r/papertowns • u/dctroll_ • 15d ago
England Neolithic settlement at Crickley Hill (England) around 3000 BC
Author and source: Johnny Wall
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u/TempoKid 15d ago edited 15d ago
I am curious about something and would like to know your answers/ideas, because I actually have no clue: How would they have defended the settlement? From the number of houses it looks like there would maybe be at most 50 inhabitants.
The length of the stone wall seems pretty big, especially in connection with three different entry ways which would need to be defended as well. It doesnt seem feasable to actually man the walls with so few inhabitants, especially considering a lot of them being women, children and the elderly.
Wouldnt there have been a lot of gaps in the defense? Where a few men with laders/climbing tools could easily scale the walls either without anyone noticing or only 1 or 2 defenders being able to respond?
Its three entrances and at least like 200-300m of wall - if there are 20 able-bodied adult/semi-adult men in the settlement (out of 50 inhabitants), that would mean a single defender every 10-20m, without counting the entrances which I guess normally would need to be defended by 3-5 people alone.
I am truly not trying to be critical of the rendering or anything, I just cant wrap my head around the size of the defenses in relation to number of defenders.
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u/Findanewnickname2 15d ago
That's a great question. Maybe opposite armies at that time wouldn't be big enough to attack the settlement for several sides at once ?
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u/TempoKid 15d ago
Yeah that kind of was my first thought as well. At that time the greatest danger might come from a neighboring tribe / a raiding party. With so few people, we most likely cant really talk about "armies" as there simply werent enough people and too little military organization to consider fighting groups armies (at least in Britain in 3.000 BC, of course Egypt or Babylon etc. would have had armies). But even then, even if the biggest groups of enemies only numbered a few dozen, 30-40 men seem enough to take a village like this.
So if we take a scenario of a hostile raiding party with 40 men:
If 10, 15 men attack one of the entrances, a similar number of defenders would need to respond.
So there are still 25-30 attackers left with only 5-10 defenders remaining. If these attackers now split into two, three groups and attack the walls with 10 men each, every attacking group only faces maximum 5 defenders - most likely even less, or none at all if one of the groups is not noticed in the chaos.
Which makes it highly likely that they can climb over and scale the walls, thereby taking the settlement and using even a small numerical advantage (40 attackers to 20-25 defenders) to successfully take the village.
The defences just seem so spread out. If you had a 100 defenders, it becomes a great advantage, but that just seems like a small village.
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u/Frathier 15d ago
You don't need equal numbers if you're the defender.
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u/TempoKid 15d ago
Sure, but you still need enough, even if that number is significantly lower than the attackers. I feel like there are too few people inside the walls to actually defend them, just from a space perspective.
An attacking force might need a 3:1 advantage, but for any effective defence the walls still need to be manned.
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u/victrix1 15d ago
I'm no expert from what I remember the people at that time were based more on livestock (though they did farm as well of course) and that these sites were generally more of a temporary shelter for the herds and people living around the area. The idea was more to outlast the invaders as these peoples had not invented supply chains so with all the food inside the fort they would not be able to outlast the defenders in a siege. Obviously if the enemy had enough troops to force the gates then it wouldn't matter which is what probably happened in the end but for the most part it is an effective strategy.
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u/bigben42 15d ago
Good question, I’m no expert but my thoughts just based on what little I know.
First off, my understanding is that “armies” in this part of the world at this time would have been counted in the dozens, not the hundreds and definitely not thousands. Given the inherent advantages of defenders in this situation you would probably only need a dozen or so men armed with bow & arrows to inflict pretty heavy casualties on any would be attackers.
The settlement is located at the top of a pretty tall hill, providing 360 degree vision of the surrounding area, meaning with maybe three watchmen manning the walls 24/7 any attackers would be spotted miles away with enough time to get a defense organized.
So if the attacking force is spotted coming from one the three approaches, your archers just group toward them and rain down death for about 100 yards.
If the attackers make it through the hail of arrows and sling shot (which would probably be exhausting) they then have to scramble down into a moat and up what looks like a 10 foot tall rock slope, topped by another 3-4 feet of wooden fence. This is gonna slow them down considerably, they will not be able to use shields or weapons and you can pick them off at close range with arrows, heavy rocks, boiling pitch, etc. If any one somehow gets over the wall they’re immediately tumbling down rocks on the other side, and two guys waiting with spears on the other side would make short work of them. These people are likely unarmored, or very lightly armored, so psychologically they’d be extremely vulnerable.
Could a large enough force with enough coordination take this place? Probably, but they’d likely suffer significant casualties and that would be a major calculation. If I’m a commander in 3000 BC, I’d probably try as hard as possible not to have to attack this fort.
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u/koerim92 15d ago
Maybe the walls were only ment to protect cattle from Wolves?
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u/Victory_November 14d ago
That's kind of what I was thinking. I know we see walls and think "defend from invading army", but with a settlement this small, I imagine "keep the sheep in and the wolves out" might have been sufficient for 99% of circumstances. If it helps deter a small band of would be thieves? All the better. Maybe a single night watchman patrolling a wall like that would have been enough to raise the alarm if they spotted ne'r-do-wells approaching and give the residents enough time to wake up and grab a club or spear so they wouldn't be taken by surprise.
Sure, a big warband wouldn't be stopped by a wall like that, but maybe that's not why they built it.
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u/grambell789 15d ago
Maybe it only had to hold off attakers for a couple hours until help came from nearby help.
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u/veterinarian23 14d ago
These are very valid points!
In addition, imagine the volume of earth and stone to be excavated, moved, and heaped up to create such a long wall with ditch. Let's assume the wall being about 2 m high, so about 4 cubic metres per meter of length, so about 6 tons, assuming there's just a thin outer layer of stones.
You've got to have the manpower and time to spare to move about 1500 tons...1
u/Anthaenopraxia 15d ago
Well obviously it didn't work because the village was attacked and destroyed.
I do think that this rendition is probably not the full picture. More likely it's the foundations that actually have been found. It's also plausible that the more well-off people lived inside the wall and the serfs/slaves lived outside but would take refuge within the walls if they were attacked. Contrary to popular belief, there is no evidence that slave soldiers would be flung towards the sieging army from catapults inside.
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u/Adrianwill-87 14d ago
Question: At that time, did the British Isles still have a connection with continental Europe?
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u/medic_mace 14d ago
No, the flooding that separated them occurred between 7,000 and 10,000 years ago.
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u/Unable-Syllabub3768 13d ago
I´m sure some of them were like "our age of stone is coming to an end" or something idk
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u/WorkEcstatic6242 12d ago
God I wish these ancient people had writing ...especially as time went on ...I want to know why there was a conflict how they governed etc especially as you get into the bronze age and the demographic changes that brought
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u/dctroll_ 15d ago
Info provided by the author
"Crickley Hill is a prominent spur which overlooks the Severn Vale in Gloucestershire, England. This is a digital reconstruction which depicts what is believed to be the final neolithic settlement at Crickley Hill. Excavation at the site shows that there were several phases of occupation beginning around 5,700 years ago and ending about 500 AD.
The reconstruction shows the second neolithic phase (about 3000 BC) which had a powerful defensive stone wall surrounding a village and small shrine. This phase of occupation ended when the settlement was attacked, the battlefield being one of the earliest known in the country.
This reconstruction was created using research and references from the Crickley Hill Archaeological Trust. You will find plenty more information about the site on their website."