Maiden Castle, Dorset

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Maiden Castle, Dorset

Maiden Castle is a hill fort

Hill fort

A hill fort is type of fortification refuge or defended settlement, located to exploit a rise in elevation for defensive advantage. They are typically European and of the Bronze Age and Iron Ages....
, mostly dating from the British Iron Age

British Iron Age

The British Iron Age is a conventional name in the archaeology of Great Britain referring to the prehistoric and proto-historic phases of the Iron Age culture of the main island and the smaller islands, typically excluding Ireland....
, in the civil parish

Civil parish

In the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland, a civil parish is usually the lowest unit of local government, below district and county councils....
of Winterborne Monkton

Winterborne Monkton

Winterborne Monkton is a hamlet and civil parish in the south-west of the England county of Dorset.It is just off the A354 road, three miles south of Dorchester, Dorset....
, situated 2 miles south of Dorchester, in the English

England

Dorset

Dorset , is a Counties of England in South West England on the English Channel coast. The county town is Dorchester, Dorset, situated in the south of the county at ....
.

name maiden was once believed to derive from the Brythonic mai dun, meaning great hill. Recent work by Richard Coates

Richard Coates

Richard Coates is professor of linguistics at the University of the West of England in Bristol. He was formerly professor of linguistics at the University of Sussex, where he served as Dean of the School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences from 1998-2003....
(Maiden Castle, Geoffrey of Monmouth and Harun al-Rashid, Nomina 29 (2006), 5-60) has made this theory obsolete.

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Encyclopedia

Maiden Castle is a hill fort

Hill fort

British Iron Age

Civil parish

In the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland, a civil parish is usually the lowest unit of local government, below district and county councils....
of Winterborne Monkton

Winterborne Monkton

England

Dorset

Dorset , is a Counties of England in South West England on the English Channel coast. The county town is Dorchester, Dorset, situated in the south of the county at ....
.

Name and form

The name maiden was once believed to derive from the Brythonic mai dun, meaning great hill. Recent work by Richard Coates

Richard Coates

Castle

A castle is a defensive structure seen as one of the main symbols of the Middle Ages. The term has a history of scholarly debate surrounding its exact meaning, but it is usually regarded as being distinct from the general terms fort or fortress in that it describes a residence of a monarch or noble and commands a specific defensive territor...
' as such on the site. The earthworks

Earthworks (archaeology)

In archaeology, earthworks are artificial changes in land level often known as 'lumps and bumps'. They can themselves be Feature s or they can show features beneath the surface....
are up to 6 m high, and enclose an area of 18 ha

Hectare

A hectare is a unit of area equal to , or one square hectometre , and commonly used for surveying.The hectare is used in most countries around the world, especially in domains concerned with land ownership, land planning, and land management, including law , agriculture, forestry, and town planning....
, making it one of the largest hill forts in Europe

Europe

Europe is, conventionally, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally divided from Asia to its east by the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural , the Caspian Sea, and by the Caucasus Mountains to the southeast....
. The site is maintained by English Heritage

English Heritage

English Heritage is a non-departmental public body of the United Kingdom government with a broad remit of managing the historic built environment of England....
.

Hill fort development

Excavations at the site have dated construction of a Neolithic

Neolithic

The Neolithic period was a period in the development of human technology, beginning about 9500 Before the Christian Era in the Middle East that is traditionally considered the last part of the Stone Age....
causewayed enclosure

Causewayed enclosure

Causewayed enclosures are a type of large prehistoric Earthworks common to the early Neolithic Europe. More than 100 examples are recorded in France, 70 in England and further sites are known in Scandinavia, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Ireland and Slovakia....
back to around 4000 BC. An extensive bank and ditch as well as a bank barrow

Bank barrow

A bank barrow, sometimes referred to as a barrow-bank, ridge barrow, or ridge mound, is a type of tumulus first identified by O....
burial mound are evident from this period at the eastern end.

However most of the works at the site date from around 450 to 300 BC, when an earlier Iron Age

Iron Age

In archaeology, the Iron Age was the stage in the development of any people in which tools and weapons whose main ingredient was iron were prominent....
hillfort dating to c. 600 BC was extended and enlarged with three new ditch-and-bank earthworks built creating the main fortifications in a set of three concentric rings with offset entrance points.

