Prehistoric hillfort

In 2017–2018 a rescue excavation which was carried out in a new quarry deposit in Plaňany identified components of the Linear Pottery culture and the Late Halstatt period/Early La Tène period but in the first place also the remains of a fortification constructed by the people of the Únětice culture during the Early Bronze Age. In this way, the hypothesis formulated earlier by M. Vávra based on his observations made during the construction of a water pipe line from Plaňany to Radim in 1996 was confirmed. At that time M. Vávra speculated about the existence of a so-far unknown hillfort at the site of „Na Černé“, on the border between the cadastral areas of Plaňany, Radim and Vrbčany. However, in contrast to his original assumptions, the fortified area was somewhat larger. The excavation also identified a narrow gate on the southern slope of the hill which was probably used by individual persons rather than by carriages. It is so-far not clear if this fortification system can be considered as a fortification of the hillfort in the true sense of the word, or if it rather was a site serving as a local refuge. This can perhaps be proven by a future non-destructive survey of the fortification's remains, especially by geophysical measurements.

Analiza in arheološka interpretacija lidarskih podatkov zavarovanega območja spomenika Kazlje – gradišče Vahta (EŠD 7283) z okolico.
Strokovno poročilo o delu in rezultatih

Za arheološko interpretacijo obravnavanega območja v Kazljah (občina Sežana) smo procesirali 41,3 miljonov točk lidarskih podatkov in arheološko interpretirali površino 4 km2.
Dokumentirali smo 320 potencialnih arheoloških sledi, od tega 268 prazgodovinskih, 1 rimsko in 5 arheoloških sledi iz 1. svetovne vojne. Izpostavi

Vladař hillfort, situated close to the town Žlutice, western Bohemia, has attained only little attention from archaeologists until very recently. This contribution provides a description of the current stage of our knowledge of the site, its environmental setting and possible significance in the Bohemian later prehistory
(Bronze Age, Hallstatt and La-Tène periods). Vladař hillfort became a focus site for a currently running research project; its actual progress, basic description of the finds – mainly pottery fragments – and some outline of preliminary results about Ha and LT periods settlement are given.

Photogrammetry is quickly becoming an important, cost effective technique for recording cultural heritage. Beyond the micro-scale of site evaluation, however, there are also effective landscape applications, with drone-based image collection allowing for large-scale survey. This combination of highly portable technology, which is fully automated, can be used to create accurate and dense three-dimensional models at a fraction of the cost of LiDAR, and often at a much higher spatial resolution. Yet, despite this, few studies have assessed the viability of this technique in regard to landscape studies. Those that have, such as Muñoz-Nieto et al. (2014), highlight the effectiveness of this technique and its ease of use. This paper assesses the viability of this technology for mapping large archaeological sites such as hillforts, providing a case study for its application to landscape archaeology.

We consider that there is archaeological relevance in this new oppidum
located in the Tajuña valley, right on the limit of Celtiberia and Carpetania.
The findings recovered during the systematic research, have provided proof
that it is a walled settlement, wider than 9 hectareas, that was occupied until
the first dates of the Roman conquest. The site was found from the nineteenth-
century documents maintained in the Royal History Academy about
findings of the zone.

Hillforts in Ireland and Europe have often been regarded as defensive structures or monuments built to facilitate and strengthen community cohesion and identity. Recent discourse, however, stresses the importance of competitive display, promoting the idea that hillforts were built to convey the power and strength of a community. The enclosing elements themselves were an effective mechanism to display this, being highly visible and permanent features in the landscape. The costly act of construction, in terms of time, effort and resources, reflects the conspicuous and highly visible consumption of resources and labour. As such, larger and more elaborate works could reflect a bigger community who had a more substantial labour force and resource base. Impressive enclosing earthworks found at many hillforts in Britain and mainland Europe contrast with the unimpressive nature of Irish sites. This paper considers the Irish evidence with regard to this recent narrative and assesses whether Irish hillforts were built to signal the power of local communities.

