Sites of archaeological interest on Isle of Skye, and nearby places, visited by Isle of Skye U3A
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Wednesday 7 December 2016
Brochs and forts
Alan was suggesting that where you had a broch (for the elite) you ought to have a fort (for the peasants). So let's see if the data support that theory:
I think before we consider the issue of whether brochs were for the elite and forts for the peasants, we need to define what we mean by broch, dun and fort. Not an easy thing to do considering the experts cannot agree on simple definitions.
Broch, according to Ian Armitt (in "Towers of the North"- ) tells us that "the word broch derives form the Norse "borg" (meaning fort)".
According to wikipedia is "Dun is a generic term for an ancient or medieval fort. It is mainly used in the British Isles to describe a kind of hillfort and also a kind of Atlantic roundhouse. The term comes from Irish dún or Scottish Gaelic dùn (meaning "fort"), and is cognate with Old Welsh din (whence Welsh dinas "city" comes.)
A fort is "a strong or fortified place occupied by troops and usually surrounded by walls, ditches, and other defensive works;" definition from www.dictionary.com
So a broch is a fort and a Dun is a fort, and clearly a fort is a fort. Archaeologists would not necessarily agree that all duns, forts and brochs were in fact used as defensive structures.
My own personal interpretation is that brochs are always circular, have double skinned walls, sometimes (but not usually on Skye) with a solid base. Inner wall vertical, outer wall tapering (or I believe having inward batter is the correct way to express it ) and have a "certain" but variable height - ie they were towers.
Brochs in my mind are a sub category of Dun. Duns to me are the wider variety of "forts" (whether defensive or not), up here they seem to have had dry stone walls, in some cases double skinned and in some cases with "guard cells" and galleries so have some similarities to brochs and this is what led in the past to the concept of "semi broch".
Shape varied but not circular often walled enclosures across a promontory or similar rocky position inland.
According to Ann Macsween (Brochs, Duns and Enclosures of Skye) Skye is one of the few areas which has both brochs and duns.
Thinking of Skye in particular - in my mind brochs are a later form of dun. Maybe brochs were built on the site of earlier duns. Recycling stone has always been a popular pastime. Maybe in some places there was a dun (or fort) and the elite chose to build a better structure nearby leaving the old fort to the peasants, as Steve says Alan suggested.
I do think we need to widen our scope and look at what was going on in other parts of the UK or even the world, at this time to get a better understanding. Calling Talla who has more knowledge of iron age forts in other parts of UK
I agree with Joy with her broad definitions (maybe we've read the same books or spent too much time staring at the same heaps of stones). I too feel the duns are earlier and am struck by the similarities between the walls of some promontory forts and broch walls. For those who haven't heard me banging on about it before, I wonder if someone who didn't happen to have a promontory handy to build his fort on, had a lightbulb moment and realised he could just build the wall round till it joined up ... and presto! the first broch was born. Whatever the increased threat was in 200-100 BC or whenever (the Roman advance across Gaul, perhaps? and slave-raiders to supply that ready market?), there was a similar increase in the building of hill-forts in the south and England. I agree - cautiously - about looking at other areas BUT it's hard enough to understand the pattern in Skye without confusing ourselves even more :(
Part 1: The hillforts of the south - are massive, much bigger than anything on Skye. They are similar, in that every one of them is different! A great deal of work has been done on them, and they have been categorised and re-categorised by every archaeologist who looks at them. Some of them, such as Danebury in Hampshire, show signs that they were inhabited with hut circles and grain pits. Others show no sign of any habitation. Some appear to have gone out of use almost as soon as they were built, others such as Hambledon Hill in Dorset were extended from Causewayed Enclosures (early Neolithic) and were still inhabited when Vespasian's II Augusta Legion raced along the south coast to secure the Cornish tin trade (probably) and build their Fort at Exeter.
They are not uniformly spread around the country - Warminster (where I used to live) has 3 huge hillforts (Scratchbury, Battlesbury and Bratton) in a very small area and then it's 10 miles or so to Yarnbury. My lecturer at Bristol (Mark Corney) believed that they were probably used for a variety of uses, but were mainly markets or seasonal fairs. This is not to say that they were not used for other things - they would make excellent places of refuge when slave traders or cattle rustlers were about and, as at Danebury, they could have been used to live in year-round. The Warminster hillforts happen to be on the edge of Salisbury Plain, in an area populated by the Atrabates tribe, but also on the frontier on the Dobunni and Durotriges tribes. An excellent place for trading, but also a tribal statement - a sort of "here we are, open for business, but don't think of messing with us".
Recently, a lot of work has been done on hillfort environs (started by Barry Cunliffe at Danebury) and more similarities have appeared. There appear to be scattered farmsteads, with small fields, in the vicinity of most of them. There is often at least one larger farm unit very close - interestingly there also appears to be a co-relation to large Roman villas - probably showing that the Iron Age chiefs of the hillforts became the local Romano-British bigwigs under Roman rule.
