Dinas Powys hillfort

The Dinas Powys hillfort is an Iron Age hillfort near Dinas Powys, Glamorgan, Wales. It is just one of several thousand hillforts to have been constructed around Great Britain during the British Iron Age, for reasons that are still debatable. The main fort at Dinas Powys was constructed on the northernmost point of the hill in either the third or 2nd century BCE, with two further constructs, known as the Southern Banks, being built further down on the southern end of the hill in the following 1st century BCE. It appears that occupation at the site ceased during the period of Roman Britain, but was re-inhabited by an Early Mediaeval settlement in the 5th century CE, who constructed further additions to the fort. The site was subsequently excavated by a team of archaeologists led by Leslie Alcock from 1954 through to 1958.

The hillfort, which was called the dinas (city) by Welsh speaking locals, is probably the reason why the neighbouring village was named Dinas Powys, and archaeologists excavating the site in the mid 20th century decided to rename the hillfort after the settlement, with excavator Leslie Alcock remarking that "it therefore seemed appropriate by a kind of back-formation to restore the village name to [the fortifications]".

Dinas Powys hillfort is located on the eastern end of the Vale of Glamorgan, a county borough at the southernmost tip of Wales that geologically comprises predominantly Lias limestone in the south and Carboniferous limestone in the north. The eastern end in particular "is dissected into flat-topped, steep-sided ridges and hills by deep and narrow river valleys, so that in detail the relief of the south-east Glamorgan is a tangle of minor [landscape] features." The hillfort was constructed on one such of these geographical features, a whale-back hill that is just over a quarter of a mile in length. The fort was built on the northerly tip of the whale-back hill, the highest and narrowest point of the vicinity. It had "no visible defences; but on the west side there is a single bank, on the east two banks, while the southern approach is barred by no fewer than four ramparts." It was located near to the harbour at the estuary of the River Ely, which would have been an important entry point for trade in later prehistory: there is certainly evidence for its use as a harbour in the Early and Middle Bronze Age, several centuries prior to the hillfort's initial construction.

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