An excavation at the Iron Age Promontory Fort at Embury Beacon is described. Most of the work was concentrated on the inner rampart, its entrance and the small remaining portion of the interior, where structures revealed by post holes were associated with Glastonbury style pottery. The outer rampart was also sectioned and areas within the wide intervallum space investigated.

Chevaux-de-frise is a term used to describe the (normally stone) stakes placed upright in the ground outside the walls of early fortifications with the intention of making access more difficult for an approaching enemy, be he on foot or on horse back. The existence of this defensive technique outside prehistoric forts in Britain or Ireland was first mentioned in 1684 when Roderick O'Flaherty described the Aran Island fort of Dun Aenghus in his Ogygia (O'Flaherty, 1684, 175), and it has often been discussed since, among others by Christison (1898), Westropp (1901, 661), Hogg (1957) and most recently and judiciously by Simpson (1969a, 26). Some writers, for instance Raftery (1951, 214) and Hogg (1957, 33) have suggested that the origins of chevaux-de-frise in Britain and Ireland should be sought in the Iberian Peninsula, where they occur in greater numbers (Hogg, 1957 and Harbison, 1968, a), and chevaux-de-frise are often taken as one of the most important pieces of evidence of close ties between Spain–Portugal and Britain–Ireland during the Early Iron Age. The purpose of this paper is to put forward a hypothesis that the Spanish–Portuguese examples on the one hand, and the Scottish–Welsh–Irish–Manx ones on the other, are not so closely related to one another as has hitherto been thought, but that both are merely distant cousins in so far as both are descended from a common ancestral wooden prototype which originated probably in Central or Eastern Europe.

The Iron Age hill-fort at Grimthorpe (Grid reference SE.816535) in the parish of Millington, East Riding of Yorkshire, is on the western edge of the Yorkshire Wolds, with a commanding position over the Vale of York. There is an uninterrupted view to the White Horse on the Hambleton Hills, 25 miles to the north-west; beyond York, 13 miles to the west, to the Pennines; and to the south 25 miles to the chimneys of Keadby and Scunthorpe. To the west and south the land slopes away to the Vale of York, and to the north and east there is a sharper fall to Given Dale and Whitekeld Dale. The hill-fort defences follow the 520 feet contour, and enclose an approximately circular area of eight acres (fig. 1).

A traditional reference may be preserved in the field-name—Bruffs—perhaps a variation of ‘Brough’, which ‘refers in all cases to ancient camps, usually Roman ones’. But all surface indications have now been obliterated by ploughing, and even a century ago there was little more to be seen. John Phillips in 1853 noticed ‘unmistakable traces of ancient but unascertainable occupation’, and in 1871 an excavation by J. R. Mortimer located ‘the filled up inner ditch of a supposed camp’. But Mortimer was not concerned with the settlement; his interest had been aroused by the discovery, in 1868, of a burial with rich grave-goods, including metalwork with La Tène ornament, in a chalk-pit within the south-west sector of the hill-fort.

The first account of the Scottish Iron Age which attempted to set its monuments and material cultures in their British and North European context was that published by V. G. Childe in 1935. Childe suggested that the brochs, which had hitherto been at best discussed in a purely local context, might be understood better if regarded as only one aspect of the more widespread phenomenon of the hundreds of tiny stone fortlets, or duns, of the highlands and islands, termed by him the Castle Complex to distinguish them from the larger forts of the lowlands. He also suggested that parallels between the bone weaving equipment found on broch sites and in the Glastonbury lake village provided a clue to the origins of their immigrant builders.

Eighteen years ago Sir Lindsay Scott, following Childe's lead, published in these Proceedings two long papers on the brochs and wheelhouses of the Scottish Atlantic Iron Age and the fact that subsequent discoveries have disproved some of his ideas does not detract from the great service that he rendered with them to British archaeology. He was the first to undertake a comprehensive and detailed survey of the available evidence—both excavated and from surface fieldwork—about two classes of drystone structures which had previously all too frequently been treated as a peculiarly Scottish phenomenon having few clear relationships with Iron Age cultures further south.

It is twenty years since Dr Alex. Curle published his conclusions on the problem of the brochs and it does not diminish our regard for the great services which he has given to the study of the Scottish Iron Age that his article did not end the discussion. About the same time Dr Watson and Professor Brögger expressed their views, and the Scottish Royal Commission on Ancient Monuments summarised the results of their survey, a summary which they have brought up to date in their recently published volumes. In the intervening years Professor Gordon Childe has made important contributions, and one valuable broch excavation has been reported. And yet it cannot be said that the central difficulty has been resolved.