The Prehistoric Society

Book Reviews

AN INHERITED PLACE: BROXMOUTH HILLFORT & THE SOUTH EAST SCOTTISH IRON AGE BY I ARMIT AND J MCKENZIE Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 2013. 592pp, 264 figs, 74 tables, ISBN 9781908332059, hb, £35

Scottish Archaeology has been waiting a long time for this volume. The work at Broxmouth in South East Scotland largely took place between September 1977 and November 1978 and involved the almost complete excavation of a lowland hillfort that was first identified through aerial photography. An initial detailed interim report was published as Edinburgh University Department of Archaeology Occasional Paper 2 (Hill 1978) and then an amended version (Hill 1982b) was published in a volume on the Later Prehistoric Settlement in South East Scotland (Harding 1982), which included several papers which either dealt directly with the material from the site (Barnetson 1982; Cool 1982), or provided discussion stimulated by the results (Hill 1982a).

This was an important period in the development of later prehistoric studies in Scotland. Aerial photography had only just begun to be applied systematically to the rich agricultural lowlands of eastern Scotland and they were revealing an enormous complexity of material that transformed understanding of the period and the region. Broxmouth was one of a number of excavations during this period, which could be described as the beginning of Rescue Archaeology in Scotland. Contemporary excavations included Dryburn Bridge (Triscott 1982) and St Germains (Alexander and Watkins 1998) both in East Lothian, but the excavations at Broxmouth were the most significant in terms of the size of the area examined, the prolonged period of excavation, the quality of the stratigraphic record and the recovery of substantial and exceptionally rare assemblages of finds.

The publication of the final volume is therefore a landmark occasion for Scottish archaeology. The interim reports contained reasonable amounts of information and provided a bedrock for discussion of the later prehistory of the Scottish lowlands over the last two decades (Harding 2004), but much of the detail was missing and no other excavation has come near to the importance of Broxmouth in the intervening decades.

This book was completed by a team based in the University of Bradford who are unconnected with the original team of excavators and post excavation specialists. Some of the reports are more or less unchanged from the originals, whereas others are recent reappraisals of the evidence. The site was well excavated and recorded; however, the passage of time has not surprisingly led to some losses and irreconcilable differences with the original interpretations, while fundamental developments in archaeology in the intervening period have altered our approach to the record. On the positive side recent changes in approaches to radiocarbon chronology mean we have a large number of radiocarbon dates that have been analysed using a Bayesian approach, which provides chronological precision only dreamed off when the site was first dug. On the negative side environmental sampling was in its developmental stages when the site was excavated, and the later loss of the limited number of soil samples recovered, means that there is no carbonised plant assemblage to provide information on the arable economy of the settlement. Despite this the resulting 538 page volume provides a substantial contribution to the later prehistoric archaeology of Scotland that will take some time to fully digest.

The primary importance of the Broxmouth campaign was that it provided a large area excavation of a typical lowland hillfort, which had been completely flattened by centuries of intensive cultivation. The area excavated covered almost all of the interior of the enclosure, a very large part of the surrounding complex multivallate boundary, including the three entrances to the east, west and south west, and an area to the north of the enclosure that contained a contemporary cemetery. The effects of agriculture have been severe and much of the interior had been truncated by ploughing. However, a number of houses could be identified in the interior and the repeated alteration and reconstruction of the enclosing boundary provided traps that preserved occupation deposits and allowed the accumulation of thick middens. The settlement sequence preserved within the western boundary provided the crucial key to the interpretation of the site and was only identified by the extensive area excavation.

The site is unique in northern Britain outside the Atlantic Province in providing a substantial bone assemblage that not only provides our first detailed picture of the agricultural use of animals in Lowland Scotland, but also insights into a key economic value as an important assemblage of bone artefacts and waste from bone working was found. The bone preservation also crucially enabled the identification of the external cemetery and the recovery of human burials and bones from the settlement area. In this review I have only a limited amount of space to examine a number of the issues raised in the report.

Boundary chronologies

The enclosing boundary at Broxmouth is an important part of the story of the hillfort and the excavations commendably examined a large area of the boundary. Unfortunately the rampart was destroyed around most of the circuit with only small patches surviving, largely on the west side of the hill where it had subsided into earlier features.

