Beyond Defence – Section 1

Introduction

Across much of Britain there are hundreds of monuments whose forms take the shape of banks, ditches, or combinations of both, collectively classified within archaeology as linear earthworks, adopting in their named title, either the word dyke or ditch. Research in Britain indicates that the construction of linear earthworks occurred in several distinct phases: the early 1st millennium BC, the Late Iron Age, and the Early Medieval period. Although linear features in the landscape date back to the Mesolithic era, with pit alignments and linear bank and ditch structures well-documented from the Late Bronze Age, a significant surge in monumental linear construction took place during the Late Iron Age, some of which is associated with the phenomenon known as oppida, which I will explore in due course.

Linear earthworks range considerably in scale, from features extending up to 80 km in length, such as Wansdyke in the West Country, to others measuring only just a few tens of metres. Offa’s Dyke, a discontinuous linear earthwork running roughly along the England – Wales border from the Dee Estuary in the north to the Severn Estuary in the south, generally dated to the Early Medieval period (c.5th–8th centuries AD), extends for an impressive 285 km.

Land boundaries have long been recognised as integral components of human societies, taking a wide variety of forms across Britain and beyond. Many linear earthworks are characterised by relatively slight, low‑profile banks, while others incorporate more substantial constructions, with banks rising several metres and accompanied by correspondingly large ditches. These earthworks commonly take the form of broad linear cuts, often measuring between 6 and 12 metres in width and reaching depths of up to 3 metres, with internal banks rising to 2–3 metres in height. This degree of monumentality suggests a considerable investment in labour and planning, although the motivations underpinning these constructions may have extended beyond narrowly defined concerns of defence or territorial authority.

In the 1st century BC, the construction of these linear earthworks “demonstrably altered the structure of the Late Iron Age landscape.” [1] A single linear earthwork might have required months, years, or even decades to construct, [2] with the earliest confirmed conventional linear earthwork dating back to approximately 3600 BC, the Late Neolithic period.

The act of dramatically reshaping and recodifying the landscape was itself significant, imbuing the landscape with a numinous status that was further reinforced by spatial organisation and associated relic features. As I shall explore, interpretations of the role and function of linear earthworks often lean toward pragmatic and utilitarian explanations. That said, despite longstanding inquiry, the topic remains subject to ongoing reinterpretation. Popular explanations regarding examples in southern Britain have favoured practical functions, such as livestock management, and are interpreted as powerful political markers of territorial control, the assumption that such symbolism was necessarily underpinned by defensive imperatives is increasingly debated and may reflect retrospective interpretive frameworks rather than contemporary motivations. Whatever their core purpose, this article will explore and attempt to expand upon ideas regarding how these enigmatic monuments are believed to have served as a tangible manifestation of a community’s collective agency, reinforcing shared beliefs and cultural values.

Any study of linear monuments or earthworks may stray inadvertently off course into the rather tangential territory of oppida, a term Julius Caesar used to describe the settlements in both Britain and Gaul that were bordered by long defensive or agricultural dykes in his memoir, The Gallic Wars. [3] In Late Iron Age Britain (c. 400–300 BC to AD 43), oppida were part of a broader transformation in settlement organisation. These centres increasingly served to delineate previously unenclosed settlements in the period leading up to the expansion of the Roman Empire and the subsequent conquest of Britain in AD 43.

