 Thank you, my name is Oliver Davis, this is Ian Dennis, we're both from Cardiff University, and we're going to do a bit of a double act today so hopefully that will be a smooth transition between us, but who knows maybe a bit of Lauren Harliro. Our other colleague, Johannes Moule-Kissing, from Germany couldn't make it today, but hopefully we will do him justice. So, we're talking about hillfords in Germany. Hillfords in southern Germany, of course, are the so-called first insitzer of Barton Wurtenburg. They have become particularly well known in recent years, and rightly so spectacular finds from places like the Haudenberg and the Glouberg. Hylfawds yn y rest of Germany, however, particularly those in the central German Highlands, the so-called Mittelgeberg Zone. I'm not a natural linguist, by the way, so apologies for my German pronunciation. In these areas, they receive much less attention. The INA settlement pattern in these regions is really dominated by un-enclosed farming settlements, mainly located in the river valleys, but there are hylfawds, around 70 or so are known in this area. Very few, noticeably, are located to the north of this region, within the so-called north German plain. Well, sites that we would traditionally call hylfawds, there are sites palisaded in closed sites in that area. Hylfawds in this region, though, of Germany, is sort of north central Highlands. Some of them are, however, spectacular and have produced remarkable finds. For example, the weapon deposits found at the Dunsberg and the Wilsenberg, some of the weapons clearly treated or destroyed before deposition, the sort of bending of sword blades. Quite reminiscent, I suppose, of the treatment of Remain, or the treatment of these type of material at the so-called Gaelic sanctuaries like Gwne, Surawand, Rhybun mor Suranko that we heard about earlier. As a whole, though, there's been relatively little excavation of hylfawds in the area. Most sites are forest-covered, so like the Hununberg in the top right-hand corner here, and therefore not really threatened by development. So little or no rescue archaeology. That's coupled with a real lack of major large-scale research projects. This means that we have a really poor understanding, of even basic questions such as chronology or function. Our work then has actually concentrated mainly on this region, let me call it North East Vesvalia, and it's really an attempt to kind of address this imbalance of knowledge. The work is a collaboration between Cardiff University and Bochum University in Germany and the Lippishlander Museum. We like to think of this as a kind of reverse Brexit, if you will. The project did start at the point of the Brexit vote that was made, rather ironically. The region is on the boundary of what is traditionally and probably rather unhelpfully called the Celtic and Germanic worlds. Topographically, it can be separated into a lowland north area and sort of an upland southern area, and that's broadly separated by the Tüterburgo ridge, which is this promontary of land here, which is forest-covered, the so-called Tüterburgo forest, known famously historically as the location of the victory of Germanic tribes unified under the leader Arminius against the Roman legions, and really sort of checked Roman advances into this kind of north German area. A number of hillfords known in this region, about 29 in total, and they're really arranged into two distinct groups, a northern group and a southern group. In the south the hillfords tend to be smaller, they tend to be located much closer together, but our work is concentrated on this northern group of around 11 sites, which are larger and distributed generally further apart. Hillfords in this kind of northern group then enclose areas ranging from about 6 to 30 hectares, but most of them enclose areas in the range of 7 to 10 hectares in size. All but one are what we would call multivalate. The rodent stat is the only one which apparently only has a single rampart. This could suggest then kind of development over time, but certainly some elements of these hillfords, the smaller inner enclosures here at the Twinsburg, for instance, and Babyloni are almost certainly demonstrated to be medieval in origin, so there's kind of early medieval reuse of these sites. Generally, while parts of the hillfords crown the tops of hills or ridges, the enclosures themselves appear to be kind of tilted in particular directions, as if to make the interior kind of highly visible to the adjacent lowland valleys. Interestingly, the multivalation is often also orientated in that direction. The entrances vary from simple gaps at the rodent stat to highly elaborate with hornworks at the Hirlingsburg. The differences may be chronological, they may be developing over time, but that's not really very well understood. Another interesting point is that almost all of them contain natural springs, and this seems to be a deliberate decision which is made that the ramparts themselves appear to deviate from their courses to make sure that they include the springs within the interior areas. The first studies of hillfords in this region were undertaken by Klostermaier in the 1800s, and he and his successors really saw them as kind of Germanic fortifications built to repel the Roman advances into the region, and this was memorialised famously with the construction of the Statue of Arminius, the Hermann's Denchamel in the actual hillfords of the Grottenberg. New work after World War II in the 50s and the 60s by people like Hohenschwerth began to kind of challenge this view, but unfortunately the excavations have remained rather small scale, and so interpretations haven't really moved on particularly. Of this kind of northern group of hillfords, the best known I suppose is that of the Hodenberg by Gellinghausen. This has been recently excavated on a relatively large scale by Werner Best, shown it mainly to be a medieval but actually with Iron Age origins. Excavations within the inner enclosure identified a timber box Iron Age rampart fronted by stone and with a substantial gate house which you can see in this bottom right hand image. The rampart itself appears to have been burnt and six spearheads were found scattered in the entrance way, leading the excavators to suggest that this was evidence of an assault onto the site. But I think if you take this together with the metal finds from the other sites, such as the Dunsberg and the Wilsonberg, it may be