An atlas of hillforts in Britain and Ireland

Hillforts are the most impressive field legacy from the Iron Age across many areas of England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Eire. Although precision is not possible, it is likely that there are over 4000 in Ireland and Britain. Any academic or popular account of later prehistory from c. 1000 BC has to include a discussion of hillforts as the dominant monument type: their forms and architecture, possible functions, relationships with their setting and archaeological surroundings. Over recent years within Iron Age studies the importance of 'regionalisation' has emerged again as an important theme and one which requires information and data to be available at both the local level and at regional and inter-regional scales. There is no integrated system that will provide this information for hillforts, although a wide variety of sources exist in digital and paper form. These sources however are diverse, often difficult to access, and hard to integrate to produce wider interpretations and new research questions, since all previous syntheses have generally been at 'national' (i.e. Ireland, England) scales. Furthermore, most of the ways in which these sites are usually described are based on upstanding examples, but it is now essential to incorporate many ploughed-down remains, only visible as cropmarks, into understandings of these sites.

This project will create an online interactive database that will include standardised information on all hillforts in the UK and Eire and enable interrogation and analysis at a range of scales from an individual hillfort to the whole collection. The database will be linked to Google Earth/Maps so that the locations of hillforts can be seen within their landscape contexts. At the close of the project, the data file will be available for re-use in a variety of software. The information held will be a compilation of all existing sources, re-structured to provide maximum achievable consistency and the ability to search all hillforts, evaluating and comparing them on meaningful characteristics such as number and configuration of ramparts, ditches and entrances. Evaluation, analysis and interpretation will take place at local, regional and inter-regional scales and the outcomes will be a paper atlas of hillforts, where cartographic presentation will be matched by succinct analytical texts. These will include extensive discussion on the structuring of the data, including consideration of what is and is not a hillfort and why, together with the interpretation of analyses and patterns established at the different scales and visualised through a series of maps and plans. The results will feed significantly into discussions of regionality and how hillforts fit with other data and interpretations. This work will be mirrored by a critical re-assessment of the dating evidence for these sites, including isotopic and other scientific determinations, numismatic and artefactual data, and documentary sources: these monuments are used in both the first millennia BC and AD, and evaluation of the chronological range of these sites at a variety of scales will allow closer readings of patterns through time, to match the spatial focus highlighted above. The analysis of this set of sites across the whole of Britain and Ireland - something not previously-attempted - will generate new configurations of information on similarities and differences amongst sites that will challenge prevailing views.

Hillforts are of great interest to a large range of audiences, sometimes just for their intrinsic archaeological value but often as part of wider landscape, historical and environmental interests. Further to encourage the breadth of this participation, the database will be configured as a hillfort-wiki, capable of accepting user-generated content so that additional text and images can be attached to any hillfort, separately from the core data generated by the project,

A wide range of users outside the academic community will benefit from this research. The results will be fed back into the publicly-accessible national monuments records of England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Eire, so that they will all have an enhanced resource to make available to their wide range of clients. This will include more information than present systems contain and be more useable for research-type queries based on characteristics of the monuments. All of these record systems are widely consulted for a range of reasons from development control and related interests within the planning system through to public interest; and the data researched, calibrated and standardized during this project would be a core part of that resource. This enhancement of the resource also links with the private and professional heritage sectors, including archaeological consultants and contractors, who use these resources for desk-based assessments and other purposes in the applied world of 'polluter-pays' archaeology. The integration of 'cropmark' data from the lowland arable zones will represent a particular enhancement to be offered by this project. The aim is to make the final data available as a file that can be re-used within a range of software and, therefore, be as widely accessible as possible.

Policy makers, for example state heritage organizations, National Trusts, National Parks and local authorities, will be interested in this resource especially because it will include (separately and identifiably) user generated content, i.e. information from various specialists and input by the general public. With the current interest in public participation in heritage and landscape management this will provide an important source for opinions concerning hillforts and their place in peoples' lives and communities.

Hillforts of various forms are an international phenomenon occurring over large areas of Europe from the Iberian peninsular to east-central Europe. Britain and Ireland however possess one of the longest- and best-studied data-sets, and some of the most innovative approaches to this suite of sites, so that the standardisation that this portal will offer will be international in its significance. Beneficiaries of this research would include the Iron Age academic archaeological and heritage communities from Spain and Portugal eastwards, for all of whom sites equivalent to insular hillforts are an important key to the comprehension of the regional Iron Ages.

In many areas of rural Britain and Ireland, tourism and associated recreation for example in the form of hill-walking helps underpin local economies. There are numerous cases from the south coast of England to the northern Highlands and west to the Dingle peninsula, of conspicuous or reasonably-preserved hill-forts being targets for such recreational use. By making accessible information on these sites, it is hoped that this project may simultaneously encourage responsible tourism and the sustainability of these key monuments whilst also disseminating information about them that helps to distributes visits to them around more examples, thereby deflecting potential damage from footfall at some 'honeypot' sites, while also encouraging enjoyment and educational use of these important monuments.