In the Broxmouth sequence published earlier by Peter Hill (1978; 1982a) nine phases (I-IX) were identified and these included Neolithic activity and Post Medieval ploughing, but this account reduces these to seven phases, which all belong to the Iron Age, more or less. In the new sequence phase 1 comprises the palisade with evidence for external settlement, phase 2 comprises a univallate then bivallate enclosure with two entrances to the east and west, phase 3 comprises four sub-phases of enclosure with two entrances to the east and south west, phase 4 comprises settlement evidence which accumulated on the west side of the inner ditch, phase 5 comprises midden overlying these structures and the external cemetery, phase 6 comprises the settlement that survives in the interior and a refurbished inner bank. Finally phase 7 comprises an isolated Early Christian burial.

One of the main features of this account is a detailed absolute chronology based on 158 radiocarbon samples and this is a major contribution to research that places Broxmouth well ahead of any other hillfort in Britain. It is important to note that though the later prehistoric occupation of the hill appears to last almost a millennium from 640/570 cal BC through to AD155/210, the construction of the hillfort boundary appears to begin about 490/430 cal BC and finishes just before 295/235 cal BC. This is a period of approximately 200 years, confirming previous Bayesian analysis which suggests many of the monumental phases of British Prehistory are actually very short-lived phenomena (Whittle et al, 2011).

Using the southern English terminology, the hillfort was created at the beginning of the Early Iron Age and was actively rebuilt throughout the early part of the Middle Iron Age. This is actually very similar to the time-line proposed for southern English hillforts (Sharples 2010). The construction of the first hillfort at Danebury, Hampshire, is for example, dated to the middle of the fifth millennium cal BC (Cunliffe 1996) and the main phase of boundary construction died out in the third century cal BC, when the internal settlement became the focus for expansion and reorganisation. The close similarity in the chronological development of these two geographical distant hillforts (that is Danebury and Broxmouth) is surprising given the development of very distinct regional differences in the British Iron Age and it is of considerable importance that comparable sequences are obtained in future research on other hillforts in Britain to establish whether this is a national pattern.

There are several significant changes to the sequence earlier proposed by Peter Hill (see above). The palisade has moved from phase IV, in the middle of the sequence of hillfort ditches, to the beginning of phase 1. Hill had argued that the internal settlement contained houses belonging to three separate phases; phase II, an unenclosed phase at the beginning of the later prehistoric occupation, and phases VII and VIII at the end of the occupation. Here Armit and McKenzie argue that these all belong to one, which is phase 6.

Peter Hill initially thought the Broxmouth palisade was integrated with the major reorganisation of the boundary, (his phase IV), that occurred when the western entrance was closed and a new south western entrance was created. This was based upon ‘it’s known relationships in the western part of its circuit, on its incongruity with the period III gateways and on its coincident alignment with the period IV gate’ (Hill 1978, 27). However, he revised this interpretation in 1982 where he suggested, ‘It is likely to have formed a freestanding stockade enclosure built either before or after the earthwork defences of Period III’ (Hill 1982a, 184). Its original position within the boundary sequence was a crucial part of the assault on the Hownam sequence, a chronological sequence based on excavations undertaken by Piggott in the 1950s and 1960s, which was being undertaken at the time of the excavations (Harding 2004, 54). Hill and others argued that complex sequences had been over simplified and that palisades, where identified as crop marks, could not be claimed to be evidence for an early LBA/EIA phase of activity.

Clearly the rephasing by Armit and McKenzie has much broader implications as it reintroduces the possibility that palisades indicate a primary phase of boundary creation in the Border region and that major enclosures could appear in the landscapes earlier than previously understood. This seems to make sense and I am happy to accept this suggestion. However, it should be noted that the phasing is still problematic and the absence of a western entrance through the palisade makes its presence in the later phase 2 hillfort incongruous.

The other major phasing change relates to the internal settlement. In the original sequence Hill split the identified houses into three phases: one house belonged to pre-enclosure phase (phase II), due to structural similarities with stratified houses in the western defences; the second group of houses, defined by postholes and gullies was associated with the final phase of enclosure (phase VII); and a final group of sunken, stone-paved and walled, houses built after the defences had gone out of use (phase VIII). Armit and McKenzie have claimed all these houses with their different architectural traditions are contemporaneous and placed them altogether in phase 6. Both interpretations it should be noted leave the interior devoid of settlement when the principal enclosure is built and used (phases 2 and 3), which is an issue we will return to later.

