Welsh Journals

Some Suggestions concerning the Purpose of "Hill-top Camps." By R. U. SAYCE, M.A. As the result of recent excavations a considerable literature is growing up concerning what are generally called hill-top camps. Evidence is steadily accumulating by means of which it is becoming possible to ascribe these fortified sites to a definite period, or periods, and also to understand something of the mode of life of their builders. Though a certain number of the interrupted ditch type are assigned to the neolithic period, the majority of the camps appear to have been constructed during the Early Iron Age. It is clear also that the inhabitants of the country during that period practised agriculture, kept domestic animals, smelted iron, made pottery and textiles, and carried on a good deal of trade, even with foreign countries. There is still some uncertainty as to whether the camps were the sites of permanent habitations or were used merely as places of refuge in times of trouble. The writer has already stated his opinion1 that they were in most cases the permanent residences of the chiefs and their immediate followers, and that some suitably situated camps probably developed into industrial and commercial centres. It seems fairly certain, however, that these rampart encircled enclosures were not permanently occupied by the whole of the population. Many of them are too small for this. Others are so large that they could have held a population so numerous that it would have been difficult to feed them with the agricultural products of the immediate neighbour- hood.2 We should probably not be very far wrong if we were to picture many of the tribesmen living, as Giraldus Cambrensis described them in Cent. XII., scattered about the countryside in huts made of branches of trees twisted together, while the camps were occupied only by a section of the population. De Coulanges, after carefully studying Caesar's references to Gaul, came to the conclusion that the camps in that country were not centres of population. If Caesar appeared suddenly before a town, he found on the walls at first only a small number of defenders. The towns only offered (1) Trans'. Cymrodorion Society. 1921. (2) It should be noted that the Maori pa, which presents many analogies with our camps, was also sometimes very large, and occasionally contained cultivated lands.