Celtic Sites: Explore Hillforts, Fortified Towns and Iron Age Settlements

Celtic sites in this collection include large fortified towns, hilltop settlements and stone enclosures. Their remains range from successive earth-and-timber ramparts to excavated houses, workshops and underground stores. Examples in France, Germany and Ireland show how builders used ridges, cliffs and mountain slopes to protect places where people lived, worked and kept supplies.

Many settlements continued into the Roman period, when houses and public buildings changed. Their articles distinguish those later additions from Iron Age defences and occupation, as well as identifying modern reconstructions of gates and walls.

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Fortified towns, houses and workshops

Bibracte occupies Mont Beuvray in France, where the Aedui developed a fortified town, or oppidum. Its successive defensive circuits enclosed a large area of the wooded summit. The ramparts combined timber frameworks with stone and earth; the reconstructed section at the Rebout Gate explains a construction system whose wooden components have largely disappeared.

Inside the enclosure, the Côme Chaudron and Champlain districts preserve the excavated remains of artisan housing and metalworking premises. Blacksmiths and bronze workers operated near the main entrance. Elsewhere, large stone houses with courtyards, drains and heated baths belong to the settlement’s adoption of Roman building forms during its final occupation. The town therefore contains evidence of both craft neighbourhoods and changing domestic architecture.

Hillside settlements and storage pits

The settlement at Ensérune, in southern France, developed on a long rocky plateau. Rows of rectangular stone houses followed the ridge, while retaining walls supported building terraces on the slopes. Its position brought local communities into contact with Iberian, Celtic and Mediterranean trading networks.

Rock-cut storage pits and large pottery containers set into the ground are prominent features among the house remains. They show how supplies were kept within a densely occupied settlement. Later, larger houses introduced columns and other Roman arrangements, so the exposed buildings represent successive changes rather than a single moment in the town’s history.

Hillfort ramparts, ditches and gateways

At Dünsberg in Germany, three defensive rings follow the slopes of a hill. Banks, ditches and entrances mark an enclosure that expanded through successive phases. Terraces inside the circuits accommodated occupation, while wood-lined springs supplied water. A modern reconstructed gate illustrates the appearance of an entrance; the much longer surviving earthworks establish the scale of the fortified settlement.

La Bure, in the Vosges, preserves a different view of rampart construction. Its sandstone defences were repeatedly rebuilt, with timber beams fastened by iron pins incorporated into the wall. Surviving masonry faces and the earth behind them expose parts of that combined structure. Later Roman-period rebuilding reused carved stone, adding another phase to the defences of the same promontory.

Cliffside and mountain enclosures

At Caisses de Jean-Jean near Mouriès, limestone cliffs bound a long basin. The principal approach was protected by two ramparts set apart along the accessible western end, while the surrounding rock reduced the need for a continuous wall on every side.

The main rampart grew through repeated additions, producing a broad mass of masonry rather than a single thin curtain. Towers, ditches and changes to the gateway strengthened the approach. The remains include a bent entrance arrangement introduced late in the settlement’s Iron Age occupation, forcing movement through a controlled passage before reaching the interior.

Caherconree in County Kerry occupies a high spur with steep drops on three sides. A long dry-stone wall closes the accessible side, enclosing the summit without surrounding it with a complete circuit of masonry. The wall’s inner face includes terraces and steps, providing access to its upper levels.

The fort’s precise date is uncertain, and parts of the wall have been restored. Its surviving layout nevertheless gives a clear example of a stone enclosure shaped around a mountain position, with the constructed barrier concentrated where the natural defences were weakest.

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