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Wooden and Stone Chevaux-de-Frise in Central and Western Europe

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 September 2014

Peter Harbison
Peter Harbison
Affiliation:
Bord Fáilte, Dublin
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Extract

Chevaux-de-frise is a term used to describe the (normally stone) stakes placed upright in the ground outside the walls of early fortifications with the intention of making access more difficult for an approaching enemy, be he on foot or on horse back. The existence of this defensive technique outside prehistoric forts in Britain or Ireland was first mentioned in 1684 when Roderick O'Flaherty described the Aran Island fort of Dun Aenghus in his Ogygia (O'Flaherty, 1684, 175), and it has often been discussed since, among others by Christison (1898), Westropp (1901, 661), Hogg (1957) and most recently and judiciously by Simpson (1969a, 26). Some writers, for instance Raftery (1951, 214) and Hogg (1957, 33) have suggested that the origins of chevaux-de-frise in Britain and Ireland should be sought in the Iberian Peninsula, where they occur in greater numbers (Hogg, 1957 and Harbison, 1968, a), and chevaux-de-frise are often taken as one of the most important pieces of evidence of close ties between Spain–Portugal and Britain–Ireland during the Early Iron Age. The purpose of this paper is to put forward a hypothesis that the Spanish–Portuguese examples on the one hand, and the Scottish–Welsh–Irish–Manx ones on the other, are not so closely related to one another as has hitherto been thought, but that both are merely distant cousins in so far as both are descended from a common ancestral wooden prototype which originated probably in Central or Eastern Europe.

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society , Volume 37 , Issue 1 , July 1971 , pp. 195 - 225
Copyright
Copyright © The Prehistoric Society 1971

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