The term ‘territorial oppida’ is commonly applied to extensive, semi-urbanised landscapes in southern Britain which, during the Late Iron Age (c. 100 BC–AD 43), exhibit evidence of high-status burials, substantial quantities of imported goods, and large-scale configurations of linear earthworks. The complexes are delineated by linear earthworks, more often discontinuous in form, that can stretch up to 30 km in length. These features are typically interpreted as mechanisms for regulating movement and demarcating defensive boundaries. However, they too have been described as “unclear,” as often, exactly “what they demarcate and define” is “illogical.” [4] Frequently they feature gaps, do not form a continuous feature such as a dyke, bank or ditch, so the notion of them simply relating to defence is deeply flawed. In part, it is for these reasons that the preferred term ‘terrain oppida’ has been coined, dyke systems across wide tracts of land that incorporate aspects of local topography and natural features. [5] In fact, as a class of settlement, the term oppida has been described as “not a useful functional label” with the largest known terrain oppida in North Oxfordshire, Grim’s Ditch at 50 square kilometres for example, having no obvious settlement focus at all? [6]

Camulodunum, what is now Colchester in Essex, is perhaps the best-known example of a large-scale terrain oppida, covering over 30 square kilometres and has been extensively investigated over the years with its location often referred to as ‘the oldest town in England’. The earliest major boundaries at Colchester were likely constructed in the final quarter of the 1st century BC with a complex settlement that included industrial as well as burial and ritual foci. The settlement “was built like an obstacle course” and contained no less than sixteen dykes. [7] The Colchester dyke system is understood to have enclosed an area of approximately 31 square km, bounded by the Roman River (a tributary of the River Colne) to the south and the River Colne itself to the north. Additional stretches of boundary also extend for several kilometres to the north. Whilst the precise role of oppida “remains difficult to determine” [8] their principal defining characteristic was that of a widespread system of related linear earthworks, which routinely shared an intimate association with riverine networks. Whilst there remains a tendency to constrain interpretations of their function within prosaic categories such as livestock control, economic centres involving craft activities, trade, political and religious centres, other fascinating possibilities regarding the function of terrain oppida have been proposed. That they played a pivotal role as focal points for religious or ritual activity, a role heightened by their placement to watery or marshy landscapes and that they may have directed patterns of movement for religious and secular purposes. [9] Haselgrove has suggested the use of the term ‘polyfocal settlements’ to characterise these sites, emphasising their role as periodically occupied neutral centres which were not originally settled in a permanent sense, but had their origins borne out of sacred sites. [10]

A viewshed analysis* by Garland [11] illustrated that visibility across the earthwork system was controlled, designed so as to restrict visibility to certain areas that lay in the immediate proximity of the oppidum.

Whatever may be the case, as can be seen in Fig 2, the precise function of the linear earthworks as boundaries remains unclear, with this ambiguity contributing to their overall “illogical” appearance. [12]

If earthworks associated with oppida were described above as ‘illogical’, cross-ridge dykes take this to another level. Unevenly scattered across the landscape, cross dykes consist of linear ditches extending over ridges and spurs or continuing inward from escarpment edges. With approximately three hundred known, their function is described as “crazy meaningless things – monuments of apparently purposeless energy.” [13] In a study of sixteen cross‑ridge and spur dykes (earthworks built to traverse ridge crests and spur projections) on the Ebble-Nadder ridge in Wiltshire [14] sixteen examples span between the scarp edge and coombe bottom, extending from anything for several hundred metres, to up to a kilometre. Formed of banks rising 1 to 2 metres and flanked by ditches three to four metres wide, cutting directly across ridge crests, as is expected, dominant, functionalist interpretations for their form and function dominate the narrative, where they are typically regarded as having “a primary economic significance” i.e. land division, funnelling of movement of travel, an obstructive and defensive tribal boundary or livestock control. [15]

The cross-ridge and spur dykes’ relationship with associated barrows on the flat ridge-top summits were found to deliberately detach themselves from the surrounding wider landscape, their placement emphasizing a direct relationship with the sky as well as watery depths and hinting at a far greater “ritual significance”. [16] On the Wessex chalk, cross-dykes follow a strikingly consistent logic: they track the flint‑rich Lewes Chalk, where periglacial meltwater carved and concentrated natural lines of flint. These monuments seem deliberately aligned with those features, hinting at a ritual purpose rather than a purely practical one. “Perhaps these features, on high open ground, were seen as passages between an underworld, the human world and a sky world, containing gifts of flint.” [17] Linear earthworks are far more than the examples of oppida given above and are not always easy to date.