suggestive of other practises, potentially even deliberate deposition, potentially cultic behaviour or the display of war trophies at these sites. Excavations within the interior suggested that there was evidence of occupation and radiocarbon dates suggesting the construction of the site at some point in the 4th to 2nd centuries BC. Our work then has actually concentrated on two of the other hillfords to the north of the Gutenberg, that of the Grottenberg and the Pippencock, which are situated on the Dutaberg region and the Pippencock to the northeast. I'll hand over to my colleague here at this point. Okay. So, we began the programme a couple of years ago in 2017 and we were asked to collaborate to work on two hillfords. The ones that we chose that my German colleagues are very interested in was the first one was the Grottenberg, which is obviously where Arminius is located. Arminius is located in the centre, as you can see on the plan. It was dug by Nablitsky in 1951 and he put around, I think, 10 trenches on the outer works. There is an inner works where Arminius is located, where two more trenches were placed. And these, again, were systematically dug. The records of the Grottenberg from Dettemawr Museum have actually disappeared. So, again, we were asked to actually re-investigate, look at it, try and find some more dating evidence. Both the hillfords that we've investigated have only got one date. The Grottenberg has a bit of a strange one. It's known for the Groswbunnering or the large stone wall that goes around the outside. And yet, the literature says that the dates in for it came from a palisade part of the rampart. So, we went to re-investigate and first one we put up. Yes, that's it. So, we, again, as Alia mentioned, we are in a heavy forested area. So, trying to find a nice place to put your trench is a bit of hard work, especially as the trees are up and standing and also ones that have died and then obviously on the rampart itself. So, although our trenches over the time may be a little bit bitty, it's because it's not that we can't join them. It's because there's trees in the way that actually can do it. So, the first bit that we exposed was towards the south on the southern half of the rampart where the stone wall is visible. Clearly off, quite good preservation, good archaeology. There are sorts of construction methods to the wall. It's salio with large stones and then evidence for possible posts within the centre. You can see a postpacking and then around that postpacking was some burning and then when we removed it all, we could see there's a burning patch which hopefully would get some dating evidence for to give us some idea of maybe when this was first constructed. And then we're down onto what I think it's called in general the flaming's mile, which is a lovely copper mile with nice and bright and orange. We were also very interested in the interior. Again, the Besky reported that they found an area on the inside where there are post holes in a line that could be structured. Again, we used our geophysics that had been done, so we located an area where we could actually fit the area in. Again, and we started to find very similar post holes. So, they looked very regular, very in a line and I was talking with the forester and Johannes and I looked around and I went, they're in line with all the beach trees. So what we've actually got is a beach tree plantation where they use a quora, pop it in, it gets to three or four years old and they take it out and they're like, oh no, so there's absolutely nothing there. They're like, oh wow, we can wrap that one up, that was easy, that's fine. But what we have found at the Gronberg is that it's been absolutely worked to death by modern car parks, visitor centres, everything. There have been no fines from the Gronberg apart from one peeler that was found on Trench 5 towards the north of it. That has had a report on it and this year we're actually digging because we reopened up the trenches from that area and we found another socket that made it from the spear that has come through. The two photographs at the north, this is where the alleged palisade is or was and we refound the old German trenches from 1951 and re-excavated them out and they had found a post at the back but then they'd stopped sure to actually carry on over to the wall so that was really good because we've actually now found evidence of the wall to the northern side which they didn't think was actually there as you can see but also it's been very robbed out because in the 13th to 14th century in the medieval period there is documentation that somebody paid whoever it was to land over to take the stone away and we also know that when they built the Arminius monument they used a lot of the stone as the rubble core for the action monument itself. So the wall would probably have been a lot more impressive. That was one of our latest excavations. This is on the bottom photo this summer and our wall was in much, much better condition, much larger, not better preserved and we have got features appearing at the back and structures that are putting up onto the wall. So I then run over another 35km at the same time or if you're in the Gronberg we were into the Pippencoff. So the Pippencoff is just outside Lemgo which is about 35 miles north of Dettmold near a town called Dordantrup. We have a Llyda image of the Pippencoff and you can see it's got the multi-vallet. We've got the blue inner. The yellow is a palisade one and the green one we're not too sure it has been recorded but no one's actually ever dropped a trench over that one yet to see what it actually consists of. Excavations were done by Nabiletic again in 1939. He did three snits or trenches over the two on the inner ramparts and one on the palisade ramparts. Hone Schwert again reinvestigated and dropped another trench or snitfall over the war and rampart in 1966. And this is where we came in because snit two towards the north was not finished. War broke out so they just left the trench open. And during the poor war period the Pippencoff was used as a quarry because it's got port sites so it's a very important resource for the Germans and so they got a large quarry to the north. Our main objective of what we were asked to do we were to open up the old trench from 1939 re-evaluate and re-record. So as you can see we cut it back really quite nice depending on the 1939 German trenches which were quite nice. The wall is in