An intriguing features that is increasingly being found is the presence of a large midden, just outside the hillfort, which is full of the detritus of binge-feasting - animal bone, broken pottery and so on - and which show signs of seasonal use. A pile of rubbish, covered by a skim of chalk and earth (to mask the smell) followed by another heap. These features are only slowly being understood by archaeologists. The enormous East Chisenbury midden was only looked at this summer for instance. It is interesting that the rubbish was kept in a specific place and not used as manure. This might show that the hillfort feasting had a 'ritual' meaning - but probably was meant to show that the people doing the feasting were so rich they didn't have to bother. The middens could also be the detritus of seasonal fairs - also showing conspicuous consumption. Think of Christmas markets these days!
Part 2: The term 'fort' is misleading as very few show signs of warfare. Hambledon is one of them - Vespasian stopped there long enough to bombard them with his ballistas and set up a small fort in the corner after they had surrendered. Maiden Castle also famously shows signs of battle. South Cadbury was re-used as a fort in the Dark Ages, hundreds of years after it was built. Most hillforts show no sign of being used as forts, although all of them could have been used as a defensive place.
As for their construction - this varies from a single bank with outside ditch to the triple banks and ditches of Maiden Castle. The single ditch hillforts are the earliest with increasing banks and convoluted entrances added over time. The enclosed area varies hugely.
So - it's a bit like comparing apples and pears. The forts on Skye could have been used for all the things that the hillforts in the south were used for, but on a much smaller scale. This might be accounted for by either a smaller population or a different structure to society, based on small family units rather than tribes/clans.
I've just discovered that when RCAHMS were putting together their classification system they chose an arbitrary figure of 4000 sq ft (375 sq m) as the cut-off point. Anything with an area below that was classified as a dun, anything above that was a fort.
It was done for the purpose of compiling the Inventories. The first of these, for Berwick, was published in 1909, the one for the Outer Hebrides, Skye and the Small Isles was published in 1928.
Cunliffe (Iron Age Communities in Britain, 2005, 73-5) makes a broad distinction between Atlantic and western Scotland as dominated by strongly-defended homesteads of single family units, and southern and eastern Scotland as a hillfort-dominated zone interpreted as reflecting communal activity of large groups of people based in a range of other subsidiary settlements. He acknowledges that this is an over-simplification, but there could be some truth in it.
I'm not sure if you've seen this about a broch on Orkney. It was reported (in a garbled form) on the BBC. The TV programme next week will be worth watching.
I think before we consider the issue of whether brochs were for the elite and forts for the peasants, we need to define what we mean by broch, dun and fort. Not an easy thing to do considering the experts cannot agree on simple definitions.
ReplyDeleteBroch, according to Ian Armitt (in "Towers of the North"- ) tells us that "the word broch derives form the Norse "borg" (meaning fort)".
According to wikipedia is "Dun is a generic term for an ancient or medieval fort. It is mainly used in the British Isles to describe a kind of hillfort and also a kind of Atlantic roundhouse. The term comes from Irish dún or Scottish Gaelic dùn (meaning "fort"), and is cognate with Old Welsh din (whence Welsh dinas "city" comes.)
A fort is "a strong or fortified place occupied by troops and usually surrounded by walls, ditches, and other defensive works;" definition from www.dictionary.com
So a broch is a fort and a Dun is a fort, and clearly a fort is a fort. Archaeologists would not necessarily agree that all duns, forts and brochs were in fact used as defensive structures.
My own personal interpretation is that brochs are always circular, have double skinned walls, sometimes (but not usually on Skye) with a solid base. Inner wall vertical, outer wall tapering (or I believe having inward batter is the correct way to express it ) and have a "certain" but variable height - ie they were towers.
Brochs in my mind are a sub category of Dun. Duns to me are the wider variety of "forts" (whether defensive or not), up here they seem to have had dry stone walls, in some cases double skinned and in some cases with "guard cells" and galleries so have some similarities to brochs and this is what led in the past to the concept of "semi broch".
Shape varied but not circular often walled enclosures across a promontory or similar rocky position inland.
According to Ann Macsween (Brochs, Duns and Enclosures of Skye) Skye is one of the few areas which has both brochs and duns.
Thinking of Skye in particular - in my mind brochs are a later form of dun. Maybe brochs were built on the site of earlier duns. Recycling stone has always been a popular pastime. Maybe in some places there was a dun (or fort) and the elite chose to build a better structure nearby leaving the old fort to the peasants, as Steve says Alan suggested.
I do think we need to widen our scope and look at what was going on in other parts of the UK or even the world, at this time to get a better understanding. Calling Talla who has more knowledge of iron age forts in other parts of UK
I agree with Joy with her broad definitions (maybe we've read the same books or spent too much time staring at the same heaps of stones). I too feel the duns are earlier and am struck by the similarities between the walls of some promontory forts and broch walls.
ReplyDeleteFor those who haven't heard me banging on about it before, I wonder if someone who didn't happen to have a promontory handy to build his fort on, had a lightbulb moment and realised he could just build the wall round till it joined up ... and presto! the first broch was born.
Whatever the increased threat was in 200-100 BC or whenever (the Roman advance across Gaul, perhaps? and slave-raiders to supply that ready market?), there was a similar increase in the building of hill-forts in the south and England.