Centuries after its construction the fort was probably occupied by the Durotriges

Durotriges

The Durotriges were one of the Celtic tribes living in the British Islands prior to the Roman invasion of Britain. The tribe lived in modern Dorset, south Wiltshire and south Somerset....
, a Celtic tribe

List of Celtic tribes

This is a list of Celtic tribes and associated Celts with their geographical localization....
at the time of the Roman invasion. The site may have been attacked and invested by the 2nd and the 8th legion under Vespasian

Vespasian

Titus Flavius Vespasianus, commonly known as Vespasian , was a Roman Emperor who reigned from 69 A.D. until his death in 79 A.D. Vespasian was the founder of the short lived Flavian dynasty, which ruled the Roman Empire between 69 A.D....
in AD 43. Mortimer Wheeler

Mortimer Wheeler

Brigadier Sir Robert Eric Mortimer Wheeler Order of the Companions of Honour, Order of the Indian Empire, Military Cross, British Academy, Society of Antiquaries of London , was one of the best-known British archaeologists of the twentieth century....
created a vivid account of the fall of the hill fort in his report following the excavations of 1934-1937. Later examination of his records by Niall Sharples has largely discounted this interpretation and it is no longer thought that the fort was besieged or violently taken by the Romans.

20th century English composer John Ireland

John Ireland (composer)

John Nicholson Ireland was an English composer....
(1879-1962) visited the area and later wrote Mai-Dun, a symphonic rhapsody evoking something of the prehistoric character of the fortifications, the people who lived there, and their lifestyle.

Roman temple

The Romans occupied the site but concentrated their efforts in the area around Durnovaria

Durnovaria

Durnovaria is the Latin form of the Brythonic name for the Roman Britain town of Dorchester, Dorset in the modern England county of Dorset....
(now Dorchester) and the nearby Poundbury Hill

Poundbury Hill

Poundbury Hill hill fort is the site of a Middle Bronze Age enclosure. It is roughly rectangular and it is likely that it was designed to command views over the River Frome, Dorset and the Frome valley to the north....
. There was a large scale reconstruction of the site, just before AD 400. A small Romano-British

Romano-British

Romano-British culture is that of the Romanised Britons under the Roman Empire and later the Western Roman Empire, and of those exposed to Roman culture in the years after the Roman departure from Britain....
temple

Temple

A temple is a structure reserved for religious or spiritual activities, such as prayer and sacrifice, or analogous rites. A ??templum?? constituted a sacred precinct as defined by a priest, or augur....
was built in the eastern half of the hill fort during the late Roman pagan revival and the denfences were refurbished to form it temenos

Temenos

Temenos is a piece of land cut off and assigned as an official domain, especially to basileus and anax, or a piece of land marked off from common uses and dedicated to a god, a sanctuary, holy grove or holy precinct: The Pythian Games race-course is called a temenos, the sacred valley of the Nile is the ?e????? p??? t??e??? ?????da, the...
. The temple adjoined the site of an abandoned, but apparently remembered, circular Iron Age shrine and seems to have been used for the worship of a number of gods

Roman mythology

Roman mythology, or more appropriately, Latin mythology, refers to the mythology beliefs of the Italic people inhabiting the region of Latium and its main city, Rome....
including Diana

Diana (mythology)

In Roman mythology, Diana was the goddess of the hunting, being associated with wild animals and woodland, and also of the moon. In literature she was the Greek deities and their Roman and Etruscan counterparts of the Greek mythology Artemis, though in Cult she was Italy, not Greek, in origin....
, Minerva

Minerva

Minerva was the Roman mythology name of Greek goddess Athena. She was considered to be the virgin goddess of warriors, poetry, medicine, wisdom, commerce, weaving,crafts, and the inventor of music....
and Taurus Trigaranus

Tarvos Trigaranus

In ancient Gaul, Tarvos Trigaranus was a Cattle god. An alternative spelling is Taruos Trigaranos since the Latin script did not distinguish U and V....
. It consisted of the usual sanctuary or cella surrounded by an ambulatory. A small rectangular structure, perhaps for the priest, stood alongside. The temple did not last long and the site was abandoned by the Romans soon afterwards. It was not re-occupied and remained deserted from then on.

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