AN INVESTIGATION OF PREHISTORIC SETTLEMENT PATTERNS IN THE ALMONDBURY DISTRICT OF HUDDERSFIELD.
J. Benjamin Dunn

The abstract of this dissertation, covering the site of Castle Hill, Almondbury and its neighbouring prehistoric settlements and sites has shown that there were a great many inter related places within the landscape of Castle Hill and beyond. During the time frame of the Bronze and Iron Ages, the monuments; be they cairn-fields, barrows, enclosures or the multivallated hill-fort itself all played a vital role in the day to day life of the people who inhabited Almondbury in that far distant age.
During the investigation all known sites, monuments and finds relating to the area and time frame from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age were plotted on a map to show their correlation and relationship to each other and their surrounding environment.
The need for a number of the sites under discussion to be reappraised by members of the Sites and Monuments Records Office, with a view to some preliminary excavation forms a part of the conclusion. It is to be concluded that Almondbury and its hinterland was a Bronze and Iron age subsistence  landscape, within it a small community who were most likely farmers eking out an existence on the fertile plains between the lifeblood of the rivers Colne and Holme and their network of tributary brooks, becks, streams and dykes. Their choice to settle and build monuments was often near water courses, which would serve as both important boundaries and trade routes with the world beyond this archaeologically rich yet undervalued lesser known region.
Table of Contents
Abstract……………………………………………i
List of Contents………………………...…………ii
List of Tables……..…………………………………...…iii
List of Maps…………...…………………….………..….iv
List of Figures…………………………………...………..v
Acknowledgments………………..……………...………vi
Original dissertation guidelines brief………..………..vii
Foreword, Research Aims & Objectives………..……viii
Chapter One Topography and geology & A short chronological introduction to the Castle Hill site………………………………………….…………………..……...1     
Chapter Two Literature Review and Previous Work…………………………8
Chapter Three Sites and Monuments Record……………………………..…22
Chapter Four An examination of Castle Hill…………………………………45
Chapter Five Discussion and conclusion…………………………………...….55
Bibliography…………………………………………………………………..…70


List of Tables

Tab. 1 Time line summarising the history of Castle Hill, Almondbury
Tab. 2 Table showing S.M.R. data of known Bronze & Iron Age sites within the        District of  Huddersfield   
Tab. 3 Table showing S.M.R. data of known Bronze & Iron Age finds within the District of Huddersfield
Tab. 4 Table showing sites relating to the North Eastern quarter of Map SE 11  SE
Tab. 5 Table showing finds relating to the North Eastern quarter of Map SE 11 SE
Tab. 6 Table showing sites relating to the North Western quarter of Map SE 11 SE
Tab. 7 Table showing finds relating to the North Western quarter of Map SE 11 SE
Tab. 8 Table showing sites relating to the South Western quarter of Map SE 11 SE
Tab. 9 Table showing finds relating to the South Western quarter of Map SE 11 SE
Tab. 10 Table showing sites relating to the South Eastern quarter of Map SE 11 SE
Tab. 11 Table showing finds relating to the South Eastern quarter of Map SE 11 SE






List of Maps

        Map 1. The location of Castle Hill, Almondbury (circled) within the West             Yorkshire locale.

Map 2. North Eastern quarter of Map SE 11 SE showing distribution of sites and finds
Map 3. North Western quarter of Map SE 11 SE showing distribution of sites and finds
Map 4.  South Western quarter of Map SE 11 SE showing distribution of sites and 
finds
Map 5. South Eastern quarter of Map SE 11 SE showing distribution of sites and
finds










List of Figures
Figure 1. An aerial view of Castle Hill, Almondbury taken from the north east.

Figure 2. An artist’s impression of a Hill-fort bank and ditch defence system, with circular huts.

Figure 3. Plan of Castle Hill showing outer ditches and lines of building phases.

Figure 4. Reconstruction of first rampart.

Figure 5. Reconstruction of the defences of the Univallate Fortlet.

Figure 6. Reconstruction of the north western junction of the Bivallate Extension with its predecessors. 

Figure 7. Reconstruction of the Gateway through the Univallate Fortlet.

Figure 8. South-east looking aerial view of Castle Hill with Newsome and Longley in the background.

Figure 9. South-western looking aerial view of Castle Hill with Almondbury village in the background.

Figure 10. View of Castle Hill and its sentinel like tower looking from Farnley Bank.

Figure 11. Direct aerial view above Castle Hill and immediate surrounding landscape.



Acknowledgements
For their help and support in the process of producing this dissertation I would like to pass on my appreciation and gratitude to the following organisations and people:
Jason Dodds and the staff at the SMR office in Wakefield
Mike McCarthy of the University of Bradford
The staff of the local history section at Huddersfield Central Library
The staff at the University of Bradford J.B. Priestley Library
My partner Amanda and my friends and family for their support, patience and belief.
.










