The June Griffith Memorial Lecture in association with the Montgomeryshire Society.
Research and interest in the Iron Age hillforts of Wales has seen something of a resurgence in the last twenty years, with new and exciting ways of interpreting these monuments emerging.
From the Late Bronze Age through to the Roman period and beyond, more than 2,000 hillforts and defended farmsteads were built across Wales, signalling new approaches to communal living in the first millennium BC.
Hillforts were cleverly designed, their architecture embodying elements of competitive display as an effective deterrent against attack. They were built and re-built, harnessing networks of debt and obligation. Along the Welsh Borderlands were vast hillforts commanding iconic locations, presiding over a strongly regional landscape linked by vibrant networks of exchange and communication.
This lecture will examine the new ideas emerging about Welsh hillforts and their landscapes, and how this has developed our understanding of the Iron Age communities of Wales.
It will also consider how visible these hillforts are to the people of modern Wales, and how the next generation might engage more widely with this critical period of Welsh (pre) history.
Speaker Dr Toby Driver FSA, Senior Investigator (Aerial Survey) at the Royal Commission, Wales
Dr Toby Driver FSA specialises in the prehistoric and Roman archaeology of Wales and works as a Senior Investigator with the Royal Commission, Wales.
He is the author of several books on Welsh archaeology including ‘The Hillforts of Iron Age Wales’ (Logaston Press 2023), and he is the current Chair of the Later Bronze & Iron Age Research Framework for Wales. He is a Trustee of the Cambrian Archaeological Association and a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London.
To watch online live, click here or go to www.cymmrodorion.org/talks
