Durotriges
Durotriges | |
---|---|
Rulers | None known |
The Durotriges were one of the
Name
The tribe's name is known from Ptolemy's Geography and from two inscriptions on Hadrian's Wall, both dating from after the Roman conquest of Britain.[2] It is not known if anyone referred to them as the Durotriges before they arrived in the area now known as Dorset.
The name can probably be broken down into two parts. 'Duro', which means 'hard' or 'strong place' and was widely used for early Roman forts, and 'trig' means inhabitant.[3] That would produce a meaning of 'fort dwellers', appropriate for the region's many hill forts (although these appear to have been largely abandoned by the time of the Roman invasion of Britain in AD 43).[4] 'Duro' has also been derived from 'dubro', the British word for water ('dour' or 'dwr'), and the second element has been interpreted as 'riges', that is 'kings'.[5]
Territory
The area of the Durotriges is identified in part by coin finds:[6] few Durotrigan coins are found in the "core" area, where they were apparently unacceptable and were reminted. To their north and east were the Belgae, beyond the Avon and its tributary Wylye: "the ancient division is today reflected in the county division between Wiltshire and Somerset."[7]
Their main outlet for the trade across the Channel, strong in the first half of the 1st century BC, when the potter's wheel was introduced, then drying up in the decades before the advent of the Romans, was at Hengistbury Head. Numismatic evidence shows progressive debasing of the coinage, suggesting economic retrenchment accompanying the increased cultural isolation. Analysis of the body of Durotrigan ceramics suggests to Cunliffe that the production was increasingly centralised, at Poole Harbour (Cunliffe 2005:183).
The Durotriges were possibly more of a tribal confederation than a discrete tribe.[8] They were one of the groups that issued coinage before the Roman conquest, part of the cultural "periphery", as Barry Cunliffe characterised them, round the "core group" of Britons in the south. These coins were rather simple and had no inscriptions, and thus no names of coin-issuers can be known, let alone evidence about monarchs or rulers. Nevertheless, the Durotriges presented a settled society, based in the farming of lands[9] surrounded by hill forts, the majority of which seem to have gone out of use by 100 BC, long before the arrival of the Roman II Legion, commanded by Vespasian in 43 or 44 AD. Maiden Castle is a preserved example of one of these earlier hill forts.[10]
Settlements
The absorption of the Durotriges' ruling families into the Roman province of Britannia and the extent of Romanisation makes documenting the names of settlements occupied by the Durotriges before the Roman conquest difficult, but from a variety of sources several places are known. Ptolemy's Geography lists Dunium, speculated to be Hengistbury Head, as an important tribal centre near their Belgae neighbours, but it is unknown whether if it was considered the capital of the tribal confederation, especially as several other settlements appear to be equally important from archaeological evidence. Known places of pre-conquest settlement include:
- Woolsbarrow Hillfort
- Maiden Castle
- Cadbury Castle
- Ham Hill
- Abbotsbury Castle, Allington, Dorset,
- Badbury Rings, Banbury Hill, Bindon Hill, Buzbury Rings
- Chalbury Hillfort, Coney's Castle,
- Dungeon Hill,
- Eggardon Hill,
- Flower's Barrow,
- Hambledon Hill, Hod Hill,
- Lambert's Castle, Lewesdon Hill,
- Pilsdon Pen, Poundbury Hill
- Rawlsbury Camp
- Duropolis
Culture
Burial of Durotriges was by
Although it was previously thought that the Durotriges strongly resisted the Roman invasion of AD 43/44, the historian
The Durotriges, and their relationship with the Roman Empire, form the basis for an ongoing archaeological research project directed by Paul Cheetham, Ellen Hambleton and
See also
- Abbotsbury Castle
- Castle Rings, Wiltshire
- List of Celtic tribes
Notes
- doi:10.2307/4128631
- ^ Deconstructing the Durotriges. A definition of Iron Age communities within the Dorset environs. BAR British Series 462, 2008. Martin Papworth. ISBN 978 1 4073 0221 8.
- ^ "Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru".
- ISBN 9781784917159)
- ^ Deconstructing the Durotriges. A definition of Iron Age communities within the Dorset environs. BAR British Series 462, 2008. Martin Papworth. ISBN 978 1 4073 0221 8. p.26
- ^ Cunliffe 2005: fig. 8:2.
- ^ Eagles 2004: 234 and map, fig. 5.
- ^ "The Durotriges were a close-knit confederacy of smaller units centred on modern Dorset," writes Barry Cunliffe, Iron Age Communities in Britain: An Account of England, Scotland and Wales from the Seventh Century BC Until the Roman Conquest, 4th ed. 2005:178, in beginning his Part II.8 "The tribes of the periphery: Durotriges, Dobunni, Iceni and Corieltauvi" (pp 178-201).
- ^ Several homestead sites have been excavated in Cranborne Chase.
- ISBN 9781784917159)
- .
- ISBN 9780713460834)
- ISBN 9781784917159)
- .
- ^ "The Durotriges Project". www.bournemouth.ac.uk. Retrieved 5 July 2022.
- ^ Cheetham, P, Hambleton, E, Russell, M, and Smith, M 2013 'Digging the Durotriges' CURRENT ARCHAEOLOGY 281, 36-41
Further reading
- Martin Papworth, (2011), The Search for the Durotriges: Dorset and the West Country in the Late Iron Age. The History Press. ISBN 0752457373
- Paul Cheetham Ellen Hambleton, Miles Russell and Martin Smith (2013), Digging the Durotriges: Life and Death in Late Iron Age Dorset. Current Archaeology 281, 36-41.
- Dave Stewart and Miles Russell, (2017), Hillforts and the Durotriges: a geophysical survey of Iron Age Dorset. Archaeopress ISBN 9781784917159
- Guy de la Bédoyère (2006), Roman Britain: A New History