Кэдбери-Касл: Древнее городище и легенды о Камелоте.

Hillfort in Somerset, England

Cadbury Castle is a Bronze and Iron Age hillfort in the civil parish of South Cadbury in the English county of Somerset. It is a scheduled monument and has been associated with King Arthur's legendary court at Camelot. The hillfort is formed by a plateau surrounded by ramparts on the surrounding slopes of the limestone Cadbury Hill. The site has been excavated in the late 19th and early 20th century by James Bennett and Harold St George Gray. More recent examination of the site was conducted in the 1960s by Leslie Alcock and since 1992 by the South Cadbury Environs Project. These have revealed artifacts from human occupation and use from the Neolithic through the Bronze and Iron Ages. The site was reused by the Roman forces and again from c. 470 until some time after 580. In the 11th century, it temporarily housed a Saxon mint. Evidence of various buildings at the site has been unearthed, including a "Great Hall", round and rectangular house foundations, metalworking, and a possible sequence of small rectangular temples or shrines.

The suffix bury (from byrig, an Anglo Saxon word meaning "fort" or "town") is frequently, but not exclusively, used to refer to hill forts. The first part of the name may come from the River Cam, as with the nearby villages of West Camel and Queen Camel. Other scholars suggest a derivation from some figure named "Cador" or "Cada". It is one of three sites in Somerset to include the Cadbury name, the others being Cadbury Camp, near Tickenham, and Cadbury Hill, which is also known as Cadbury Congresbury to distinguish it from the other sites.

Cadbury Castle is located 5 mile (8 km) north east of Yeovil. It stands on the summit of Cadbury Hill, a limestone hill situated on the southern edge of the Somerset Levels, with flat lowland to the north. The summit is above sea level on lias stone. The hill is surrounded by terraced earthwork banks and ditches and a stand of trees. On the north west and south sides there are four ramparts, with two remaining on the east. The summit plateau covers , The hill fort is overlooked by Sigwells, a rural plateau rich in archaeological remains. Due to scrub and tree growth the site has been added to the Heritage at Risk Register. Further information on the dig and hill fort can be found a short walk down the road on Somerset Heritage Panels which have been erected in the local pub The Camelot Inn.

The earliest settlement on the site is represented by pits and post holes dated with Neolithic pottery and flints. These are the remains of a small agricultural settlement which was unenclosed. Bones recovered from the site have been radiocarbon dated to 3500 and 3300 BC. Radical revisions of the Bronze Age archaeology on the lower slopes resulted from discoveries during excavations and survey work by the South Cadbury Environs Project. Finds include the first Bronze Age shield from an excavation in northwest Europe, an example of the distinctive Yetholm type. Carbon dating implies that the shield was deposited in the 10th century BC, although metallurgical evidence suggests that it was manufactured two centuries earlier. A metal working building and associated enclosure were discovered south east of the hillfort, roughly contemporary with the period of manufacture. Human occupation continued throughout the Iron Age. A stone enclosure was constructed around 300 BC with timber revetting, and ploughing ceased within the hilltop site. Excavations have shown the signs of four and six post rectangular buildings which were gradually replaced with roundhouses. Large ramparts and elaborate timber defences were constructed and refortified over the following centuries. Excavation revealed round and rectangular house foundations, metalworking, and a possible sequence of small rectangular temples or shrines, indicating permanent oppidum like occupation. Excavations were undertaken by local clergyman James Bennett in 1890 and Harold St George Gray in 1913, followed by major work led by archaeologist Leslie Alcock from 1966 to 1970. He identified a long sequence of occupation on the site and many of the finds are displayed in the Museum of Somerset in Taunton. The finds from the Late Bronze Age to the Early Iron Age, exploring the ramparts and southwestern gate structure, represent one of the deepest and most complex Iron Age stratigraphic sequences excavated in southern Britain.

During the first century BC, additional lines of bank and ditch were constructed, turning it into a hill fort which is now known as the castle. There is evidence that the fort was violently taken around AD 43 and that the defences were further slighted later in the first century after the construction of a Roman army barracks on the hilltop. Excavations of the southwest gate in 1968 and 1969 revealed evidence for one or more severe violent episodes associated with weaponry and destruction by fire. Leslie Alcock believed this to have been dated to around AD 70, whereas Richard Tabor argues for a date associated with the initial invasion around AD 43 or 44. Michael Havinden states that it was the site of vigorous resistance by the Durotriges and Dobunni to the second Augusta Legion under the command of Vespasian. There was significant activity at the site during the late third and fourth centuries, which may have included the construction of a Romano British temple.

Following the withdrawal of the Roman administration, the site is thought to have been in use from c. no – c. 470 until some time after 580.

According to the Domesday Book, Cadbury Castle appears to have been part of the feudal barony of North Cadbury held by Turstin FitzRolf in 1086. Some small scale fortification of the site may also have occurred in the 13th century.

Local tradition, first written down by John Leland in 1542, holds that Cadbury Castle was King Arthur's Camelot. The site and the Great Hall are extensive, and the writer Geoffrey Ashe argued that it was the base for the Arthur of history. His opinion has not been widely accepted by students of the period. Militarily, the location makes sense as a place where refugees and the southwestern Brythons of Dumnonia could have defended themselves against attacks from the east. If Arthur was indeed conceived at Tintagel, as tradition asserts, he may have been a prince of Dumnonia and used Cadbury as a stronghold on his eastern frontier.

The recent work on the archaeology of the site and the surrounding area has been carried out by the South Cadbury Environs Project. Since 1992 the project team, which included local volunteers South East Somerset Archaeological and Historical Society and the Yeovil Archaeology and Local History Society, have carried out geophysical surveys including gradiometry and electrical resistivity tomography, ploughzone sampling, test pits, deeper excavations and geographic information system (GIS) approaches. The project had input from academics and archaeologists from the universities of Bristol, Glasgow, Birmingham and Oxford, funded by the Leverhulme Trust and Arts and Humanities Research Council. The project studies the castle and surrounding area up to away, using landscape sampling,