Ancient Forth Defences 1 – Hillforts and fortified settlements

 
I knew of hill forts and fortified settlements such as Traprain Law near Haddington, Cockleroy near Linlithgow, and Dunadd in Argyll, but was staggered to discover that there are almost 1700 known hill-fort sites in Scotland. The area around the Firth of Forth includes more than 140 sites.

Hillforts around the Firth of Forth

I obtained these locations from a new on-line Atlas of Hill Forts which was created by a research team based at the universities of Oxford, Edinburgh and University College Cork helped by citizen scientists from across England, Wales, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Ireland. {Lock, G. and Ralston, I. 2017. Atlas of Hillforts of Britain and Ireland. [Online] Available at https://hillforts.arch.ox.ac.uk}

You can click on any of the points in the atlas to get information about the site.

Wikipedia has this useful list of Hillforts in Scotland –

In pre-Roman times, there was no concept of a Scottish nation; the land was divided into a number of kingdoms, e.g. the Kingdom of Fife, each ruled by a local chieftain.

The hillforts and fortified settlements were built by clans, tribes and communities to mark out their territory and defend themselves against neighbours and raiders.