Bell, in his 2012 study of the archaeology of dykes records a total of twenty-four across the country which he describes as being of unknown date in origin, with the Black Ditches in Suffolk being one of them. [18] Such features frequently yield minimal dateable material, and this absence can render it extremely difficult to establish whether an earthwork initially constructed around 500 BC was later subject to repeated modification or episodic clearance extending perhaps as late as 1000 AD. Consequently, “superficially, their form is not often diagnostic, so prehistoric examples can be confused with medieval or later ones”. [19] As Grigg makes clear, despite numerous advancements in archaeological science over the past century, the methodologies employed in the study of dykes and ditches have largely remained static. [20] Researchers instead often go for the ‘easy wins’, predominantly focusing on re-evaluating whether a dyke is longer or shorter than previously documented. There remains a pressing need to re‑evaluate the diversity and character of Britain’s linear earthworks through broader interpretive perspectives and renewed methodological approaches, as recent scholarship has argued for “a comparative dialogue as a means for reinterpreting these landscape features”. [21]

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The Black Ditches – Beyond Defence

Located in West Suffolk the Black Ditches are currently in two sections, though originally would have been one continuous earthwork extending for up to 7.24 km in length. [22]

Fox records the name Black Ditches as coming from the northern section where the dark sand is covered with ling and old heather stumps darkening the soil. [23] This northern section lies on the flat landscape of Cavenham Heath, flanked by Cavenham Brook and the River Lark for about 1.8 km before cutting across Risby Poor’s Heath with the southern section crossing Cavenham Heath for around 2.4 km up to Cavenham Brook. Here Fox recorded the bank one hundred years ago as being 27 feet wide and between 4–6 feet in height above the ground, whilst noting that an ordnance survey map from 1836 carried the line of the dyke very near to Barrow Bottom and that it would then have extended towards Turnpike Road to the south “where the clay capping over the chalk indicates natural forest”. [24]

The southern section of the Black Ditches is more difficult to define as cultivation has destroyed its structure over the centuries. Grigg’s notes that the same alignment on the ground is recorded in the Suffolk Heritage Explorer monument record (HER) RBY 002 from aerial photographs, suggesting it was once nearly 4 km long and that the same HER record cites an aerial photograph that revealed the presence of the ditch across Twenty Acre Hill. [25]

Up until around 2000, since Fox’s publication in 1923 [26] on the archaeology of the Cambridge region, there has been numerous proposals advanced for what the Black Ditches were and exactly when the era of their initial construction or use was:

1. An agricultural boundary under Prasutagus King of the Iceni, who famously married Boadicea who traded willingly with the Romans in return for receiving military protection until his death in 60 AD. [27]
2. A typical Saxon boundary earthwork, post Roman [28] i.e. after 410 AD.
3. A late 6th century Anglo-Saxon earthwork designed as a defensive measure against the Mercians to the west and specifically to protect the Icknield Way** – a key line of communication and transport. [29]
4. One of five such successive defensive ditches dating from the time of the 5th–6th century kingdoms. [30]
5. The remains of a Roman sewerage system [31] approximately between 50–400 AD.

Grigg’s described the Black Ditches as the only “possible Early Medieval dyke in Suffolk” and being located so close to the Norfolk border concluded that it might possibly relate to the Cambridgeshire dykes. [32] He later conceded though that the odd profile of the ditch, combined with “prehistoric finds from a parallel ditch suggests this is at best a reused prehistoric dyke”. [33] As Historic England have noted, earthworks “of prehistoric origin… are less straightforward to understand,” [34] and it is perhaps this complexity, rooted in limited datable material and ambiguous form, that explains their frequent treatment in only “a superficial way.” Despite their scale and persistence in the landscape, these monuments remain profoundly “difficult to interpret,” [35] and continue to challenge conventional analytical frameworks.

