hillfort

hillfort, a large, roughly circular enclosure surrounded by one or more earthen banks and external ditches, or stone walls. Where there are two or more banks they are usually concentric and widely spaced. The innermost, or only, enclosure must be not less than 495 feet (150 metres) internal diameter to qualify as a hillfort. Furthermore a hillfort is always (by definition) positioned in a high, defensive, often strategic location, the bank(s) usually encircling a substantial portion of a prominent hill. Several dozen hillforts are known, the majority lying in the northern part of Munster. A remarkable cluster exists near Baltinglass, Co. Wicklow. Irish hillforts were once, wrongly, regarded as evidence of Iron Age settlement, but excavation now indicates that most are of Late Bronze Age date, especially from the 12th to the 10th centuries bc. It has been suggested that they might represent a defensive response to social stresses brought about by a seriously deteriorating climate at that time. Ritual deposits of weapons and gold ornaments, and evidence of a ritual obsession with lakes, rivers, and bogs, appear to support this hypothesis. It also seems probable that hillforts acted as centres of local power. There is much confusion amongst the uninitiated between hillforts, ringforts, and monastic enclosures. However, there is little overlap in the typological descriptions and careful consideration of form, context, and definition will almost always satisfactorily identify the class of an enclosure. The shared characteristic of all these types is their defensive nature (for instance the external ditch, where a ditch exists), and in this respect hillforts should not be confused (though they often are) with the large, ritual, internally ditched enclosures of Neolithic or Iron Age date (see emain macha).

Richard Warner