Powerful places, powerful peoples

Controlling the land

From 1000 BC onwards, we have much fuller evidence for where people actually lived and worked. Traces of late prehistoric settlements survive all over the Borders … and Eddleston is no exception.

Northshield Rings, Portmore. What was originally a fort with a single circuit of defences has later strengthened by constructing two additional outer ramparts and ditches. Crown Copyright RCAHMS.

 

The most impressive sites are the hillforts, once defended by massive walls or earthen ramparts thrown up from quarry-ditches. The defences can be seen most clearly from the air, for example at Milkieston and Northshield Rings. Forts like these reek of power and strength: they are not simply places of refuge.

Besides the forts, there are a very wide variety of smaller settlements ranging from those large enough to accommodate several houses to smaller farmsteads with space for perhaps only one or two buildings.

Milkieston Rings commands a wide sweep of the valley. The defensive banks and ditches of the fort show up well from the air. Beyond the fort (within the curving plantation wall) can be seen the remains of prehistoric boundary earthworks, possibly for controlling stock. Copyright RCAHMS.

 

Boundary banks and traces of tillage

Slowly but surely the prehistoric landscape was carved up into territories and enclosed to form landholdings. At Milkieston, rare traces of the prehistoric land boundaries actually survive as earthworks.

In places, even traces of the fields survive! Narrow cultivation ridges, known as `cord rig’, survive near the fort at Milkieston and near a smaller prehistoric settlement on Cavarra Hill. There is evidence that these low rigs may have been created by hand with spades and hoes, rather than by ploughing.

 

Artist’s impression of a hillfort. Forts like these were the power-bases for warrior chieftains who would have controlled the local territory and its produce - the prehistoric equivalents of ‘lairds’. Drawing by Alan Braby.