Hengistbury Head
Categories: Archaeological sites in Britain | History of Dorset | Iron Age Britain
Hengistbury Head is a headland jutting into the English Channel between Bournemouth and Christchurch in the English county of Dorset.
The promontory has witnessed a long sequence of human occupation but is most famous as a fortified Iron Age mercantile centre playing an important role in cross-Channel trade between Britain and Gaul.
Long prior to this, the site was occupied during the Upper Palaeolithic with evidence of an open settlement of the Creswellian culture on the hill in the middle of the headland dating to around 10,500 BC. At the time, this hill would have overlooked a large river valley that was to become the English Channel. Later, once the sea had inundated the surrounding valley, Mesolithic hunter gatherers exploited the site and Neolithic stone tools have been found but it was not until the Bronze Age that visible traces of the site's occupation are apparent.
Eleven Bronze Age round barrows sit on the promontory with two more a little further inland. Amber and gold jewellery was recovered from these tombs. The site seems to have then been abandoned until around 700 BC when the headland was cut off from the mainland by the construction of two banks and ditches. These earthworks turned Hengistbury Head into a fortified settlement area which seems to have grown over succeeding centuries until it became an important port.
By 300 BC, the site was trading with Gaul and the Mediterranean, importing coloured glass, Italian wine, figs and Breton pottery. Goods being exported included iron ore, salt and cattle. There was possibly a mint working alongside the port, producing bronze staters as well as silversmithing. This trade continued into the Roman period when the site was abandoned, probably in favour of more Romanised ports elsewhere along the coast.
The barrows at the site were first excavated by J. P. Bushe-Fox between 1911 and 1912 and then by Harold St George Gray in the years following the First World War. Most of our knowledge of the site comes from Barry Cunliffe's work there between 1979 and 1984.