Hill Forts and the Ritualisation of War

In many parts of Europe the monuments that most characterise the Iron Age are hill forts. The nomenclature reflects the traditional assumption that these large, strongly built enclosures, usually set on hilltops, promontories or other prominent locations, were fortifications, reflecting unstable and violent societies.

While Continental scholarship has largely continued to see them in this light, debate has raged in the anglophone literature about the degree to which Iron Age hill forts reflect symbolic rather than actual warfare. Much of this debate has centred on the well-studied hill fort landscapes of Wessex, in central southern England, where key sites such as Danebury and Maiden Castle have dominated much of the discussion.^{^[884]} These large multivallate hill forts (that is, with multiple close-spaced ramparts and ditches), like others in the region, were transformed over the course of the Iron Age from relatively simple beginnings, through the progressive addition of extra circuits, heightened banks, deeper ditches and huge, maze-like entrance outworks.

Traditionally, these great Wessex hill forts were seen as evolving in response to developments in sling-based warfare, each innovation intended to enhance the advantage of the defenders over the attackers.¹⁰ The vision which emerged was one of highly organised warfare conducted by armies staffed by suspiciously modern-sounding ‘military engineers', ‘commissariats' and ‘battalions'. 11 This position, however, came under attack from the 1980s onwards as general interpretations of the nature of Iron Age society shifted with the increasing adoption of post-processual and symbolic perspectives in archaeology. In relation to the Wessex hill forts specifically, a number of apparent shortcomings were highlighted with regards to the defensive capabilities of these sites.¹² First, it was argued that the enormous circuits of sites like Maiden Castle would have required unrealistically large numbers of defenders given the likely population size of the region during the Iron Age.

Second, the lack of physical linkage between the various ramparts would appear to isolate defenders on the outer circuits, making it impossible for them to fall back effectively. Third, the high ramparts and deep ditches created ‘dead ground' where attackers could move unseen, disadvantaging the defenders. Fourth, hill forts often reoccupied sites where much earlier monuments, such as Neolithic causewayed enclosures and chambered tombs, evidenced a history of veneration and religious significance. Fifth, some hill forts were overlooked from higher ground or had their defences positioned in such a way that their interiors were visible, giving onlookers a clear sight of the deployment of defending forces. Perhaps the most critical disadvantage for the defenders, however, was the lack of a secure water source inside almost all Wessex hill forts, a phenomenon that is true of similar sites across much of the Continent and which appears to preclude any

British Archaeology, 1984 ); Niall Sharples, Maiden Castle: Excavations and Field Survey 1985-6 (London: English Heritage, 1991).

10 Mortimer Wheeler, Maiden Castle, Dorset (London: Research Reports of the Society of Antiquaries of London, 1943).

11 Michael Avery, Hillfort Defences of Southern Britain, Council for British Archaeology Research Reports 231 (Oxford: Council for British Archaeology, 1986), pp. 217, 226, 235.

12 Bowden and McOmish, ‘Required Barrier'; Mark Bowden and David McOmish, ‘Little Boxes: More about Hillforts', Scottish Archaeological Review 6 (1989), 12-16; Gary Lock, ‘Hillforts, Emotional Metaphors and the Good Life: A Response to Armit', Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 77 (2011), 355-62.

Ritual Violence and Headhunting in Iron Age Europe seriously defensive function, since it meant that hill forts could not be held against a prolonged siege.

Given the nature of broader archaeological debate during the 1980s and 1990s, these issues tended to polarise discussion; hill forts were taken to be either defensive or symbolic.

In the latter case, their multiple concentric ramparts and ditches were taken to signify social exclusion and exclusivity rather than a concern for defence, while their complex entrances signalled the passage from the day-to-day world of farms, fields and villages to the sacred world within. Their spatial correspondence to earlier funerary and religious monuments implied a similarly spiritual intent on the part of the hill fort builders. Views into the interior were intended to enable onlookers to observe the performance of rituals by religious specialists or elite groups inside the hill forts. Hill forts became seen as essentially sacred spaces, their superficial likeness to defensive enclosures no more than a coincidence.

