What is Space?

One thing I’ve been looking at as part of my research recently is the concept of space - not the astronaut kind, sadly, but the gaps between things. It is just the gaps though - is it just “empty space” or does it have more meaning? I have decided there are three main ways to approach space, although this is completely dependent on my own educational history.

1) Philosophically – the questions of the nature of space began with philosophy – is space subjective or does it really exist? Kant[1] would say that space is not ‘real’, but merely a scheme for locating things. In philosophy the concept of space is often questioned in tandem with “time”, and this is a theme that lends itself well to archaeological investigation.

2) Archaeologically – although archaeology encompasses all three approaches, in terms of “simple” archaeological investigation, I mean the location of archaeological sites and artefacts in space, as well as the spatial organisation of past societies. Although sometimes there is very little of this organisation left in the archaeological record, Pompeii is a great example of how past people occupied and used space, and so are hillforts as many of them are still present in the landscape today.

 An aerial photograph of Pompeii, taken around 1900.[2]

Some archaeologists try to blend these two together (archaeologists are extremely keen on borrowing from philosophy, although some more successfully than others), creating the sub-discipline of phenomenological archaeology, which focuses on the sensory perception of the individual within the archaeological landscape[3].

3) Mathematically – this involves deconstructing the space of your landscape into data points or ‘events’. This is great for statistical processing, as it allows (theoretically) for you to examine your data without introducing the bias of what the points actually mean.

For example, the above map (depicting a chunk of southern England), could depict anything – they are just points in space. The dots are in fact hillforts of varying sizes (as per the legend), and is an image from my own MSc dissertation. Of course, you then have to reintegrate your conclusions into the context of your data – they can’t just be points for ever.

What I’m attempting to do is to approach space from all three standpoints at once – to weave them together in a coherent and unique way that will hopefully lead to a new understanding of Iron Age society (or that’s the PhD dream, at least).

I can’t draw any conclusions about the nature of space in this short post, but it’s a question worth thinking about whether you’re an archaeologist, philosopher, mathematician or anything – “do space and time really exist?” is one of the greatest philosophical questions, and may never be answered, but it does not mean that asking it will lead us nowhere.

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[1] Immanuel Kant 1724-1804

[2] Photo from http://www.ancient.eu.com/image/957/

[3] For a heads up try A Phenomenology of Landscape by C. Tilley, and I will be writing a separate post on phenomenology at a later date.

What is a hillfort?

Considering my research topic, maybe I should start off discussing what a ‘hillfort’ is. Easy, right? The name gives it away – a fort, on top of a hill. Done. Except, not really. Hillforts were first built in Britain in the Bronze Age (2500 – 800 BC), but they are most associated with the Iron Age (800 BC – 43 AD), and the majority were built during this period. They are “the symbol” of the Iron Age in Britain, and as such have been heavily researched.

The study of hillforts is (although fairly recent in the grand scheme of history), extremely diverse and varied. Thomas Hardy had a go - in 1885 Hardy published a short story in the Detroit Post called A Tryst at an Ancient Earthwork, where he writes of “Mai-Dun, the Castle of the Great Hill … with an obtrusive personality that compels the senses to regard it”.

He was talking about Maiden Castle, arguably the most famous, and most easily identifiable hillfort in Britain. It’s situated in the Dorset countryside, and has an area of around 18 hectares. It’s a huge structure, obvious even today, and one can only imagine what influence it had over people in the Iron Age.

Maiden Castle ^a

So regarding hillforts, let’s break the name down into its three main parts: 1) a defensive 2) structure 3) on a hill.

2) Is fairly simple, and really the only part anyone can definitively agree on. A hillfort is a structure that is formed primarily from earth ramparts – i.e. a bank and ditch. Hillforts can have one rampart (univallate), or multiple (multivallate) – Maiden Castle has four. These earth ramparts can be reinforced with timber and/or stone (although the former is much more common). Although some hillforts have now been ploughed out, the vast majority in Britain are still present in the landscape today – making them an almost complete dataset in terms of archaeological settlements.

3) "On a hill" is a little more problematic. Whilst it is true that a typical hillfort is, quite obviously, on a hill, it seems as though this is not a necessary requirement. Some areas of Britain, such as East Anglia, don’t really have any hills. And yet, in the Iron Age, they still built “hillforts”. Everyone built hillforts. Just because they didn’t have hills didn’t stop them, and it doesn't make sense to exclude these low-lying sites just because of geography.

Stonea Camp in Cambridgeshire, situated at a height of 2m above sea level^b.

1) “Defensive’ is the real kicker, and much debated amongst hillfort scholars. In the 1980s the first scholars^c started to question whether hillforts really were forts. Their conclusion was that no, the style and structure of some hillforts heavily suggests that in all practicality, they could never have been defensible. Alternate suggested uses range from cattle enclosures, through storage facilities, to glorified “villages”, but the message is clear – hillforts don’t have to be “defensive”.

So really, hillforts are structures that are maybe on hills, but not necessarily so, and some were used for defence (i.e. as forts), but not all of them.

And I don’t think that this lack of definition is really a problem – if we attempt to define something too rigidly, then we end up left with nothing at all, and what use is that? 

                                           

a - image from http://ads.ahds.ac.uk/newsletter/issue17/natinv.html

b - image from Archaeology: a Framework for the Eastern Counties, 2. research agenda and strategy, ed. N. Brown & J. Glazebrook.

c - for further reading start with Bowden & McOmish, 1987. 'The Required Barrier' in Scottish Archaeological Review, 4(2), pp.76–84.