Hillforts at War: From Maiden Castle to Taniwaha Pa

摘要

Following Wheeler's excavations at Maiden Castle, the multiva/late hillforts of Wessex came to he seen as responses to a specific form of warfare hased around the massed use of slings. As part of the wider f>ost-processnal 'rethink' of the British Iron Age during the late ll>S()s and IWOs, this traditional 'military' interpretation of hillforts was increasingly subject to criticism. Apparent weaknesses in hillfort design were identified and many of the most distinctive features of these sites (depth of enclosure, complexity of entrance arrangements, etc) were reinterpreted as symbols of social isolation. Yet this 'pacifical'um' of hillforts is in many ways as unsatisfactory as the traditional vision. Both camps have tended to new warfare as a detached, functional, and disemhedded activity which can be analysed in terms of essentially timeless concepts of military efficiency. Consideration of the use of analogous structures in the ethnographic record suggests that, far from being mutually exclusive, the military and symbolic dimensions are both essential to a more nuanccJ understanding of the wider social role of hillforts in Britain and beyond.