The basis for this reinterpretation appears to be a detailed Bayesian analysis of the radiocarbon dates from the houses. However, I am not convinced by the analysis of these dates. Many of the dates appear to have been discarded to produce acceptable models. For example seven radiocarbon dates are available for house 1 but my reading of the model suggests that only 2 were completely acceptable. Similarly, of the 10 dates obtained from house 4, only two seem to fit the model? The main problem appears to be the difficulty in obtaining good quality samples, as most of the material sampled is argued to be either residual or intrusive. I would suggest that this leaves open the possibility that an alternative archaeological interpretation is possible. Nevertheless, the presence of material that appears to be contemporary with the rampart phases does suggest internal occupation of the hillfort and possibly that the house stances were very long-lived locations.

Interestingly, in contrast to the redating of the palisade, the redating of the houses further undermines the classic Hownam sequence, which argued for stone houses belonging to a Roman phase of settlement which followed Late Iron Age multivallation. The original interpretation argued that these stone houses were introduced in the Iron Age (Hill 1982b) and conversely were not considered a Roman development, but this recent volume further suggests that the architecture of houses does not comfortably provide a basis for typological sequences.

Boundary

The timber resources used to construct the first palisade are significant and if the hillfort contained houses equivalent to the early houses outside the palisade, then these would have a major impact on the woodland of the surrounding landscape. This point is highlighted and the authors emphasise the importance of well managed woodland that implies a sophisticated sense of management and property but I am not so sure this is the best interpretation. An alternative argument could be that palisades and large houses are limited to the Bronze Age/Iron Age transition and earthen boundaries and smaller houses are characteristic of later periods because most of the prime woodland is used up and not recreated (see discussion in Harding 1982).

I have previously argued that the Bronze Age/Iron Age transition represents a phase of massive environmental destruction with the carefully managed woodlands of the Bronze Age systematically erased by this phase of massive monumental constructions (Sharples 2010, 206- 7). The substantial quantities of mature timber required for the construction of all these palisades and massive houses could not be easily replaced and to my mind this is an indication of the breakdown in established power structures, property, authority roles and social cohesion, which marks the introduction of iron and the end of the Bronze Age.

The nature of the subsequent banks and ditches is difficult to understand as the above ground archaeology has been largely destroyed by subsequent ploughing. The enclosing banks appear to be fairly scrappy productions and although revetments and postholes are recorded in places, there is not much evidence for a substantial timber or stone-faced monumental wall. It seems likely that they were short lived banks with, at best, beach cobble surfaces, though this is not discussed in any detail in the report. Whatever the reconstruction, the banks are so unstable that they soon collapse into the surrounding ditches.

It is the ditches which indicate that the original ramparts were relatively substantial constructions. The well preserved ditch sections were generally just less than 3m deep but in places reached 3.6m deep and up to 5.8m wide. They indicate at least six major realignments of the enclosure system. Excavating the ditches would have required a very significant effort, which suggests large numbers of people were involved in their creation. Yet they filled up relatively quickly, and in some cases, were deliberately infilled with large quantities of rubbish.

These discoveries support the argument that mature multivallate hillforts were developed by a long process of construction rather than the outcome of a single planned event. I have argued previously that multivallate hillforts were continuous construction sites that attracted a substantial labour force during the summer months (Sharples 2007). These communities worked on the boundaries as a sort of potlatch event where labour resources were consumed in a fairly wasteful fashion. It is, however, important to differentiate this process from the original construction of the hillfort. The construction of the palisade, and in other areas, the original hillfort, were prescribed events which had clear goals to enclose the hillfort in as short as possible a time and this has different significance and meaning. The event defined the hill as a special place, whereas the process of multivallation commemorated and remembered this event and uses the construction process to bind people to the community on the hill.