I agree - cautiously - about looking at other areas BUT it's hard enough to understand the pattern in Skye without confusing ourselves even more :(
An intersting link
ReplyDeletehttp://www.assemblage.group.shef.ac.uk/pdfs/issue11/Crowther_-_Shedding_Light_on_the_Matter.pdf
Part 1: The hillforts of the south - are massive, much bigger than anything on Skye. They are similar, in that every one of them is different! A great deal of work has been done on them, and they have been categorised and re-categorised by every archaeologist who looks at them. Some of them, such as Danebury in Hampshire, show signs that they were inhabited with hut circles and grain pits. Others show no sign of any habitation. Some appear to have gone out of use almost as soon as they were built, others such as Hambledon Hill in Dorset were extended from Causewayed Enclosures (early Neolithic) and were still inhabited when Vespasian's II Augusta Legion raced along the south coast to secure the Cornish tin trade (probably) and build their Fort at Exeter.
ReplyDeleteThey are not uniformly spread around the country - Warminster (where I used to live) has 3 huge hillforts (Scratchbury, Battlesbury and Bratton) in a very small area and then it's 10 miles or so to Yarnbury. My lecturer at Bristol (Mark Corney) believed that they were probably used for a variety of uses, but were mainly markets or seasonal fairs. This is not to say that they were not used for other things - they would make excellent places of refuge when slave traders or cattle rustlers were about and, as at Danebury, they could have been used to live in year-round. The Warminster hillforts happen to be on the edge of Salisbury Plain, in an area populated by the Atrabates tribe, but also on the frontier on the Dobunni and Durotriges tribes. An excellent place for trading, but also a tribal statement - a sort of "here we are, open for business, but don't think of messing with us".
Recently, a lot of work has been done on hillfort environs (started by Barry Cunliffe at Danebury) and more similarities have appeared. There appear to be scattered farmsteads, with small fields, in the vicinity of most of them. There is often at least one larger farm unit very close - interestingly there also appears to be a co-relation to large Roman villas - probably showing that the Iron Age chiefs of the hillforts became the local Romano-British bigwigs under Roman rule.
An intriguing features that is increasingly being found is the presence of a large midden, just outside the hillfort, which is full of the detritus of binge-feasting - animal bone, broken pottery and so on - and which show signs of seasonal use. A pile of rubbish, covered by a skim of chalk and earth (to mask the smell) followed by another heap. These features are only slowly being understood by archaeologists. The enormous East Chisenbury midden was only looked at this summer for instance. It is interesting that the rubbish was kept in a specific place and not used as manure. This might show that the hillfort feasting had a 'ritual' meaning - but probably was meant to show that the people doing the feasting were so rich they didn't have to bother. The middens could also be the detritus of seasonal fairs - also showing conspicuous consumption. Think of Christmas markets these days!
Interesting...I don't think I've read about any middens found be bridge or duns up here but that could simply be that very few have been excavated
DeletePart 2: The term 'fort' is misleading as very few show signs of warfare. Hambledon is one of them - Vespasian stopped there long enough to bombard them with his ballistas and set up a small fort in the corner after they had surrendered. Maiden Castle also famously shows signs of battle. South Cadbury was re-used as a fort in the Dark Ages, hundreds of years after it was built. Most hillforts show no sign of being used as forts, although all of them could have been used as a defensive place.
ReplyDeleteAs for their construction - this varies from a single bank with outside ditch to the triple banks and ditches of Maiden Castle. The single ditch hillforts are the earliest with increasing banks and convoluted entrances added over time. The enclosed area varies hugely.
So - it's a bit like comparing apples and pears. The forts on Skye could have been used for all the things that the hillforts in the south were used for, but on a much smaller scale. This might be accounted for by either a smaller population or a different structure to society, based on small family units rather than tribes/clans.
All very intriguing.
I've just discovered that when RCAHMS were putting together their classification system they chose an arbitrary figure of 4000 sq ft (375 sq m) as the cut-off point. Anything with an area below that was classified as a dun, anything above that was a fort.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately later contributors didn't stick to this plan, so the classification is pretty meaningless.
Deleteany idea when they decided on that? is that area within outer perimiter walls or inner walls?
ReplyDeleteIt was done for the purpose of compiling the Inventories. The first of these, for Berwick, was published in 1909, the one for the Outer Hebrides, Skye and the Small Isles was published in 1928.
DeleteI would guess it was the area enclosed by the walls (which would have been easier to measure), but my source doesn't actually say.
DeleteCunliffe (Iron Age Communities in Britain, 2005,
ReplyDelete73-5) makes a broad distinction between
Atlantic and western Scotland as dominated
by strongly-defended homesteads of single
family units, and southern and eastern
Scotland as a hillfort-dominated zone
interpreted as reflecting communal activity of
large groups of people based in a range of
other subsidiary settlements. He acknowledges that this is an over-simplification, but there could be some truth in it.
http://www.bajrfed.co.uk/bajrpress/radiocarbon-dates-reveal-life-in-an-orcadian-broch/
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure if you've seen this about a broch on Orkney. It was reported (in a garbled form) on the BBC. The TV programme next week will be worth watching.