situ in sections sorry and if you look at the bottom right hand one what we have got is the back of the rampart which shows some really nice burning and you have an upright post with a beam coming at the back. This was really quite surprising because it's really well burnt with a really dark layer. So this year again we carried on with our excavations and we opened up a lot more area towards the north of the wall and as we got up there low and behold more and more burning at the back of the rampart with the posts upright and large carbonised beams this was also prevalent in Honeysworth and Netflix's work on the lower ramparts the whole of the rampart of the Pippencoff has been burnt systematically and the one thing that we noted as we were going down the soil or the clays above the burning is also scorched very close proximity of it being burnt they've actually then covered it with more material which has got ceramic finds within it so probably within 48 hours of the burning they're beginning to start to cover this up which is a bit strange. We did do some work on the interior again the heat this year actually a calf killed my students so we couldn't work as a bigger area as we wanted but we did find in a 4x4 metre area that we dug over 200 shirts that was coming out spindle walls, finger impressed I think it's called a rubbed square roughen and saggy on the outside and that was quite a lot but there was no associated features within that area but we'll go back next year and we're going to hope not to be a good sandboy 20 square metre area Thank you Ian trying to bring that together with some kind of narrative there what can we actually say standing back from the detail then there are a number I think of common patterns when looking at our work at the Pippertgoff and the Grottenburg and actually looking at other excavations of small scale excavations in the area perhaps one of the most striking elements we've already heard about this in an Irish context is the burning of the ramparts this seems to be quite a consistent pattern that's been identified at the Pippertgoff at the Grottenburg and actually at all the health forts that have been excavated in the area burnt ramparts have been increasingly recognised in recent years of the pitrified forts of Britain and France to the Irish health forts that we've heard about before the break and even the first incits in the southern Germany seem to have burning events that have been revealed and are often attributed to accidents or the result of external or internal conflict but I think there are a number of problems with using those kinds of interpretations for the best volume sites firstly if you use the tactical use of fire in an assault you might expect localised burning particularly around entrances however at sites like the Pippertgoff it's the entire rampart which has been systematically burnt down second the burning of the timber elements is unlikely to be accidental because it would have required considerable resources accelerants, brushwoods smearing it with animal fat things like that to aid combustion and finally the systematic destruction of the rampart whilst it could be the punitive raising after capture there would have been little point at the Pippertgoff what Ian forgot to mention was that a charcoal analysis showed that the timber beams were heavily rotten, decayed this was a hill foot that was already structurally compromised yet it was chosen at this point to be destroyed through fire so whilst violent endings can't be discounted perhaps you could also consider that these are deliberate acts of conspicuous destruction and possibly potentially by the inhabitants if we accept that a hill foot might have been understood as a physical representation of the community that would have been brought together to create it then its physical destruction would also signify the dramatic ending of that community or those community relationships the glow from a burning hill foot would have been spectacular, highly visible and its meaning would have been seen and felt far and wide the interiors of these sites continue to be little understood and large-scale open area exploration is desperately needed and planned for however there are noticeable terraces contained in many of the hill foes have been identified through LINDAR suggesting that they are potentially intensively occupied and they might be related to the phases of the concentration or centralisation of populations in terms of locations as well they obviously sit in elevated locations but these are somewhat peripheral to the lowlands that were presumably more regularly occupied and the hill forts appear designed to directly overlook those lower line areas in other words the hill forts are part of bigger landscapes as part of a round of movement that points along natural routeways the pathways that people and animals are regularly treading finally just think about chronology here dating is really not very good but when we bring together all of the dates from all of the sites we sit at all the radiocarbon dates that does seem to be a specific construction horizon between the 4th and 2nd centuries between 400 and 200 BC why they appear at that point is not well understood and hopefully has a question that we may begin to answer their emergence does coincide with broad changes in burial rites which may indicate profound social changes but whether hill forts are a result or a cause of these changes is an interesting question interestingly this period precedes, proceeds the abandonment of the hill forts in the south we seem to be getting centralisation in the north those first in the south we seem to be seeing the decentralisation of populations so just to conclude then north east of Esfalio it's not a coherent pattern there are distinct groups of hill forts in this area considerable labour is being put into not just their construction but also into their destruction which I think is a very interesting point probably at some point in the 4th century although their abandonment is still a little bit unclear we haven't got dates for their abandonment but I suspect they're relatively short lived there's little evidence of ramparts for instance being reconstructed so perhaps we're seeing moves towards centralised social forms around this time but it's not linear and we get decentralisation of populations again mirrors at a later date those kinds of social trajectories that we see in southern Germany thank you