Experts map ancient hill forts of UK and Ireland

BBC

Castle Law hill fort, Perth and Kinross. Almost 40% of the hill forts of the UK and Ireland are found in Scotland

 The locations and details of all ancient hill forts in the UK and Ireland have been mapped in an online database for the first time.

Scientists found 4,147 sites - ranging from well-preserved forts to those where only crop marks are left.

Researchers from the University of Edinburgh, University of Oxford and University College Cork spent five years on the project.

Nearly 40% are in Scotland, with 408 in the Scottish Borders alone.

Information on all the hill forts has been collated onto a website that will be freely accessible to the public so they can discover details of the ancient sites they see in the countryside.

The University of Edinburgh's Prof Ian Ralston, who co-led the project, said: "Standing on a windswept hill fort with dramatic views across the countryside, you really feel like you're fully immersed in history. "

This research project is all about sharing the stories of the thousands of hill forts across Britain and Ireland in one place that is accessible to the public and researchers."

Brown Caterthun near Edzell, Angus. Sometimes only vegetation marks and remnants of the forts show where they once stood

Prof Gary Lock, from the University of Oxford, said it was important the online database was freely available to researchers and others, such as heritage managers, and would provide the baseline for future research on hill forts.

 He added: "We hope it will encourage people to visit some incredible hill forts that they may never have known were right under their feet."

In England, Northumberland leads the way with 271 hill forts, while in the Republic of Ireland, Mayo and Cork each have more than 70 sites.

Powys is the county with the most hill forts in Wales, with 147, and in Northern Ireland, Antrim has the most, with 15.

Hill forts were mostly built during the Iron Age, with the oldest dating to around 1000 BC and the most recent to 700 AD, and had numerous functions, some of which have not been fully discovered.

Hill fort near Alyth, Perth and Kinross. The researchers have found 4,147 sites across the UK and Ireland

Despite the name, not all hill forts are on hills, and not all are forts, the experts said.

Excavations show many were used predominantly as regional gathering spots for festivals and trade, and some are on low-lying land.

The research team from the University of Edinburgh, University of Oxford and University College Cork were funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council to gather information from citizen scientists.

 About 100 members of the public collected data about the hill forts they visited, identifying and recording the characteristics of forts, which was then analysed by the team.

Recently Discovered Scratched Stone in Denmark Could be One of The Earliest Maps in History

Ancient Origins

Reports of existing archaeological discoveries are pouring in lately from Scandinavia. A puzzling stone found in a ditch on Bornholm, a Danish island in the Baltic Sea, to the east of the rest of Denmark, could be one of the earliest maps in human history according to archaeologists and researchers at the National Museum of Denmark. The recent find, however, was not complete. It is made up of two pieces and one piece is still missing. As the magazine Skalk reports, the stone was discovered during archaeological excavation work at the Neolithic shrine Vasagård, where scientists have previously unearthed similar ancient stones inscribed with rectangular patterns filled with different rows of lines and shading.

The discovery was made on the island of Bornholm, Denmark (flickr)

Excavations of the paddock since the early nineties have discovered many broken flat stones inscribed with patterns of radiating straight lines, called "sun stones" or "solar stones”. Archaeologists have claimed that these artifacts were most likely used in the rituals of the followers of a Neolithic sun-worshipping religion that existed almost five millennia ago.
By 3500 BC locals had set up farms in several parts of Northern Europe where they built groups of houses with wood and stone, surrounded by fields. They grew wheat and barley, which they ground into flour. Some farmers grew beans and peas. Others grew a plant called flax, which they made into linen for clothes. The early farmers also went hunting and gathered nuts and berries to eat, but they spent most of their time working on their farms. For that reason they often worshiped their own Gods or Mother Nature to be generous with them and for that purpose they organized rituals in which they possibly used these stones.

Not a “Solar Stone” But a Map

The recently found stone is filled with lines that look like rays too, but it is not like other “sun stones”. It is probably something else. Unlike previous and similar findings, Flemming Kaul, an archaeologist and senior researcher at the National Museum, is almost certain after examining closely the artifact, that the stone does not show the sun and the sun’s rays, but displays the topographic details of a piece of nature on the island as it appeared between the years 2900 and 2700 BC.
“There was one particular stone that seems to be rather complicated, and we all agree that it looks like some sort of a map — not a map in our modern sense, but a stylized map,” Kaul told Live Science. " I could see some similarities with rock carvings from the Alps in northern Italy, dated to the same period of time, which are interpreted as symbolic landscapes — and that is what I believe we have found now."

The stone disk found on Bornholm. Photo by Marta Bura

Still a “Ritual Stone”

Flemming Kaul called the newly found artifact a stone "without parallel" and speculates that it was also used in rituals, where it was possibly crushed. He suggests that both the map stones and sun stones were used together in rituals to impact the effects of the sun on the fertility of a particular landscape. He says, “Often when ritual objects have had a certain life cycle, then they are deposited at a sacred place, perhaps also to enhance the magic of the ritual which has just been performed with them," and adds, "And of course, when they are broken, then they are not working more in the human world — but they are still working in another spirit world, by being placed in the ditches of these sacred sites.” [via Live Science].