In 1992 following the accidental destruction that exposed 50 metres of the Black Ditches a limited excavation was undertaken by Suffolk’s archaeological unit. The investigations identified a second narrow ditch running parallel for at least 30 metres, 10 metres to the east of Black Ditches. This second ditch was recorded as being 1.10 metres deep and 3.1 metres wide possessing a “similar profile to the Black Ditches”. [36] In the layer immediately above the lower steep profile “seven shards of Late Iron Age pottery from a Belgic cordon jar” were recovered. [37]

Despite this possible evidence for a prehistoric origin for the Black Ditches, they still often get ‘lumped together’ with dykes and ditches in the region, notably those to the west in Cambridgeshire and represent one of five such comparable monuments that stretch across East Anglia.

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The primary dykes and ditches surrounding the Black Ditches

	Name	County	Length	Proposed date
1	Black Ditches	Suffolk	7.2 km	Late Iron Age – based on Belgic pottery possibly 100 BC–60 AD
2	Devil’s Dyke	Cambridgeshire / Suffolk	11 km	5th–7th C AD
3	Fleam Dyke	Cambridgeshire	4.8 km	330–510 AD
4	Brent Ditch	Cambridgeshire	2.4 km	-109 BC (+/- 55) Post-Roman – Though as a probable prehistoric road or Hollow Way this earthwork will not be covered.
5	Bran Ditch	Cambridgeshire	5.2 km	450–1000 AD. Though studies also suggest a triplet of pre-existing Early Iron Age ditches 735–397 BC
6	Fossditch	Norfolk	9 km	390–1050 AD.
7	Devil’s Ditch (Garboldisham)	Norfolk	3.2+ km	590 BC–790 AD 42, likely recut in the late 8th C
8	Panworth Ditch	Norfolk	0.5+ km	Iron Age typically 800 BC–AD 42 in England
9	Launditch	Norfolk	7.5 km	Iron Age typically 800 BC–AD 42 in England
10	Bichamditch or Devil’s Dyke	Norfolk	5 – 11 km	An Early Medieval Post-Roman 410+ AD two-phase monument possibly cut in an older Iron Age monument 800 BC–AD 42
11	Bunn’s Bank and Double Banks	Norfolk	3 km +/-	410–1100s AD

A hypothesis advanced by Malim et al. in 1997 [38] proposes that the Cambridgeshire dykes were constructed during the 5th and 6th centuries AD, serving a defensive territorial function, though they were preceded by significantly earlier monuments. It proposes that the British victory at Mount Badon posed a threat to Anglo-Saxon occupation in south Cambridgeshire and East Anglia, prompting the main phase of the dykes’ construction as a defensive measure. Yet these defensive interpretations, pursued over several decades, have not gained universal acceptance within the archaeological community.

1. If their purpose was purely to aid defence, it has been noted that it would often be far easier to use existing river courses and simply plan to block the flow of movement of people by placing existing forests at their terminus or planting lines of dense hedgerows. Offa’s Dyke for instance has over 30% of its border as the river, before becoming an earthwork again, though beside the same river. Why employ significant hours of toil and labour to achieve seemingly the same end? [39/40]
2. The slightly shorter dykes or ditches are even more problematic, as any determined attacker could simply “go round the dyke.” [41]
3. As for substantially longer earthworks it is highly unlikely that these were patrolled across their entire length. Take the Black Ditches for instance, if there were soldiers stationed every 100 metres, this would be seventy-two stations. However, there is no such evidence for watch towers or stations along it and other monuments length. As such, “all an enemy had to do was to concentrate enough troops against one part of the dyke to overwhelm the defenders.” [42]
4. Even if we accept that the linear earthworks across much of Cambridgeshire were built between the early 5th–7th centuries AD, including Devil’s Dyke, Fleam Dyke and Bran Ditch how as Malim points out, do we reconcile “evidence for settled rural life with the turbulence and warfare indicated by the great defensive earthworks?” [43]