Entrances

An important feature of the boundary sequence at Broxmouth are the dramatic changes in the entrances. The original hillfort had two entrances; one facing east and one facing west. At the beginning of the 4 th century BC the west entrance was closed by the dismantling of the gateway, the construction of a rampart and the digging of a ditch across the entrance. A new entrance was created that was oriented to the south west and involved the infilling of two ditches and the dismantling of two banks that had only recently been built. The east entrance though very badly damaged by ploughing seems to have been maintained throughout the life of the hillfort.

This pattern, and the change in orientation, represent a major event in the life of the hillfort and must have been of considerable significance to the occupants. It is interesting to note that the creation of opposing entrances, roughly oriented to the east and west, is a feature of the earliest Wessex hillforts (Hill 1996, 110). They almost always have this distinctive arrangement of entrances. Furthermore, they often close down one of the original entrances when they become developed hillforts in the Middle Iron Age and this is almost always the western entrance. However, what they don’t do is create a new entrance, more often than not they maintain and develop only one entrance, though there are exceptions, for example Maiden Castle, Dorset, always had two double entrances.

The orientation of hillforts and houses has been assumed to be of considerable importance in recent studies of later prehistory and it is commonly assumed that orientation has a structuring cosmological significance. So I would not follow the argument that these changes relate to simple functional explanations such as better access to a significant coastal routeway, which is mentioned in this volume. The emphasis of the original entrances can be deconstructed. The significance of the eastern orientation is normally assumed to mark out the position of sunrise on the spring equinox. This orientation provides a popular alternative to the predominant south east orientation favoured by most Iron Age houses (Oswald 1997; Sharples 2010, 199). This association with houses might suggest that the eastern entrance was associated with routine day to day movements in and out of the hillfort. West facing entrances are unusual in house orientations and by contrast would have been associated with sunset rather than sunrise. This orientation might suggest that these entrances are associated with death and therefore are used for special occasions; perhaps they are the appropriate entrance for foreigners, people coming to the settlement who are not members of the local community, and for ceremonial occasions.

In southern British terms the closure of this entrance could be related to the increasing paranoia of the inhabitants and an obsession with pollution that was also documented by the increasingly complex boundary (Sharples 2010). This does not fully explain the creation of the new Broxmouth entrance, which if anything becomes more important in the Middle Iron Age, but a burial placed on its path in phase 5 is significant. By this phase this entrance appears to have had elaborate gates and is the focus for the deposition of substantial quantities of rubbish (in phases 4 and 5) so perhaps indicates its importance as a threshold area that required ritual deposition. It is also the entrance around which the houses of phase 6 are arranged and accessed.

The internal occupation

One of the big problems with our understanding of Broxmouth is the absence of evidence for settlement in the interior of the hillfort. No features, other than two graves, appear to pre-date the phase 6 settlement, which follows the abandonment of the maintenance of the surrounding boundary. This was a point noted by Peter Hill in the original interim reports, though he proposed a slightly more complicated final phase.

Clearly there has been a lot of erosion in some areas of the hilltop at Broxmouth and the relatively unsubstantial nature of the enclosure ditches uncovered in the trial trench indicated just how damaged the east and north sides of the hill were by modern cultivation. The palisade trench, which was up to 1m deep, was not identified in these areas. However, the discovery of houses in a large part of the interior indicated that modern ploughing was not comprehensively destructive across all areas of the hill. This, therefore, leaves us with the difficult question of why there were no traces of early houses amongst the later houses, where erosion was less destructive?

A simple explanation for this could be that there never was a permanent settlement in the hillfort, and that it was a monument used for seasonal gatherings and events, a location for community solidarity but not for permanent living. This explanation has routinely been used to explain many apparently empty hillforts, and has even been used by JD Hill as an interpretation for the densely occupied developed hillforts of southern England, such as Danebury (Hill 1996), though I never found it a very convincing argument.

At Broxmouth the argument against this is that the extensive excavation of the defences has produced very substantial evidence for settlement. Substantial structures associated with the phase 1 palisade, though external to it, were preserved by the construction of the first hillfort. In phase 4 there is good evidence for dense settlement on the periphery of the hillfort, and the abandoned and infilled inner ditch is the location for a closely packed row of houses. The presence of significant midden deposits in phases 2/3 and 5, (when no houses are identified), suggests the continuous presence of settlement throughout the archaeological sequence.

