Volume 7 Chilterns Conservation Board Spring 2020

The Hillfortian Times

Our Statement on COVID-19

frontline healthcare workers. We all Inside this issue: Part of understanding our LiDAR discoveries is getting out in the land- want to return to the outdoors and to

The Far Side of the 2 scape. But visiting heritage sites and exploring our archaeological heritage World—NZ looking at LiDAR on the ground is as soon as possible, and that means not essential travel. for now staying at home. What’s on ? - 3 Workshops & Fieldwork Our archaeology has in some cases We Chilfortians want everyone to been waiting millennia to be re- stay healthy and safe, so all of us can Understanding hillforts: 3 vealed—it can wait a little longer. The get stuck into understanding our an afternoon with Prof. priority now is to limit the spread of Beacons of the Past together, once the Sir Barry Cunliffe coronavirus and take pressure off the conditions are safe to do so. Featured feature: 4 Bulstrode Camp

An update from the Chilforts Team

Karangaumu pā in Papamoa We’ve had a great time in the last Hills Regional Park few months outside scrub bash- ing, field checking, and meeting groups of you at talks and train- Fun Facts ing sessions. Sadly the corona- virus pandemic has of course Many hillforts have forced us to cancel our public later structures inside events. them. Our Chilforts at You can now access your “My Ac- Cholesbury Camp However, one thing that isn’t af- count” page on the website, which will and West Wycombe fected by the shut-down is our do two things. Firstly, it will give you ability to continue work on the some statistics on your time on the por- both have churches LiDAR Portal! Now is a great time tal, how many records you’ve found, within the ramparts. to jump back in if you’ve been and you get “badges” for the work away for a little while, as we con- you’ve done... (Ed says ‘if you want to Ham Hill, a large tinue to push up our number of print these out and sew them onto your sprawling hillfort in sites found. It has been 7 months jumper, be my guest’). Secondly, you , is the only since we launched the Portal, and can see a table of all of your records, in that time you have recorded along with the outcome of their review. UK hillfort with a pub nearly seven and a half thousand Plenty of workshops and mapathons inside the earthworks! records! coming up, so check page 3, and on the Portal forum for details of these .

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Hillforts on the Far Side of the World

Travelling to New Zealand has at least, Māori were the first One thing that was very differ- been a dream for decades, but I people to arrive on NZ and ent was the ability to speak to the descendants of monument always thought it was out of they came in the 13th century builders, whose thrice great reach because of the distance AD and the pā were construct- grandparents were involved in and the time and money need- ed probably over a 500 year construction, and who had an ed. What was really stopping period from the 14th to 19th cen- oral tradition of how the sites me, I think, was sufficient mo- turies. The latest pā were erect- worked. What I wouldn’t give tivation. When the opportunity ed during the Land Wars with to have that conversation with came to travel with a dozen the British, so we have detailed the thrice-great grandchildren of other members of the Hillfort records of the hows and whys the folk who built our Chilforts! Study Group, with the express of construction (although these The stories told by the people I met helped me to think about all purpose of a fortnight’s tour of cannot be projected back to the intangibles we miss in ar- the pā sites of the North Island, explain earlier pā , which were chaeology—a single post placed the obstacles seemed less not defending from cannon- there because of an argument daunting and suddenly I was fire!) A good article is free here. between neighbours, or a shell on a (29hr!) journey to the fur- We visited 26 pā in total, and dump not for convenience, but thest from home I have ever met with the archaeologists because shells make noise if you been! and museum curators who are try to sneak over them in an at- tack. In a British prehistory set- Pā sites have for at least a cen- working to understand, inter- ting, these things we would tury been on the radar for have to guess at (and may never scholars of British prehistory. have occurred to us!) Dame Eileen Fox visited New The trip was an amazing expe- Zealand in the last century and rience, and I felt I only scratched wrote extensively about the the surface of the rich New Zea- similarities between these land story. Of course, all work hilltop enclosures and the Iron and no play makes for a dull Age hillforts she knew well. The view over the vale from Karangaumu pā Hillfortian, so I would be lying There are over 6000 pā in NZ, and the dominating lone tree made this site if I said it was all archaeology… in Papamoa Hills Regional Park seem very mainly in the North Island familiar... Beacon of the Antipodes? there was time for fishing, sam- (compared with over 4000 hill- pling the craft beers (churlish forts across Britain and Ire- pret, preserve, and protects not to!) and after an impromptu these monuments. Many pā game of darts with locals in ru- land!). Like hillforts, they vary are still sites of both secular ral Katikati, I can honestly say I in size, shape, and function. and spiritual significance for am undefeated in the Southern However, there is a shortened the Māori iwi, or tribes. I met Hemisphere (provided I never chronology – where British with conservationists who are play there again!). I may have hillforts were constructed over challenged with blending care even gotten a new tattoo, but a span of nearly nine centuries and maintenance of the monu- that’s a story for another day... ments with sensitive natural habitats., whilst keeping open lines of communication with tenant farmers and iwi repre- sentatives. As we have experi- enced here in the Chilterns, the key to successful management of a landscape is engagement, Not an unfamiliar sight—substantial ditch open dialogues, and shared and bank earthworks held wooden pali- sades. Kororipo pā , Kerikeri enthusiasm.