Add to this the increasingly common view that some of the Cambridgeshire dykes, previously thought to date to the early 5th–7th centuries AD, are now being reappraised and consequently redated. Recent research of the Bran Ditch suggests an Early Iron Age date for an earlier trio of pre-existing ditches, highlighting the potential connection between the eastern Chiltern boundaries and the Cambridgeshire dykes. A newly identified, similar multi-ditched boundary near Allington Hill, between the Fleam and Devil’s Dykes, may extend this Iron Age boundary system further northeast. [44] Although distinctions can be drawn between Iron Age triple-ditched boundaries and Anglo-Saxon dykes, the research establishes connections between them, underpinned by evidence for a palimpsest and indications of earlier origins among other Cambridgeshire dykes and ditches. To the west, the adjacent earthworks of the Mile Ditches, Telegraph Hill Dyke, and Dray’s Ditches are likewise no longer considered to date from the 5th to 7th centuries AD, and are instead described as probably prehistoric, with origins in the Iron Age around 500 BC.

Is it possible that the parallel ditch discovered at the Black Ditches in 1992 described above conforms to such an Iron Age multiple ditch system?

Another well-established idea for the Cambridgeshire dykes, is that they mark the wet fenland on higher ground, running southeast to northwest, with notably the largest, the Devil’s Dyke, serving as a significant defensive barrier from the east, hindering travel along the Icknield Way route. This idea of controlling movement has also been attributed to the Black Ditches, where according to Wade-Martins [45] it, along with the Fleam Ditch and Devil’s Ditch in Cambridgeshire, played a significant role in controlling access from the south into the region along the Icknield Way, with the Devil’s Ditch in Garboldisham to the north-east also crossing a Roman Road.

Amusingly in ‘The Early Iron Age Origins of the Cambridgeshire dykes’ senior archaeologist Mortimer demonstrates how over time shifting perspectives have framed ideas of whom these defences might be aimed at ‘controlling,’ from the hardship-stricken Britons in the 5th –6th centuries AD, followed by the Mercians in the 7th–8th centuries AD, followed by the Vikings and Alfred’s army from Wessex, late 8th to early 10th centuries AD. [46] But, if as Mortimer examines, the Devil’s Dyke was for defence, its placement is illogical, as is the Fleam Dyke, as both of these miss the high ground and given the scale of effort required to build such a monumental earthwork, its deviation away from the shortest path between point A and B is striking. Consequently, it was concluded at the time that the linear earthworks crossing Cambridgeshire and extending into Hertfordshire were not built solely with defence, convenience, or efficiency in mind. [47]

The model developed in 2017 for the Cambridgeshire dykes proposed eight broadly spaced Roman roads, dykes and ditches, with three dated to the Early Iron Age (c. 800–400 BC) and five to the Middle Iron Age through to the Roman period (c. 400 BC–AD 410), thought to follow watershed lines before descending into eastern and southern river valleys, with Iron Age origins. [48] This model was later expanded to twelve such features, with the suggestion that these structures converge at bridging and fording points along the River Cam, acting as territorial boundaries and movement corridors that facilitated the controlled movement of people and livestock between upland and fenland while avoiding arable land. [49]

While the above model is likely correct in attributing practical and utilitarian functions to linear monuments across extensive areas, accepting such interpretations as their sole purpose risks overlooking potential symbolic, cosmological, and mythic dimensions. These broader interpretative approaches, though requiring careful critical scrutiny, should nevertheless be permitted to inform a more comprehensive analytical framework.

The archaeological effort to understand, categorise, and theorise dykes and ditches has striking parallels with the study of Iron Age hillforts, a term that appears self‑evident at first glance, implicitly suggesting a defensive function. Yet the apparent clarity of the label proves misleading, for researchers continue to debate not only how these sites were used, but whether ‘fort’ accurately captures their varied social, functional, and symbolic roles.

