Celtis Villages and Warfare
Celtic Villages
- Housing
- Huts
- Arched timbers
- Walls of wicker
- Thatched roofs
- Small hamlets
- Farming
- Main economic activity
- They brought with them the iron plow
- Earlier plows
- Awkward
- Suitable only for light upland soils
- Heavier iron plow major improvement
- Cultivation of rich valley and lowland soils
- Required team of 8 oxen to pull it
- Difficult to turn these teams
- Fields were long and narrow
- Vegetable gardens in the village
Warfare
- Celts were not centrally governed
- Quite happy fighting each other
- Were primarily warriors
- Lived for the glory of battle
- Pride in victory
- Plunder one means for movement of goods
- Under Celts appearance of hill fort
- Defensible hilltop
- Surrounded by ditch and embankment
- Entrances complex arrangement
- Size varied
- Some only large enough for a single family
- Some were very large with extensive embankments
- Not certain if first built by native Britons against the Celts
- Contained no source of water
- Maiden Castle in Dorset
- Badbury Rings in Dorset