Moot hill
A moot hill or mons placiti (statute hill) is a hill or mound historically used as an assembly or meeting place, as a moot hall is a meeting or assembly building, also traditionally to decide local issues. In early medieval Britain, such hills were used for "moots", meetings of local people to settle local business. Among other things, proclamations might be read; decisions might be taken; court cases might be settled at a moot. Although some moot hills were naturally occurring features or had been created long before as burial mounds, others were purpose-built.
Although the word moot or mote is of Old English origin, deriving from the verb to meet, it has come to have a wider meaning throughout the United Kingdom; initially referring to any popular gathering.
In England, the word folkmoot in time came to mean a more specific local assembly with recognised legal rights. In Scotland the term is used in the literature for want of any other single accepted term.
Many moot, "mote" or "mute" hills are known by that name today. Others have local names such as Court Hill, Justice Hill, Judgement Hill, Mount, Munt, Moat Hill, Tandle, Downan, Bonfire Hill, Cuthill, etc. Many are also associated with names such as Knol, knock, knowe, or law.
Many other names are used for prominent earthworks, depending to some extent on their location within the United Kingdom, and some of them are known to have served as moot hills at some point in their existence. Terms include Tumulus, how, howe, low, tump, cnwc, pen, butt, toot, tot, cop, mount, mound, hill, knoll, mot, moot, knol, motte, and druid hill. Often the names are combined, as in Knockenlaw, Law Mount, etc.
Some hills known today as "moot hills" were actually historically mottes (from an unrelated French word meaning "mound"), the remains of a motte-and-bailey castle. (In this fortification, a wooden or stone keep was built atop a small mound, usually man-made, which was in turn surrounded by a ditch and an outer ward called the "bailey".) In some cases a mound built as a motte may have seen later use as a functioning moot hill.
Moots may have met on existing archaeological mound sites such as tumuli or mottes; others on entirely natural mounds such as the one at Mugdock or natural mounds which were modified for the intended purpose. One common aid to identification is size: most moot hills, in addition to lacking signs of defensive walls and ditches, are smaller than most mottes.
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