According to Lock, emeritus professor of archaeology specializing in Iron Age studies, hillforts are “something of a misnomer… they aren’t always on hills, and they probably weren’t ‘forts’”, a name that “was coined in the early 20th century, and perhaps archaeologists at the time had a more military frame of mind… it’s unlikely that they would have been defensive structures.” [50]

Indeed, the term ‘hillfort’ properly entered scholarly usage following publications by Hawkes in 1931 [51] and Wheeler in 1943 [52] both of whom had a military background with a penchant for classifying forts as defensive. Hawkes was seconded to the Ministry of Aircraft Production during World War two whilst his father was also a Lieutenant Colonel with Wheeler an officer in the British army. Both of these archaeologists built upon earlier works by Pitt Rivers, himself a distinguished lieutenant colonial in the British army who published his excavations on Southern British Hill-forts in 1883. [53] The term ‘hillfort,’ quite simply, is “problematic” [54] and for “too long seen only as defensive citadels rather than a range of community functions, social, economic and ritual.” [55]

The apparent practical function of a hillfort does not preclude the presence of ritual aspects. As a ‘community building’, hillforts in the Iron Age were community gathering places and understood as multifunctional monuments whose roles differed across regions, periods, and communities.  Furthermore, according to Dennis Harding, professor of archaeology specialising in the British Iron Age, the rise in prominence of Iron Age hillforts occurred simultaneously at a time when funerary practices seem to fade from the archaeological radar. [56] Hillforts, with their complex architecture, elevated landscape setting and strong social meanings, functioned as important ritual arenas where mortuary practices, (explored in section 5) including excarnation, a rite involving the deliberate removal of soft tissue from the dead, achieved either through natural exposure and decay or through direct human actions such as butchery and defleshing were carried out in ways that reinforced community identity, memory, and relationships with the dead. After exposure, selected bones or body parts might be buried, curated, or deposited in liminal or symbolically charged places such as boundaries and entrances. This interpretation fundamentally reframes hillforts as central places within Iron Age cosmology, where life, death, and ancestry were materially and spatially intertwined.

For Tilley, emeritus professor of anthropology and archaeology at UCL cross‑ridge and spur dykes, another class of linear monument, should not be reduced to purely functional or otherwise “mundane” explanations, arguing that while such utilitarian roles may have existed, they fail to account for the deliberate monumental placement of the dykes, where their scale and visibility transform natural contours into statements of meaning. [57] Dykes must be understood phenomenologically, as expressive interventions in the landscape that articulate identity, belonging, and cosmic significance, rather than mere functional constructions. As such, they “may have been part of ritual practice seeking to maintain harmonious relationships with a complex pantheon of invisible beings and forces… part of a ritualised order of space, time and movement linked to the seasons, the significance of cardinal directions, height and elevation.” [58] Archaeologists have often treated ritual (symbolic, expressive, or spiritual) and practical (utilitarian, or everyday) functions as mutually exclusive, as if they cannot occur together.

One of the great challenges and problems with archaeology is its difficulty in perceiving elements of magic, ritual, or religion. Let us consider the verb ‘worship’ and practices that may be associated with this mental and physical activity, something Brennan explored in relation to practices in the mid 700’s AD during the conversion period, some of which are listed below. [59]

If ritual landscapes were actively maintained and repeatedly engaged with, then their significance may have resided less in monumental construction alone and more in ongoing practices of care, movement, observation, and performance. Many such practices are inherently transient or sensory, unfolding through time rather than becoming fixed in material form. This invites consideration of a key problem: which forms of ritual action are likely to leave recognisable archaeological signatures, and which may pass almost entirely unseen? The following activities suggest the breadth of practices that could have animated sacred places without necessarily producing durable archaeological evidence:

