Period: Iron Age

Roman Rig Defensive Works

The Roman Rig is a defensive dyke built to defend against attack from the south. It runs from Sheffield, past Templeborough and carries on almost to Doncaster. If this is a Brigantian dyke it would certainly add weight to Websters definition of the Roman border in the period.

Cleave Dyke Defensive System

The Cleave dyke system is several Dykes which combine to create a boundary of between 9 and 18 kilometres running north south to the west of Thirsk.

Black Dike – Coverdale

Black Dike - 1m LiDAR

Black Dike is the diminutive counterpart to the great Tor Dike, rising from its western arm and climbing to the watershed between Great and Little Whernside. Beginning at roughly SD 988 756—where Tor Dike cleaves the limestone scarp—the Black Dike pursues a steep, sinuous course uphill for nearly 0.6 km, finally spilling onto the ridge crest at about 675 m above sea level

Tor Dyke

Tor Dyke appears to have been attributed to Venutius which dates it of the period AD 52 – 70. The presence of a legionary size marching camp a few miles to the southwest at Malham certainly indicates an active role in the Roman advance of AD 70. However, given the lack of published research so far a clear picture has yet to emerge.

Hillforts: Defence or Ritual? – Part 1

View to Yeavering Bell

Over the last five years Iron-Age specialists have been re-examining what British hillforts were really for. The question is no longer just “fortress or farm?” but whether many of them were built first and foremost as places of gathering, display and ritual.

Castle Dykes Henge, Thoralby – North Yorkshire

With kind permission of YAAMAPPING

Castle dykes it is a small class one henge, 90m across, perched on the high ground up in the North Yorkshire dales. The bank survives up to 1.5 m high in places, and the ditch up to 3 m deep. Early 20th-century reports (1908) noted its intact form, and recent LiDAR-based surveys have confirmed its classic henge profile with minimal later disturbance.

Guide: Spoil Heaps

Ochre mine in the Lion Cavern in Eswatini southern Africa - Credit - Jörg Linstädter

These are artificial hills made from the unwanted rock, shale and tailings that come up with coal, metal ore, stone or clay when it is being mined or quarried. Because extractive industry is both deep and long-lived, single collieries or pits can generate tens of millions of cubic metres of spoil; pushed out by locomotive, conveyor or tippler wagon and dumped in successive layers, the piles quickly become a distinctive landform.

Guide: Hillfort Mounds of Europe

Trelleborg airphoto

Guide: Common Features of Iron Age Hillforts This article attempts to serve as a guide for many of the features of the hillforts found in Britain, in Read more Guide: Iron-Age minting: Ceramic Pellet-mould trays This article explores the most tangible evidence we possess for indigenous minting north of the Humber: the smashed ceramic “pellet-mould” …

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Guide: Barrows

royal kurgans barrow, interior

A barrow is a mound of earth and/or stones raised over a grave or group of graves. Used from the Neolithic through to the Iron Age (roughly 4000 BCE to 500 CE), barrows were often constructed to honour elite individuals, such as tribal leaders, warriors, or chieftains. They are frequently found singly or in cemeteries known as barrow fields.

Guide: Classification of Henge Monuments

Avebury Landscape

Archaeologists use the word “henge” for later-Neolithic and earliest Bronze-Age earthen rings whose ditch lies inside the bank, creating a deliberately bounded interior. The term itself was coined in 1932 by Kendrick; it was refined in the 1950s by Richard Atkinson, whose system still frames most discussion.

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