This symbolic interpretation, however, has itself come under attack in recent years, in part due to the wider recognition of the ubiquity and significance of warfare in non-state societies.^{^[885]} An important part has also been played, however, by the analysis of Iron Age human remains, which has revealed strikingly high levels of interpersonal violence, including evidence for repeated episodes of trauma throughout the lives of certain individuals.^{^[886]} The undoubted symbolic dimensions of hill fort construction were thus evidently underpinned by the very real existence of inter-communal violence on a significant scale. This interplay of symbolism and violence should come as no surprise. Symbolism does not exist in a vacuum; it must be underpinned by actions and beliefs in the ‘real' world. Thus a symbolism focused on defensive isolation is unlikely to emerge in a society thoroughly at peace with itself.

The application of lethal violence is of course thoroughly enmeshed with symbolism in most, if not all, societies. Even the most technologically sophisticated modern Western army retains its uniforms, badges, medals and mascots. Conventions that we might regard as symbolic could be

incorporated in lethal inter-communal conflict even where they appear to be enormously disadvantageous to the participants.

The North American Pequot, for example, did not use fire as a weapon of war and their palisaded timber enclosures were thus useless when attacked by seventeenth-century English colonists. The Mohegan and Narragansett allies of these colonists were similarly appalled by the massacre of non-combatants, which was equally alien to indigenous practice.^{^[887]} The failure of indigenous New England tribes to massacre their enemies and burn their villages does not mean that the internecine warfare they had previously practised was ‘purely symbolic'. It simply reflects different cultural understandings of appropriate and acceptable behaviour. Lest it be assumed that such seemingly ill-adaptive practices are confined to non-state societies, we should remember that officers in colonial militias of the same period were regularly picked off by sniper fire due to their refusal to abandon the bright, colourful and highly visible uniforms that signalled their authority and prestige. Conflict and violence are imbued with culturally and historically specific conventions in all societies, but this should clearly not be taken to suggest that warfare is simply symbolic.

With this recognition, we can start to interpret some of the practices and beliefs that might have underpinned warfare in the Iron Age. In relation to hill forts, for example, we can address some of the objections to the traditional ‘military' interpretation by framing our understandings of Iron Age warfare in the context of a society where honour and prestige were key social values, and where cosmological factors were woven into all aspects of life. The siting of Iron Age hill forts on locations occupied by earlier monuments may suggest that the gods or ancestors were being invoked to protect the community and add spiritual strength to the physical defences of ramparts and ditches. The frequent burial of animals, humans or objects under hill fort ramparts, and the display of trophies at gateways,^{^[888]} may have had a similar apotropaic function that accentuates, rather than undermines, the perceived need for security.

The lack of water within hill forts suggests that sieges were not an anticipated element of indigenous warfare during the Iron Age. It is perhaps instructive that Caesar's description of his siege of the Gaulish stronghold of Uxellodunum describes how the key to success was the ability of the Roman army to cut the defenders off from the spring which lay outside the walls of the oppidum.^{^[889]} ^{^[890]} As with the encounters between alien ways of war in seventeenth-century North America, the clash of Roman and indigenous values created a fatal asymmetry.

If hill forts were not designed to withstand sieges, then conflict is likely to have been more formally staged. It seems probable that the complex entrances of many hill forts acted as focal points for attack and defence, while the relatively flat areas outside some hill fort entrances (notably the early period defences at Maiden Castle) would have created highly visible venues for formalised acts of aggression, perhaps between nominated champions.

Many of the other objections to the defensive role of hill forts can also be dismissed as ethnocentric and based on modern military misunderstandings of indigenous Iron Age warfare. ‘Dead ground', for example, is a meaningless concept when the major weapon is the sling, which can kill an opponent who may be entirely out of sight. The lack of physical connection between the concentric ramparts of multivallate hill forts can easily be overcome by means of moveable ladders or even knotted ropes that could be pulled up behind the retreating defenders. In summary, the lesson from the analysis of hill forts is that warfare was real, deadly, and (judging from the thousands of such monuments built at enormous cost in terms of time, energy and resources) central to Iron Age life. Like all other aspects of the period, however, warfare was also highly ritualised and an arena for social display.

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Source: Fagan Garrett G., Fibiger Linda, Hudson Mark, Trundle Matthew (eds.). The Cambridge World History of Violence. Volume 1: The Prehistoric and Ancient Worlds. Cambridge University Press,2020. — 756 p.. 2020

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