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What’s coming up? Each issue, this area will list opportunities for What: Improving LiDAR Interpretation getting involved in the When: Thursday 23rd April 1 – 3.30 Project. A session looking at how to improve your ability to interpret archaeological features from LiDAR data. Many of you came to Ed’s “Intro to LiDAR” courses. This is now a step up from (Additional events that that, and the first step towards becoming a “Reviewer” if you wish to. We will look at how arise between editions will to get as much information as we possibly can from the LiDAR, improve our ability to recog- still be sent out in emails) nise common feature types, and explore what other sources we can easily consult from home to add to our interpretation of sites. Sign up by clicking the link.

What: Review Portal Training

When: Monday 27th April, 10 – 12.30

The ‘Review Phase’ of the project is now underway, to turn the many Citizen Science records you’ve created into our neat ‘Master Database’. Come and join the Review Team, with access to all those Citizen Records and our “Review Portal” to work through them. Ideally, you will have been able to join for the “Improving LiDAR Interpretation” session the previous week, and building on that knowledge we will look at how to use the Review Portal and create our consistent Master Records. Sign up by clicking the link. What: Mapathon

When: Friday 1st May, 10 – 12.30

You know the drill - log on with the group to work together on the Citizen and Review Portals, with Ed Peveler and others around to bounce ideas, discuss difficult sites, and just generally enjoy some (remote) company. Sign up by clicking the link

Because of COVID-19 and the necessary restrictions on movement, we have postponed our hands-on works. However, there are still a lot of things to do from indoors, and Ed has done an amazing job of converting his face-to-face training sessions to an online remote format. Do sign up for some—they are well worth it, and will enrich your LiDAR portal experience!

An afternoon with Barry Cunliffe

Anyone who has studied and Romano British archaeology in Britain (or beyond!) will be familiar with the work of Professor Sir Barry Cunliffe. With credits such as Roman Bath, Fishbourne Palace, Danebury hillfort, Portchester, and latterly, Sark—to name just a handful, Barry has sometimes been described as the ‘David Attenbor- ough of Archaeology’. Beacons of the Past was honoured to have Barry agree to give a talk on hillforts in a joint collaborative presentation event between us, Archaeological Society, and the Prehistoric Society. Held in Amersham on 07 March, there was a fantastic turnout of nearly 200 people. Barry spoke very highly and encouragingly of the Project, and talked about the evolution of our interpretation of hill- forts in general, drawing on his own 50+ years of digging experience on them, whilst weaving in Chilterns exam- ples and highlighting what our further study of them may reveal. A fantastic and inspiring afternoon!

3 Featured Feature: Bulstrode Camp, Gerrard’s Cross

Bulstrode Camp is on of the largest of our Chilterns hillforts, with its impressively preserved multi-vallate (more than one Draft image of bank) earthworks enclosing over Bulstrode Camp, 10ha (over 26 acres) of interior courtesy Wessex space. It is classed as a ‘plateau Archaeology. © hillfort’, in as much as it is not CCB on a hill, per se, but rather occu- pies a slightly elevated spot which sits between Rivers Mis- bourne and Alderbourne Valley. It likely would have stood in a relatively open landscape, with observers will see this work-in- butions all around - marshy areas to the western progress draft image has no en- shire and beyond,. However, side; indeed, the name Bul- trance!) there is no evidence for settle- strode, first recorded as ment or activity at the hillfort ‘Burstrod’, may derive from the Earlier antiquarian attempts to dating to this Catuvellauni peri- Old English burg (fortified place) interpret the use of the Camp od, which is in the very Late and strōd (marshy land with have included the belief that it Iron Age (after 100BC) and thus brushwood or trees). was a Roman construction, that is several hundred years after the

the Saxons built it to fight the likely construction of the enclo- The Camp is enclosed by a dou- Danes, and that the Danes built sure. So the Catuvellauni connec- ble rampart (bank) with inner it to fight the Saxons! Indeed, so tion is another temporal misin- and outer ditches, although many of our hillforts across the terpretation. these days much less visible on south of Britain have this fantasy western side. The site of the of the Danes built into their What we do know about the site original entrance(s) – many of placenames—Danebury (Hants), is that it may have had very early this type of enclosure have two – Danesborough (nr Milton origins indeed, as there is a pos- is obscured by so much levelling Keynes), and of course, our very sible Neolithic long barrow with- and modification which has oc- own Chilfort, Danesfield Camp in the enclosure, predating our curred over the centuries. There (nr Medmenham) all derive their Iron Age fort builders by at least are currently five breaks in the names from this misinterpreta- two millennia! The best dating circuit which could be entrance tion. evidence we have comes from locations, but without more in- three sherds of pot dating to the trusive investigative work, this A further speculation, that at Early Iron Age (probably 600- must remain an unknown. least has the merit of being clos- 500BC) . An excavation report When commissioning the recon- er in time to the actual construc- from 1924 can be read here. Yet struction artwork we selected tion of the hillfort, is the persis- despite that article’s assertion the area we consider most likely tent description of the site as a that there was no settlement, for the entrance, based on topog- settlement belonging to the Ca- more recent geophysics suggests raphy and the related landscape, tuvellauni tribe in the Iron Age that there may indeed have been viewsheds, and approaches. (sometime erroneously referred some houses at the north-eastern This may be completely wrong, to as ). Of course, this tribe end. This is what supports our but as with most aspects of pre- of Iron Age Britons, which likely artist’s inclusion of internal history, informed speculative formed out of the growing strati- structures. interpretation is often the best fication of Late Iron Age society we can hope for. (Keen–eyed and tensions within power cen- tres, is evidenced by coin distri-

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