It is argued that these partial remains indicate the complete coverage of the hilltop and that in all phases the hillfort interior was covered by permanently occupied houses. The explanation for their disappearance is that houses were routinely kept clean and that there was considerable systematic destruction and reconfiguration of the interior between the different phases, which included routine systematic demolition of buildings. However, this interpretation is still problematic as the structures in phases 1 and 4 have deep cut features that surely would have survived in the interior if these houses were as extensive as suggested.

I have some considerable sympathy with the overall thrust of these arguments and have always been convinced that hillforts were permanently settled and densely packed with houses. However, alternative interpretations are possible. It should be noted that the phase 1 settlement is distinctively odd. Why were roundhouses built outside the palisade and, if they were, does this suggest the palisade is an unoccupied adjunct to the houses, or should we think of these as completely separate phases? I do think the rephasing of the palisade and the bringing together of these two elements in one phase needs to be considered problematic. There is stratigraphic evidence that phase 1 is a long-lived period which covers several distinct phases of activity and Peter Hill originally suggested there were at least four distinct sub-phases of activity in the sequence under the western entrance (Hill 1982a, 152-3), which did not include the later palisade. It is likely that phase 1 comprised an unenclosed settlement and then a later enclosure, and that the extent of the former is unconnected with the latter, which need not have been occupied.

The peripheral location of the phase 4 houses at Broxmouth also brings to mind the peripheral location of the settlement at Danebury in the later Middle Iron Age (Cunliffe 1996). Most of the houses at Danebury in this period were located in a quarry immediately behind the boundary. This peripheral location arguably clears the centre of the settlement for activities, such as ritual ceremonies, and as such provided a public space for communal meetings and for entertaining visitors, which keeps them well away from the private domestic space around the periphery. This interpretation of the settlement fits well with Hingley’s cosmological model of house space (Hingley 1990) and might be appropriate for larger domestic settlements, particularly as Armit has argued that the house society model (cf Levis Strauss) is an appropriate model for thinking about the small hillfort communities of southern Scotland.

I have to admit I am not a great supporter of this argument as I have always believed that there may have been more houses in the interiors of sites, such as Danebury, and that this site is much more heavily damaged by ploughing than is normally assumed. Certainly if we look at unploughed hillforts, such as Hambledon Hill, Dorset, and Beacon Hill, Hampshire, the evidence suggests these were covered with houses (Sharples 2010, 122.

The disappearance of houses from inside hillforts in Southern England is perhaps more easily explained because these houses are often very ephemeral stake- walled structures without earth- fast posts. These could easily be completely eradicated with one pass of the plough, or remain invisible when excavation conditions were not perfect. However, stake-walled roundhouses have not been recorded in the Scottish Iron Age and no one working on the area is currently suggesting that stake- walled roundhouses dominated the settlement record in lowland Scotland. Nevertheless, we know stake-walled roundhouses were common in north Wales and the interior of Moel y Gaer contained large numbers of these (Guilbert 1976), so there is little reason why they should not also have been present in Scotland. A Middle Iron Age occupation marked by stake- walled roundhouses might be the best explanation for the failure to discover evidence within the interior for settlement during phases 2 and 3 at Broxmouth.

Finds

I have so far confined my discussion to the structural features and the stratigraphy which is more a reflection of my own research interests than the inherent importance of the material in this volume. As noted above one of the most significant features of the Broxmouth excavations is the large, important and unique assemblage of finds including animal bones. The recovery of the animal bone is of massive significance, as far as I am aware, this is the only substantial assemblage of bones from a later prehistoric settlement on mainland Scotland, outside of Caithness, and bone assemblages are similarly rare in northern England and Wales. Furthermore, it is likely to remain the most significant animal bone assemblage from mainland Scotland and northern England for some time as the acidic soils that characterise the north have destroyed most of the animal bones that ever existed.

The Broxmouth assemblage demonstrates the importance of cattle and indicates an economy in which milk, and presumably milk products such as cheese, was of major significance. Sheep are of much less importance than they would be in southern England and it is argued again that they are primarily being kept for milk, though the evidence is more complicated. Pigs too were an important meat source although interestingly they appear not to be breeding them on the hillfort, they were brought in on the hoof and as meat joints. This fits with evidence from other areas, such as the Hebrides, where it is argued that the relative proportions of pig may be useful proxies for prestige, as meat consumption was a restricted activity reserved for special occasions (Parker Pearson and Sharples 1991).