The Interpretation of the Map Stones Could be Debatable

For the end, Kaul acknowledges that the interpretation of the map stones could be somewhat controversial and expects to find more map stones in the near future that will give us a better idea of their role and significance. Kaul told Live Science, "About 20 years ago, after the first solar stones were found, I wrote about it for Skalk – and even the editor of the magazine didn't believe it. Now, after 20 years, we have found more than 200 solar stones, and they are one the most important things from Bornholm; so let's wait a couple of years to see if there are more map stones to come."
Top image: The engraved stone found in Denmark, which may be a Stone Age map. Credit: Bornholms Museum/Skalk Magazine
By Theodoros II

New Piece of a 2,200-Year-Old Roman Puzzle Emerges, Bringing Together Ancient Map of Rome

Ancient Origins

Maps are a useful modern tool, telling us how to get places, showing us where borders lie, and illustrating the distance between two places.  While modern technology has made the creation of and access to maps something we don’t think twice about, the creation of maps during ancient times was far more complicated.  Without the availability of GPS, air travel, and computers, ancient civilizations had to rely on other means for the difficult task of creating maps.  One ancient map – the Forma Urbis Romae – has been a mystery for years, serving as a complex jigsaw as researchers continue to uncover various pieces of the puzzle, including a recently discovered fragment that has just been reunited with the other existing pieces.

Pieces of the Forma Urbis Romae map. Researchers have spent years piecing together over a thousand fragments (Sebastia Gibralt / Flickr)

Sometime between 203 and 211 AD a marble map of Rome was created. According to History of Information, the map was originally composed of 150 marble slabs, and it was 18.10 meters (60ft) high by 13 meters (43ft) wide.  “Created at a scale of approximately 1 to 240, the map was detailed enough to show the floor plans of nearly every temple, bath, and insula in the central Roman city. The boundaries of the plan were decided based on the available space on the marble, instead of by geographical or political borders as modern maps usually are.”
The map shows the topography of Rome as it existed at the time, including structures such as temples, houses, shops, warehouses, and apartment buildings.  According to Discovery News, the map was created under the rule of Emperor Septimius Severus.  Severus served as emperor from 193 to 211 and was a strong leader, known for converting the Roman government into a military monarchy.  

The Imperial Forum: the Forma Urbis Romae was detailed enough to show the floor plans of nearly every temple, bath, and insula in the central Roman city (public domain)

The Forma Urbis Romae map has only been recovered in relatively small pieces.  The fragments that have been found are currently held at the Capitoline museum in Italy.  Researchers have recovered only approximately ten percent of the map, in 1200 pieces.  They have been attempting to piece it together for hundreds of years, since the first pieces were found in 1562.  According to History of Information, a team of researchers from Stanford University, led by Marc Levoy, began using digital technology in an effort to solve the puzzle.  Of the 1200 pieces collected, only about 200 have been identified.  The map was originally constructed on a wall within the Templum Pacis (Temple of Peace).  The wall still remains, but the map was partially torn down hundreds of years ago, with the remaining pieces eventually fell, shattering into hundreds of pieces.

Some fragments of the Forma Urbis Romae in an engraving by Giovanni Battista Piranesi, 1756 (public domain)

In 2014, a new piece of the map was discovered while workers were working at a Vatican-owned building called Palazzo Maffei Marescotti.  It is believed that the pieces ended up in that location during construction of a 16^th century palace, as building materials were being recycled.  According to museum officials, “[t]he fragment relates to plate 31 of the map, which is the present-day area of the Ghetto, one of the monumental areas of the ancient city, dominated by the Circus Flaminius, built in 220 BC to host the Plebeian games, and where a number of important public monuments stood.”  The new piece not only brought forth new information, but after recently being reunited with the rest of the pieces, it also allowed researchers to identify where three other existing pieces to the map belong.  This affords researchers a new outlook on the map as a whole.

The new piece of the Forma Urbis Romae puzzle. Credit: Sovrintendenza Capitolina Al Beni Culturali.

The Forma Urbis Romae has been called a giant jigsaw puzzle.  Unlike other puzzles, it did not come with a box showing the final product, or uniform pieces.  In fact, it did not even come with all of the pieces, and researchers may never know where the remaining pieces are located.  The discovery of the new piece allowed for more than just the placement of a single piece, but for a more holistic view of the map as a whole.  As researchers continue to find pieces of the map they will better be able to piece together another impossible jigsaw puzzle – Roman history as a whole.
Featured image: A fragment of the Forma Urbis Romae map (Stanford Digital Forma Urbis Romae Project).
By M R Reese