Bronze Age burial mounds

After the Neolithic monuments were abandoned, the hilltop remained almost deserted for over 1,000 years. During the Bronze Age, beginning about 4,300 years ago, farming intensified, leading to widespread deforestation. After centuries of grazing by sheep and cattle, Dorset’s chalk hills were probably as treeless as they are today.

Probably over 4,000 years ago two round barrows – circular burial mounds – were built on the hilltop, where they could be seen from the surrounding farmland. Originally about waist-high, they were gradually flattened by later ploughing, making them difficult to see today. One of them was crudely excavated in the 1860s by local archaeologist Edward Cunnington. Like many round barrows, it contained the remains of a single skeleton lying in a crouched position, with a simple brooch and pot.

The finds have been lost and Cunnington’s records of the excavation are poor, even by the standards of the day. For instance, he does not mention the skeleton’s orientation, which might tell us the person’s sex. In the early Bronze Age, men were usually buried on their left side with their heads to the north, while women were lain on their left side with their heads to the south, so that both sexes faced east towards the dawn.

Genetic analysis has confirmed the theory, first proposed by 19th-century archaeologists, that many people buried in this way were immigrants from mainland Europe, like the earlier Neolithic farmers.
     

Middle Iron Age: the peak of occupation

About 2,400 years ago, the hillfort’s defences were extended westwards to enclose three times the original area, making it one of the largest hillforts in Britain. The inner rampart was now 1¼ miles (2km) long – the builders would have needed hundreds of oak trees to construct the palisade that topped the chalk bank. Such a long perimeter would have been difficult to defend and no well is known within the defences which could have provided water for a besieged community. However, Iron Age warfare typically took the form of heroic confrontations rather than sieges.

Over the next 300 years, extra ramparts were added and the inner rampart was remodelled and enlarged several times. The entrances to the fort became increasingly complex as ramparts were added and gateways redesigned. Pits found near both gateways contained thousands of beach pebbles, which were slingshots – ammunition for the defenders’ slings which could be propelled up to 100 metres with deadly accuracy.

Within the hillfort, roundhouses were arranged in rows, facing onto tracks wide enough for carts. This major reorganisation suggests that some individual or group exercised control over life within the fort. Not all the circular buildings were necessarily homes: finds suggest that some were workshops where textile manufacturing and metalworking took place.

Subsequent research has questioned various aspects of the Wheelers’ findings. However, a 2006 analysis of the skeletons confirmed that 75% of the late Iron Age bodies found on site and 88% of those in the ‘war cemetery’ had indeed suffered trauma. More recent research based on radiocarbon dating and analysis of burial patterns concluded that those with weapon injuries may have been buried over a number of decades before the Romans invaded in AD 43. But the radiocarbon date ranges could also indicate that many of these burials took place within a short space of time, whether over a few years or after one violent episode.

Research on the burials continues, but it seems likely that many of the dead had lived violent lives. Some of the late Iron Age dead might have died fighting one another, and others fighting the Romans. But this was almost certainly not after a Roman assault on Maiden Castle: the bodies had been carefully laid to rest, with grave goods, by their own people – funerary rituals that do not suggest hastily dug graves after a single battle.

Perhaps the dead were buried here because the hillfort’s ancient gateway was a traditional burial place for heroes.

Later history

Most histories of Maiden Castle scarcely mention medieval activity on the hilltop. Various groups migrated to Britain after the Roman army left in AD 410. These immigrants were often buried in earthworks that they considered ancient. Excavations here have unearthed several Saxon burials, identifiable by their distinctive weapons and ornaments. There may even have been some settlement near the Romano-British temple.

Later medieval ploughing left traces of ‘ridge and furrow’ strip fields, which can still be seen on the surface in low sunshine. Mortimer Wheeler’s excavations outside the hillfort’s eastern gateway revealed the foundations of a timber barn, built in the 16th century. Documents record that cereal crops were still being grown within the ramparts in the 17th and 18th centuries. Hundreds of years of ploughing gradually erased the earlier remains, including the circular platforms that once supported Iron Age roundhouses.

In the early 19th century, the arable fields were allowed to return to grass. From then on, grazing by sheep has ensured that woodland does not return. With no water on the hilltop, a square, clay-lined ‘dewpond’ had to be constructed for sheep in the 1860s, replacing an earlier circular pond.