It should be a key objective of any future rescue excavation of a hillfort to recover large quantities of bone and research projects should prioritise limestone and shell sand areas where bones are likely to survive. It is interesting to note that the initial trial excavations at Broxmouth suggested that the site might be very poorly preserved but it was worth digging because even if only the ditches survived, the trial investigations indicated they would produce large bone assemblages.

Another important result was the recovery of a large assemblage of worked bone which confirms the importance of bone tools in Iron Age society demonstrated by other similar assemblages from Atlantic Scotland. The Broxmouth assemblage shows some objects which are common in Atlantic Scotland and Southern England, notably the ‘weaving combs’, but also includes others which are more unusual, such as the ‘yoke-shafted’ pins, which suggest a very distinctive local identity.

Exotic prestige items are much rarer but the site did produce a late pennanular brooch, spiral finger ring, pins and a fine copper alloy strap junction which dates to the period of the Roman conquest of the north. The latter object is a unique item though firmly based in the tradition of Roman-influenced Celtic art which occurs in the first to second centuries AD. Another important find of this period is a hoard of glass bangle fragments that indicate a simple act of ritual (by curation), which connects the occupants of the site to a wider world otherwise relatively undocumented in the archaeological record. The most surprising exotic (raw) material is a fragment of red coral which amazingly preserved its bright colour and would have been a resource of considerable significance to metalworkers producing ornaments in the Iron Age. There is also important evidence for metalworking on the site and one of the most significant discoveries is for iron working, radiocarbon dated to the seventh to fifth centuries BC, and which makes this not only the earliest dated metalworking in Scotland but amongst the earliest in Britain. Both smelting and smithing took place and there is limited evidence for copper alloy and gold working. The evidence is limited but the decline in the later phases suggests an important shift from on-site to off-site metalworking.

Human Bones

The recovery of a decent assemblage of human remains from the excavations at Broxmouth was not a great surprise as human remains are normally found on Iron Age sites if the excavation is large enough and the site has decent preservation. However, what was more unusual was the discovery of a cemetery at the base of the hill immediately to the north of the fort.

The cemetery comprises nine graves and 10 burials. The bodies were normally flexed or crouched, with a north south orientation, and placed in unlined oval or circular pits, though large slabs were often placed in the pits to cover the burials. The radiocarbon dates were consistent and date from the end of the third century to the middle of the second century BC. They indicate a short-lived period of activity, which coincided with the end of active rampart building and prior to the extensive appearance of houses, at a time when very little else appears to be going on inside the hillfort.

This is clearly a very small cemetery that does not represent anything but an ephemeral moment in the settlement’s history. It is argued that most of the settlement’s “dead must have been disposed of in some archeologically invisible manner, most likely through excarnation at some distance from the settlement. Or cremation and scattering of the ashes, perhaps in the fields or at sea” (page 504). I am not so sure about this as similar small cemeteries could exist for all periods of the hillfort’s use in the landscape around Broxmouth. This cemetery was only identified because it was discovered fortuitously at the end of a long trench which had been opened up across the hillfort boundary. No systematic exploration of the periphery of this hillfort, or any other hillfort, has been undertaken in south east Scotland. The survival of the cemetery was also fortuitously located close to the eroded slope of the hill which meant the burials were covered in hillwash that protected them from later cultivation. It is unlikely that a cemetery would normally survive the massive agricultural destruction that has occurred across most of this landscape without some sealing deposit.

The presence of human remains scattered throughout the settlement is not something that comes as a surprise. When bone is well preserved all Iron Age settlements are likely to produce fragmentary human remains and isolated burials. At Broxmouth 22 fragments were recovered and most of these fragments are from the skull. Radiocarbon dates indicate a much more dispersed chronology for these deposits.

