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Is There Anybody Out There? A Reconsideration of the Environmental Evidence from the Breiddin Hillfort, Powys, Wales

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 April 2011

Paul C Buckland ,
Mike Parker Pearson ,
Andy Wigley  and
Maureen A Girling
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Abstract

Researchers have often assumed that the Iron Age hillforts of the Welsh borders were densely occupied centres of population. One of these is the Breiddin, occupied in the Late Bronze Age and Iron Age, which was excavated in 1969–76. At its centre was a natural water reservoir, Buckbean Pond, which provided a radiocarbon dated sequence of deposition contemporary with the later prehistoric occupation of the hillfort. The beetle assemblage from these deposits was never properly studied or published due to Maureen Girling's death and, as a result, its implications for understanding the human impact on the pond's immediate environment were not fully appreciated. Despite the remains of four-post structures close to the pond and of roundhouses and associated deposits in the vicinity, both flora and insect faunas indicate a quiet natural pond with little disturbance other than casual grazing by animals. This ‘evidence of absence’ does not square with the archaeological evidence which is here interpreted as deriving from human activity which was neither permanent nor intensive.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Antiquaries Journal , Volume 81 , September 2001 , pp. 51 - 76
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 2001

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