Was Iron or Defence the most important factor for making the Celts settle on Trevelgue Head? - page 3
Keywords: History Celts Iron Age Settlements Defence
By Jenny on 02/07/2009
Level: GCSE Key Stage 4 (Years 10-11)
Page Number: 3 of 4 pages: 1 2 3 4
in the river that they probably smelted and traded and there is evidence that they smelted copper/bronze, which they must have got through trade.
The Celts would have needed other things as well to live on Trevelgue Head. They needed food, water, shelter and warmth.
Excavations of the place where they deposited their domestic rubbish have revealed ‘the bones of cows and oxen, goats or sheep, deer and pigs and another such favoured food was the shellfish of the locality’. Source – Report from Royal Cornwall Gazette on Croft Andrews’ excavations on Trevelgue Head. We have evidence in some of the shells gathered from Trevelgue Head. However, the keeping of animals and/or farming would have taken place on nearby upland land where the soil was light, well drained, fertile and easy to work with Celtic ploughs. The land on which Treviglas and St. Columb Minor is built was previously ‘Glebe Land’ (belonged to the Church). The Church took the second best land so this land would have been used by the Celts.
The Celts used a primitive form of ‘slash and burn agriculture’ using land then moving on.
The nearby valley would have been wooded then so wood for fires could have been gathered from there and the river on Trevelgue Head would have provided water.
Shelter would have been more difficult on an exposed headland like Trevelgue Head and maximising shelter is probably the reason for the unusual huts.
Usually Celtic houses were built with low walls made of wattle and daub panels on a woven frame and a thatched roof on a timber frame, with only one entrance.
The houses on Trevelgue Head had walls made of large granite slabs with dry stone walling to fill the gaps. Some of them were partially dug into the rock. However, they were built with a single entrance and had roofs built in the usual way.
I think that if there was no iron on Trevelgue Head the Celts would not have lived on it but would have lived nearby and retreated to their defensive position in times of trouble like most of the other Celts living in Cornwall at that time did.
If there had been neither iron nor defence on Trevelgue Head I doubt they would have lived there.
However, if there had been iron but no defence perhaps they would have lived there and had their defensive site elsewhere.
If there had been no food and water
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