It is argued that the evidence for trauma, which is visible on 6 out of 22 fragments, suggests the prevalence of warfare, but it could also be argued that the evidence relates to the deliberate fragmentation of the bones. It is clear that human remains, particularly skulls, were actively sought out and systematically broken up and worked into relatively small easily portable fragments. These clearly had an important symbolic, or religious, significance which meant they could be used in routine day to day existence; pocket ancestors. However, the isotope evidence does suggest that the diet of the individuals found in the cemetery compared to those disarticulated and discarded human bones found in the interior, was different. There is a clear statistical separation between the two groups which suggests that their home environment or diet was slightly different. The isotope evidence, combined with the possibility that some of these people met with a violent death, has been used to argue that the disarticulated remains found inside were those of outsiders and had been collected as trophies.

Conclusion

This is an excellent report, a weighty volume packed with detailed information that provides an unparalleled insight into the settlement of East Lothian in the first millennium BC. However, its significance is much wider than this; Broxmouth is one of the few hillforts in Britain to have been systematically excavated and which provides the material culture, the structural remains and the stratigraphy to enable a detailed narrative to be told. Comparative sites of this quality are surprisingly rare; there is a concentration in southern England that includes Maiden Castle, Dorset (Sharples 1991), Danebury, Hampshire (Cunliffe 1995), South Cadbury, Somerset (Barrett et al. 2001) and Balksbury, Hampshire (Wainwright and Davis 1995), but outside this region very few sites have produced such high quality of evidence and witnessed such extensive area excavation. In Wales and the borders we have the Breidden (Musson 1991), in the process of being published is Castell Henllys (Mytum 2013), while still awaiting full publication is Moel y Gaer (Guilbert 1976), but all of these sites suffer from an absence of bones and a very limited artefactual record. Recent work on hillforts has often been restricted to small-scale interventions designed to recover radiocarbon dates and whilst these excavations have produced interesting results the extensive excavations at Broxmouth indicate that we should treat these results with extreme caution.

Perhaps the most surprising result of these excavations is how similar some of the results and problems are to those encountered by past research on hillforts in southern England. The Broxmouth chronology is remarkably similar to that for Danebury and intriguingly suggests that the phenomenon of hillfort construction is a national pattern which synchronises across a wide area. The arrangement of the hillfort entrances is initially similar but at Broxmouth there is a divergence with the opening of the south west entrance. How do these national patterns relate to the distinct local patterns, such as a cattle as opposed to sheep-based economy, a culture that places little emphasis on ceramics and with, as far as we can see, completely different house architectural traditions? Further extensive explorations of well-preserved hillforts in areas outside Wessex are clearly necessary to resolve these questions.

The excavations at Broxmouth occurred in a vibrant period for Scottish archaeology both intellectually and socially. The author of this review was lucky to be a student at this time and to participate in a marginal fashion in what was one of Scotland’s showcase excavations. The parties were legendary and the basement of Broxmouth house proved to be an interesting venue for a punk concert of great intensity.

References

Alexander, D, and Watkins, T, 1998. St Germains, Tranent, East Lothian: the excavation of Early Bronze Age remains and Iron Age enclosed and unenclosed settlements. Proc Soc Antiq Scot 128, 203-54

Armit, I, 1999. Life After Hownam: the Iron Age in south-east Scotland. In B. Bevan (ed) Northern Exposure: interpretive devolution and the Iron Age in Britain . Leicester: Leicester University Press, 65-80

Armit, I, 2007. Hillforts at war: from Maiden Castle to Taniwaha pa. Proc Prehist Soc 73, 25-40

Barnetson, L.P.D, 1982. Animal Husbandry: clues from Broxmouth. In Harding, D, (ed) 1982. Later Prehistoric settlement in South-East Scotland, 101-105

Barrett, J.C, Freeman, P.W.M, and Woodward, A, 2000. Cadbury Castle Somerset. The Later Prehistoric and early historic archaeology . London: English Heritage (Archaeological Report 20)

Cool, H.E.M, 1982. The artefact record: some possibilities. In Harding, D. (ed). 1982. Later Prehistoric settlement in South-East Scotland, 92-100

Cunliffe, B.W, 1995. Danebury: An Iron Age Hillfort in Hampshire. Vol 6 A hillfort community in perspective . York: Council for British Archaeology (Research Report 102)

Cunliffe, B.W. and Miles, D. 1984. (eds) Aspects of the Iron Age in central Southern Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Committee for Archaeology Monograph 2

