is shown in blue arrows, probably starting from riverside bury bridgeheads on the East, NE and south coast of England, and E coast of Scotland:

1. From Lincolnshire north to the Yorkshire moors, south/SW to the Thames, east into Norfolk, west to the Welsh marches, up and around the Peak district into Lancs.
2. A separate development can be seen from points on the south coast moving up to the Thames and westwards into Devon.
3. Another separate development from the northern bank of the Thames estuary through Essex to Bury St.Edmunds.
4. A separate development from eastern Kent heading westwards.
5. A separate development along the coast from Northumberland heading in an arc towards the Paisley area of Scotland.
6. Separate developments along the coast north of the Firth of Forth.

Unfortunately there is no archaeological evidence, yet, to demonstrate that modern-day bury towns and villages were indeed such strongholds, and so the map presentation is theoretical.

Ishmael

In: Toronto

frank h wrote:

frank h wrote: Click each map for a larger version.

Many thanks Ishmael for putting these on the web, there is also a matching map for the Wales and W/SW England available.

Presumably, judging from your superimposed markings, that you were able to confirm the suggested fort/bury flow patterns.

Absolutely not. I just made your original marks easier to see. And I am not certain I've interpreted them correctly. You used two colors for dots that were practically indistinguishable. And you used a black marker for both your arrows and another set of dots. As you can see from the posted original, nearly impossible to tell one set of markings from another. I did my best to help everyone else. But the originals are there if my interpretation was off.

frank h

Ishmael wrote:

I did my best to help everyone else. But the originals are there if my interpretation was off.

Let's hope I've got the model reasonably right then. Given the views have been reduced from 4 miles to the inch scale, I think the screen results should be interpretable.

I've combined the maps into a single view of the British mainland, added more burys missed first time round, and computerised the dots to try and improve the presentation with more precise flow lines.

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