Maiden Castle

Maiden Castle is an Iron Age hillfort near Dorchester in Dorset, England, one of the largest and most complex hillforts in Europe, occupying a hilltop earlier used for Neolithic and Bronze Age activity before its ramparts reached their present, much-expanded form in the last centuries BC. Its defenses consist of multiple concentric banks and ditches, with elaborately staggered entrance passages designed to slow and expose attackers approaching the gates. The site was extensively excavated in the 1930s by the archaeologist Mortimer Wheeler, whose findings, including burials interpreted at the time as evidence of a Roman assault, shaped how the site has been understood and presented ever since, though later scholarship has revisited some of his conclusions.