1. Habitually visiting a local shrine
2. Performing votive acts
3. Regular curation of cultic space
4. Looking after special cultic objects
5. Purification
6. Decoration
7. The upkeep of its fixtures
8. Managing the natural surrounds
9. Pruning and planting
10. Wardenship of curated spaces
11. Use of light and shadow of a monument for ritual purposes i.e. How does the passage of sunlight interact with the sacred landscape?
12. The shifting of a person’s observation point, thereby creating a constructed, as opposed to a natural horizon between the skyscape and landscape, the marriage between heaven and earth
13. Seasonal and calendrical observations
14. Sound based interactions
15. Meditative silent practices
16. Spoken invocations or chants
17. Temporary symbolic arrangements using natural materials i.e. stones, wood, water, leaves, flowers.
18. Visionary or dream incubation

In many societies the landscape is a rich source of social memories and myths.[60]

Archaeological interpretation has often emphasised pattern‑recognition approaches, examining the distribution and interrelationships of archaeological datasets in order to identify trends, draw inferences, and develop hypotheses about past human activity and cultural practice. In examining the Black Ditches, this study seeks to draw attention to aspects of the archaeological record that do not readily align with such approaches, focusing instead on features that remain difficult to interpret within existing frameworks for Iron Age engagements with the landscape.

Material evidence strongly suggests that, since at least the Upper Palaeolithic, the human mind has possessed the cognitive capacity to engage with complex spatial and temporal patterns. It is therefore plausible that such cognitive engagement extended not only to the surrounding landscapes but also to the skyscapes above. The dynamic interplay between sky, people, and material culture, arguably the foundation of cosmological thought, remains rarely addressed in traditional archaeological interpretations of landscape and monumentality.

Ancient earthworks had the capacity to serve as a tangible connection to the celestial and spiritual realms, their very construction echoing the rhythms of the universe. They stood as sacred symbols, their alignment and placement potentially chosen to resonate with a wider cosmic order and the beliefs of their creators. As such, these monuments were far more than defensive installations or simply boundaries; they were integral to the spiritual and ritualistic landscape, bridging the human and the divine in a harmonious continuum. We know that the British Iron Age belief system was deeply connected to the cycles of the sun and moon. [61] This period marked a significant tradition of offering valuable items into natural places such as pits, rivers, springs, and bogs. This ritualistic practice, which began in the late 2nd millennium BC, saw a notable increase during the 1st millennium BC, reflecting the profound spiritual and symbolic significance placed on these acts of deposition.

In East Anglia, the primary Iron Age linear earthworks, in the above table, numbered 7–10, are as cited by Rippon [62] in his seminal ‘Kingdom, Civitas, and County: The Evolution of Territorial Identity in the English Landscape; however, it should be noted that Rippon also included the Black Ditches in his list.

While the Belgic pottery mentioned above discovered at the Black Ditches in 1992 strongly suggests an Iron Age date, Bell concedes that it ‘does not prove it.’ [63] Though most contemporary sources now refer to the Black Ditches as either of unknown date, prehistoric, or simply Iron Age.

 

We know less about the long linear earthworks which cross the west Norfolk countryside than we do about almost any other class of field monument. Their date and purpose is by no means certain. [64]

The four ditches of Launditch, Panworth Ditch, and particularly Devil’s Ditch and Bichamditch, along with the Black Ditches, all run largely north-south through central East Anglia, between Norfolk and Suffolk, lying on the high ground. Davies notes the Black Ditches “meet up” with Bichamditch, if their alignment was extended, with Narborough Camp at the terminal of with Bichamditch to the north. [65] As mentioned previously mentioned, in East Anglia there appears to be a concentration of reused Iron Age dykes and ditches. In Grigg’s attempt at modelling the various styles and forms of linear earthworks across the country, various sub types were proposed. The Black Ditches are a type C, a reused prehistoric earthwork [66] though they are “unusual for a prehistoric dyke,” given how straight and quite deep it is. [67]

Type A – Sinuous
Type B – Route-blocking dykes
Type C – Reused prehistoric (Black Ditches)
Type D – Peninsula
Type E – Marker boundaries
Type F – Multiples
Type G – Large

Iron Age, or prehistoric earthworks, “are more often contiguous with parish boundaries than other early-medieval dykes.” [68] Specifically within East Anglia, there appears to be a notable concentration of potentially reused prehistoric dykes.

