Stokeleigh Camp
| Stokeleigh Camp | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Location | Leigh Woods, North Somerset, England |
| Coordinates | 51°27′25″N 2°38′15″W / 51.45694°N 2.63750°WCoordinates: 51°27′25″N 2°38′15″W / 51.45694°N 2.63750°W |
| Area | 7.5 acres (3.0 ha) |
| Built | Iron Age |
| Reference no. | 198375 |
 Location of Stokeleigh Camp in Somerset
|
|
Stokeleigh Camp is an Iron Age promontory fort in Leigh Woods North Somerset near Bristol, England. It has been designated a Scheduled Ancient Monument.
Hill forts developed in the Late Bronze and Early Iron Age, roughly the start of the first millennium BC. The reason for their emergence in Britain, and their purpose, has been a subject of debate. It has been argued that they could have been military sites constructed in response to invasion from continental Europe, sites built by invaders themselves, or a military reaction to social tensions caused by an increasing population and consequent pressure on agriculture. The dominant view since the 1960s has been that the increasing use of iron led to social changes in Britain. Deposits of iron ore were located in different places to the tin and copper ore necessary to make bronze, and as a result trading patterns shifted and the old elites lost their economic and social status, as iron made edged weapons more generally available. Power passed into the hands of a new group of people. Archaeologist Barry Cunliffe believes that population increase still played a role and has stated "[the forts] provided defensive possibilities for the community at those times when the stress [of an increasing population] burst out into open warfare. But I wouldn't see them as having been built because there was a state of war. They would be functional as defensive strongholds when there were tensions and undoubtedly some of them were attacked and destroyed, but this was not the only, or even the most significant, factor in their construction".
Stokeleigh Camp is one of three Iron Age fortifications overlooking the Avon Gorge, the others being Burwalls south of the Nightingale Valley, of which almost no trace remains, and the other being Clifton Camp on the opposite side of the gorge, on Clifton Down near the Observatory.
A prehistoric road ran from Stokeleigh Camp to Cadbury Camp near Tickenham.
...
Wikipedia