Original dissertation guidelines brief

An Investigation of prehistoric settlement patterns in the Almondbury district of Huddersfield.

MMcC 3 Almondbury hill-fort, Huddersfield, the hinterland
“Huddersfield is dominated by a large hill-fort on Castle Hill, Almondbury. Excavations at various times by the late W.J. Varley attempted to establish a sequence of activities, but most of the results have never been published. Although hill-forts vary greatly in size date and function, none existed in isolation but were tied into the landscape and society. This dissertation will attempt to locate and identify prehistoric settlement patterns in the vicinity of Almondbury”
Mike McCarthy, September 2005












Foreword
This dissertation will be investigating prehistoric patterns of settlements within the modern day parish boundaries of Almondbury, Huddersfield. There are many sites within this zone, and it shall be the purpose of this dissertation to analyse and interpret their relationship with the defended hill fort enclosure of Castle Hill.
These prehistoric settlement sites include rectangular enclosures, barrows, a Bronze Age stone circle, Bronze and Iron Age hut circles, bank earthworks, curvilinear enclosure’s, Bronze and Iron Age enclosures and Cairnfield  Cemetery sites. In short there is a lot of evidence for habitation of the district in the pre-historic era, not to mention the abundances of flint micro-liths and other period artefacts. For a sustained period in our pre-history and right up to and including the present day the vicinity of Almondbury and Castle hill has been an important site for people to live out their lives, within the broader context of the region and beyond.

Research Aims
The research aims of this dissertation were to examine prehistoric settlement patterns in the Almondbury district, Huddersfield. In doing this a desk based study was the main method used. In addition to this, field trips taken to see the site at first hand, in changing weather conditions.
Research Objectives
The objectives for the research were visit the SMR office in Wakefield and Huddersfield library’s local history section.  Further to this to visit the site of Castle Hill and other prehistoric locations in the immediate vicinity, in varying weather conditions to appreciate the full extent of the earthworks and the surrounding landscape.

The prominent hill Vladar has been recognized for centuries for its extensive, multivallate fortifications, which were recorded in old chronicles (16th C.) as well as in the first military maps of Bohemia (18th C.). Despite this early knowledge, intensive archaeological research of this site started relatively recently (in
2002). Thanks to funding from several grant projects, a detailed plan of the whole hillfort was accomplished and several trenches excavated across fortification lines and on the top plateau of the hillfort. Alongside numerous archaeological objects, it was also possible to recover exceptionally
rich palaeoenvironmental record, illuminating the human-nature relationships in the last 2400 years.
Today the main attention of the researchers is paid to the west suburb of the hillfort (No. IV), where more waterlogged sediments recently came to light. Here the excavation yielded well-preserved remains of wooden structures, originally representing roughly rectangular, interconnected chambers (Figs. 3-4). Radiocarbon
dating and dendrochronology placed them into the 5th century BC (Fig. 6). A stratigraphically later evidence shows that in the 10th century AD these wooden constructions – possibly water cisterns and foundations of superstructures built in the marshy area – were already out of use, destroyed and completely covered by sediments. Such Iron Age wooden features have few analogies, although of a somewhat later date. One of the closest parallels comes from the late La-Tène period (2nd C. BC) hillfort Altenburg by Niedenstein in Hessen.

Continuous work on the archaeological topography of Korčula has recently resulted in locating an Iron Age settlement at the site of Brdo-Stine in Žrnovo at the eastern end of the island. Repeated field surveys of the site resulted in broad determination of its spatial extent, basic organizational components, as well as the character of small
finds, testifying to its exceptional archaeological potential. On the basis of the position of the settlement and typo-chronological determination of the collected finds of metal (iron slag), stone (whetstones, millstones, stone anvils) and ceramic (roof tiles, molds?, amphorae and pithoi), the settlement was preliminary dated to the Late Iron Age/Hellenistic period of an area characterized by very intense overlaying of the indigenous
and Hellenistic-Roman components.

Die Auswertung von LiDAR-Scans der Altenburg b. Niedenstein (Hessen) zeigt, dass die Anlage mit 150 ha doppelt so groß ist wie bisher angenommen. Aus diesem Grund beschäftigt sich das Vorgeschichtliche Seminar Marburg in Kooperation mit der hessenARCHÄOLOGIE wieder mit der Anlage. Zurzeit finden dort Begehungen statt um die in den LiDAR-Scans entdeckten Befestigungsstrukturen im Gelände zu verifizieren.

