Hillforts: Britain, Ireland and the Nearer Continent

GARY LOCK is Emeritus Professor of Archaeology, University of Oxford. He gained his first degree in Archaeology at the University of Leicester and then took his PhD based on post-excavation work at Danebury hillfort. His interest in the Iron Age and particularly hillforts and their landscapes resulted in thirty years teaching and researching at Oxford in both the School of Archaeology and the Continuing Education Department. Gary co-directed the Hillforts of the Ridgeway project which involved the excavation and publication of three hillforts: Uffington Castle; Segsbury Camp and Alfred’s Castle. Thereafter research at Marcham/Frilford, a large Iron Age ritual complex and Romano-British temple, necessitated eleven years of fieldwork. Post-excavation work on this community archaeology project is ongoing. Gary has also worked on hillfort projects in the Najera Valley, La Rioja (Spain) and the Sangro Valley (Italy). In recent years Gary has excavated a hillfort in North Wales, Moel-y-Gaer, Bodfari, which is currently being written up. He is a longstanding member of the Hillfort Study Group and was co-PI of the Atlas of Hillforts of Britain and Ireland project. Gary’s other major interest is the use of computers in archaeology, especially GIS on which he has published extensively. He has recently retired as Chair of the Computer Applications in Archaeology international conference. | IAN RALSTON’s doctorate was on the Iron Age enclosed sites of Limousin, France, following on from undergraduate studies in Stuart Piggott’s department at Edinburgh. For eleven years he was on the staff of the University of Aberdeen before transferring to Edinburgh in 1985, where he was appointed to a personal chair there in 1998 and as Abercromby Professor of Archaeology in 2012. Over his career he has primarily worked on various aspects of the prehistoric and early historic archaeology of eastern Scotland, including excavations at two promontory forts and undertaking research on other sites of Neolithic and later date. A further regional interest is in the Iron Age of France, where he co-directed and published excavations on the defences of the oppida of Levroux (Berry) and Mont Beuvray (Burgundy). More recently Ian worked as part of the team examining the large First Iron Age princely complex in and around the city of Bourges (Berry), contributing to several volumes on that site. His other interests have included aerial photography, archaeological resource management issues, the history of Scottish archaeology, and treasure trove in Scotland. A Hillfort Study Group member for some forty years, he was co-PI of the Atlas of Hillforts of Britain and Ireland project.

Preface - Eileen Wilkes; Part 1. The Atlas of Hillforts of Britain and Ireland; 1. The Atlas: an introduction - Gary Lock; 2. The Hillforts of Britain and Ireland – the background to the Atlas Project: an overview of the number of hill- and promontory-fort sites - Ian Ralston; 3. Hillforts of England, Wales and the Isle of Man: diversity captured - Ian Brown; 4. Forts and fortification in Scotland: applying the Atlas criteria to the Scottish dataset - Stratford Halliday; 5. The Irish hillfort - James O’Driscoll, Alan Hawkes and William O’Brien; 6. Fortified settlement in early medieval northern Britain and Ireland - Gordon Noble and James O’Driscoll; 7. A GIS-based investigation of morphological directionality at hillforts in Britain: the visual perspective - Jessica Murray; 8. Using Atlas data: the distribution of hillforts in Britain and Ireland - Simon Maddison; 9. The Atlas of Hillforts of Britain and Ireland online - John Pouncett; Part 2. Continental perspectives; 10. Iron Age fortifications in France - Sophie Krausz; 11. Hillforts of the central Cantabrian area in the Atlantic context: views on their distribution and records - Fernando Rodríguez del Cueto; 12. Hillforts and oppida: some thoughts on the fortified settlements in southern Germany - Axel Posluschny