The Fleam and Devil’s Dykes routes are notable for their numerous burial places and potential sacred sites, reflecting their cosmological and ritual significance. The northern terminals of these monuments are situated in wet areas, often featuring springs, which historically attracted ritual activities during prehistoric, Roman, and later periods. These locations were likely chosen for their symbolic connection to water, a vital element in many ancient cosmologies and rituals, underscoring the dykes’ importance in the spiritual and cultural landscape of the time. The sacred nature of watery locations in the landscape is reflected in the creation of earthworks that connect various water lines whilst defining areas for habitation, infrastructure and offerings. These locations held a mystical significance within the community’s social consciousness, a reverence that was not materially expressed until settlement occurred. The formation of surrounding earthworks functioned to accentuate the presence of these spiritually resonant locations, embedding their ritual presence more deeply within the broader landscape.

Before the construction of earthworks, ridgelines, slope breaks, and prominent trees may have formed part of a cosmologically ordered landscape through which territorial space was understood and sustained. Some linear earthworks may have “physically referenced natural and anthropogenic features that may have already accrued meaningful myths and stories by the time the earthworks were constructed.” [69] The setting sun in the western sky might suggest a fundamental cosmological association between water, the west (or left), and rituals related to death and the underworld, linking the ditches and their coombes (short valleys or hollows). [70] On top of the ditches ridge summits, this liminal space served to embody a metaphysical journey from life to death, from the heights to the depths. These elevated sites, intertwined with the celestial, highlight the profound ritual significance of both the lofty heights and the watery abysses. Monuments did not merely reflect social conditions; their construction actively transformed them. The surrounding landscape, forms, and experiential understandings provided the ritual context and knowledge that informed the strategies of appropriation employed by various monumental programs. In that way, as Barrett notes, ritual landscapes were designed to embed a timeless, ancestral and spiritual order onto the landscape of routine everyday life. [71]

The articles in this series will examine the orientation of the Black Ditches in relation to neighbouring dykes and ditches. The Devil’s Dyke for instance has an average azimuth (the horizontal clockwise angle from north) of 136 degrees azimuth compared with the Black Ditches that has an average of 175 degrees azimuth. Does this variance offer an explanation for their function? Whether this variation in orientation contributes to understanding the function of the Black Ditches, or whether it is unrelated, remains an important question.

The series will then turn to the landscape context of the Black Ditches, with particular attention to surrounding topography and possible connections to neighbouring ancient sites, monuments, and linear earthworks that may have influenced their design. Other Late Iron Age linear features at Beccles, Barsham and Geldeston in Suffolk will likewise be examined, as well as the suspected Iron Age Pit alignments beside the Black Ditches at Saxham, demonstrating that these enigmatic Iron Age structures are similarly far from straightforward to interpret.

Building on an emerging chronological framework for the construction of the Black Ditches, the series will consider the communities who may have been responsible for their creation. I will then examine the cosmological principles associated with surveyed landscapes, with particular attention given to the significance of linearity and straightness as encoded within the structural topography of the landscape. Finally, I will explore how Iron Age beliefs concerning death and the afterlife permeated mortuary rites and everyday experience, shaped by the conviction that the realms of the living and the dead coexisted in parallel. Within this worldview, ancestral beings were regarded as active participants in community life, continuing to fulfil essential roles from the otherworld, [72] a presence reinforced through associated ceremonial practices in which the Black Ditches may have played a part.

Footnotes
*A viewshed analysis employs geospatial modelling to identify areas of landscape visibility from a specified location, factoring in topographic variation and obstructions.
** The Icknield Way will be thoroughly explored in part nine.

See: Bibliography