An atlas of hillforts in Britain and Ireland

山堡是英格兰、威尔士、苏格兰、北爱尔兰和爱尔兰许多地区铁器时代留下的最令人印象深刻的田野遗产。尽管精确度是不可能的，但爱尔兰和英国很可能有4000多个。任何关于约公元前1000年以后史前历史的学术或通俗描述都必须包括对山堡作为主要纪念碑类型的讨论：它们的形式和建筑，可能的功能，与它们的背景和考古环境的关系。近年来，在铁器时代的研究中，‘区域化’的重要性再次成为一个重要的主题，它要求在地方一级以及在区域和区域间范围内都能获得信息和数据。目前还没有为山堡提供这种信息的综合系统，尽管有各种各样的数字和纸质信息来源。然而，这些来源是多样化的，往往难以获得，也很难整合，以产生更广泛的解释和新的研究问题，因为以前的所有合成通常都是在“国家”(即爱尔兰、英国)的范围内进行的。此外，大多数描述这些遗址的方式通常都是以正直的例子为基础的，但现在有必要将许多被犁倒的遗迹纳入对这些遗址的理解中。该项目将创建一个在线互动数据库，其中将包括英国和爱尔兰所有山堡的标准化信息，并能够在从单个山堡到整个集合的各种尺度上进行讯问和分析。该数据库将链接到谷歌地球/地图，这样就可以在山堡的景观环境中看到它们的位置。在项目结束时，数据文件将可在各种软件中重复使用。所保存的信息将汇编所有现有信息来源，并对其进行重新组织，以提供最大可能实现的一致性和搜索所有山堡的能力，根据堡垒、沟渠和入口的数量和配置等有意义的特征对其进行评估和比较。将在地方、区域和区域间范围内进行评价、分析和解释，其成果将是一份关于山堡的纸质地图集，其中将配以简明的分析文本进行地图展示。这些将包括关于数据结构的广泛讨论，包括审议什么是山堡，什么不是山堡，以及为什么，以及解释在不同比例尺上建立的并通过一系列地图和平面图可视化的分析和模式。这些结果将对地区性以及山堡如何与其他数据和解释相适应的讨论产生重大影响。与这项工作相呼应的是，将对这些遗址的年代证据进行关键的重新评估，包括同位素和其他科学测定、货币和文物数据以及文献来源：这些遗址在公元前一千年和公元一千年都使用，评估这些遗址在不同尺度上的年代范围将允许更密切地读取随时间推移的模式，以匹配上面突出显示的空间重点。对整个英国和爱尔兰这组遗址的分析--这是以前从未尝试过的--将产生关于遗址之间相似和不同的新信息，这将挑战主流观点。山堡引起了广泛的观众的极大兴趣，有时只是因为它们的内在考古价值，但往往是更广泛的景观、历史和环境兴趣的一部分。此外，为了鼓励这种参与的广度，数据库将被配置为山堡维基百科，能够接受用户生成的内容，以便可以在任何山堡上附加额外的文本和图像，与项目生成的核心数据分开，

Hillforts are the most impressive field legacy from the Iron Age across many areas of England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Eire. Although precision is not possible, it is likely that there are over 4000 in Ireland and Britain. Any academic or popular account of later prehistory from c. 1000 BC has to include a discussion of hillforts as the dominant monument type: their forms and architecture, possible functions, relationships with their setting and archaeological surroundings. Over recent years within Iron Age studies the importance of 'regionalisation' has emerged again as an important theme and one which requires information and data to be available at both the local level and at regional and inter-regional scales. There is no integrated system that will provide this information for hillforts, although a wide variety of sources exist in digital and paper form. These sources however are diverse, often difficult to access, and hard to integrate to produce wider interpretations and new research questions, since all previous syntheses have generally been at 'national' (i.e. Ireland, England) scales. Furthermore, most of the ways in which these sites are usually described are based on upstanding examples, but it is now essential to incorporate many ploughed-down remains, only visible as cropmarks, into understandings of these sites.This project will create an online interactive database that will include standardised information on all hillforts in the UK and Eire and enable interrogation and analysis at a range of scales from an individual hillfort to the whole collection. The database will be linked to Google Earth/Maps so that the locations of hillforts can be seen within their landscape contexts. At the close of the project, the data file will be available for re-use in a variety of software. The information held will be a compilation of all existing sources, re-structured to provide maximum achievable consistency and the ability to search all hillforts, evaluating and comparing them on meaningful characteristics such as number and configuration of ramparts, ditches and entrances. Evaluation, analysis and interpretation will take place at local, regional and inter-regional scales and the outcomes will be a paper atlas of hillforts, where cartographic presentation will be matched by succinct analytical texts. These will include extensive discussion on the structuring of the data, including consideration of what is and is not a hillfort and why, together with the interpretation of analyses and patterns established at the different scales and visualised through a series of maps and plans. The results will feed significantly into discussions of regionality and how hillforts fit with other data and interpretations. This work will be mirrored by a critical re-assessment of the dating evidence for these sites, including isotopic and other scientific determinations, numismatic and artefactual data, and documentary sources: these monuments are used in both the first millennia BC and AD, and evaluation of the chronological range of these sites at a variety of scales will allow closer readings of patterns through time, to match the spatial focus highlighted above. The analysis of this set of sites across the whole of Britain and Ireland - something not previously-attempted - will generate new configurations of information on similarities and differences amongst sites that will challenge prevailing views.Hillforts are of great interest to a large range of audiences, sometimes just for their intrinsic archaeological value but often as part of wider landscape, historical and environmental interests. Further to encourage the breadth of this participation, the database will be configured as a hillfort-wiki, capable of accepting user-generated content so that additional text and images can be attached to any hillfort, separately from the core data generated by the project,