Cunliffe, B.W. and Poole, C. 2000. Suddern Farm, Middle Wallop, Hants 1991 and 1996 . Oxford: Oxford University Press (Danebury Environs Programme 2.3)

Dunwell, A, 2007. Cist burials and an Iron Age settlement at Dryburn Bridge, Innerwick, East Lothian . Society of Antiquaries of Scotland and Historic Scotland. Scottish Archaeological Internet Report 24 Guilbert, G.C, 1976. Moel y Gaer (Rhoesesmor) 1972-73: an area excavation in the interior. In Harding, D.W. (ed) Hillforts: later prehistoric earthworks in Britain and Ireland . London: Academic Press

Harding, D. (ed). 1982. Later Prehistoric settlement in South-East Scotland. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh, Department of Archaeology Occasional Paper 8

Harding, D, 2004. The Iron Age in Northern Britain. Celts and Romans, Natives and Invaders . Abingdon: Routledge

Haselgrove, C, 2009. The Traprain Law Environs project: fieldwork and excavation 2000-2004 . Edinburgh: Society of Antiquaries of Scotland

Haselgrove, C, and McCullagh, R, 2000. An Iron Age Coastal Community in East Lothian: Excavations at Fishers Road, Port Seaton. 1994-95 . Edinburgh: Scottish Trust for archaeological Research Monograph 6

Hey, G, Booth, P, and Timby, J, 2011. Yarnton: Iron Age and Romano-British settlement and landscape . Oxford: Oxford Archaeology

Hill, J.D, 1996. Hill-forts and the Iron Age of Wessex. In Champion, T.C, and Collis, J.R, (eds), The Iron Age in Britain and Ireland : Recent Trends. Sheffield: J.R.Collis Publications, 67-86

Hill, P, 1978. Broxmouth hillfort excavations 1977-78. An interim report . Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh, Department of Archaeology Occasional Paper no. 2

Hill, P, 1982a. Broxmouth hillfort excavations 1977-78: An interim report. In Harding, D, (ed), 1982 Later Prehistoric settlement in South-East Scotland, 141-188

Hill, P, 1982b, Settlement and chronology. In Harding, D, (ed), 1982 Later Prehistoric settlement in South-East Scotland , 4-43

Hingley, R, 1990. Domestic organisation and gender relations in Iron Age and Romano-British households. In Samson, R, (eds), The Social Archaeology of Houses . Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 125-148

Lelong, O, and MacGregor, G, 2007. The Lands of Ancient Lothian: Interpreting the Archaeology of the A1. Edinburgh: Society of Antiquaries of Scotland

Musson, C.R, 1991. The Breidden hillfort. A later prehistoric settlement in the Welsh Marches . London: Council for British Archaeology (Res Rep 76)

Mytum, H, 2013. Monumentality in Later Prehistory. Building and rebuilding Castell Henllys Hillfort . New York: Springer

Parker Pearson, M, and Sharples, N.M, 1999. Between Land and Sea. Excavations at Dun Vulan, South Uist . Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press

Sharples, N.M, 1991. Maiden Castle. Excavations and field survey 1985-6. London: English Heritage (Archaeological Report 19) Sharples, N.M, 2007. Building communities and creating identities in the first millennium BC. In Haselgrove, C, and Pope, R, (eds). The Earlier Iron Age in Britain and the near Continent . Oxford: Oxbow Books, 174-184

Sharples, N.M, 2010. Social Relations in Later Prehistory . Oxford: Oxford University Press

Triscott, J, 1982. Excavations at Dryburn Bridge, East Lothian. In Harding, D, (ed), 1982 Later Prehistoric settlement in South-East Scotland, 117-124

Wainwright, G.J, and Davies, S.M, 1995. Balksbury Camp, Hampshire: Excavations 1973 and 1981 . London: English Heritage (Archaeological Report 4)

Whittle, A., Healy, F, and Bayliss, A, 2011. Gathering Time. Dating the Early Neolithic Enclosures of Southern Britain and England. Oxbow Books, Oxford

Niall Sharples

Cardiff University

Received: September 2014

The views expressed in this review are not necessarily those of the Society or the Reviews Editor