Between defensive and symbolic. 'Fortified’ hilltop sites in the Irish Late Bronze Age

A sharp increase in the number of so-called hillforts in many parts of Late Bronze Age Europe has usually been considered a key indicator of rising levels of intergroup violence during the final centuries of the second millennium BC. With over a hundred Late Bronze Age hillforts, Ireland provides an excellent case-study region to test this hypothesis. What little hard evidence we have for the function of these sites only lends very limited direct support to viewing increased levels of intergroup violence as a dominant factor in Irish Bronze Age society and rather suggests that other phenomena, such as regular communal gatherings and feasting activities, may have played an equally or even more significant role in the social life of Irish Late Bronze Age communities, ultimately driving the appearance of – both enclosed and unenclosed – hilltop sites during the final centuries of the second millennium BC