Pravěké opevnění v poloze Valy u Rychtářova je dlouhodobě známou, ovšem vzhledem k poloze ve vojenském újezdu jen obtížně dostupnou lokalitou. K nepočetným starším nálezům se při drobné akci v roce 2016 podařilo přidat nálezy z vnitřního prostoru datovatelné do závěru neolitu, středního eneolitu a pozdní doby bronzové, které upřesňují sekvenci osídlení polohy. Samotné opevnění zůstává ovšem nedatováno.

What was life like for the prehistoric inhabitants of Lancashire? This is the first book to look at the longue duree of the history of the county from the Mesolithic to the Iron Age period. What emerges is a picture of a complex society that changed and developed with the introduction of new technologies and influences from overseas. David Barrowclough provides a narrative of how life would have been for the early residents of this county and explains the monuments they left behind them in the landscape.

Out of this study emerges elements of a uniquely Lancastrian prehistoric cultural identity, which at the same time shared some of the core values of the wider British and European prehistoric period. With new data from a number of unpublished sites and exceptional illustrations, this book is of interest to both scholars and the general public.

"Resumen: En este trabajo se reflexiona sobre la relación entre los arqueólogos y las comunidades locales del medio rural europeo, repasando la trayectoria y las posibilidades que ofrece la atención a los relatos orales del folklore de temática arqueológica. Para ello, se analiza al caso concreto de la investigación de la Edad del Hierro en Asturias, repasando los antecedentes de este tipo de aproximaciones y exponiendo las aplicaciones prácticas que la atención a las narraciones orales puede aportar a la Arqueología. A la vez, se exploran algunas posibles vías por las que este diálogo abierto pudiese revertir en las comunidades locales.

Abstract: In this paper we reflect on the relationship between archaeologists and local communities in rural Europe, seeking to review the history and possibilities of attention to oral stories of the folklore with archaeological themes. We analyze the specific case of the investigation on the Asturian Iron Age. We review the background of such approaches and we show the practical applications that focussing on oral history can contribute to archaeological research. At the same time, we explore some possible ways in which this dialogue could revert to local communities."

During the years 2013 and 2014, several small scale surface prospections took place on a Late Hallstatt period hillfort Minice in Central Bohemia. Collected set of items is welcomed for its value as chronological or paleoeconomical evidence. Finally, some attention is paid to the evidence of bronze smelting in the surrounding area. Some of the finds and other Late Hallstatt artefacts were also analyzed with XRF spectrometry with quite surprising results. Key words: Bohemia – Late Hallstatt period – Minice hillfort – alloy composition – Fusszierfibel – leaded bronze Bursák, D. – Daněček, D. – Smíšek, K. 2016: Nové kovové nálezy z doby halštatské z hradiště u Minic, okr. Mělník. In: Popelka, M. – Šmidtová, R. – Burgert, P. – Jílek, J. (ed.): … tenkrát na východě … Sborník k 80. narozeninám Víta Vokolka. Praehistorica XXXIII/1-2, 117-129.

A completely unknown fortified settlement was discovered during a surface survey in the cadastral territory of Kladky (Prostějov district,
Olomouc region) in northwest Moravia in 2010. The fortifications copy the higher peak of a hill located away from the traditional
settlement area between Haná and Malá Haná. Surface prospecting, including the use of detection technology, uncovered a collection
of pottery, a collection of metal industry and even several artefacts of stone industry. The oldest discovered artefact was a Sudoměřice-
type needle dated to B B1. The fortified settlement likely originated as early as H A2 and was abandoned in H B2–3; the
highpoint of settlement was in H B1, proof of which is provided by potsherds and, primarily, metal finds. The finds indirectly document
work with bronze. The site differs from settlements on flat land in that it is located away from fertile soil; the fortifications are likewise
distinct primarily due to the presence of deposits. Evident in the inventory of artefacts are southern influences (part of a Bismantovatype
knife) and, mainly, northwest influences (the plate of what appears to be a Kreuzenach-type clasp and the deposit of a Gamów
– Práčov-type clasp). On the basis of the determined circumstances, we hypothesize a connection between the fortified settlement
and the route connecting the fertile enclaves of Haná and Malá Haná.