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A monitoring programme at Castell Henllys helps us to understand what might have happened to timber structures at Castell Henllys in the Iron Age. By closely observing experimental archaeology projects in the reconstruction of roundhouses and other structures we can try to relate our results to the findings of the annual Castell Henllys excavation. The post-holes identified as the doorway were large and, because of this, it was thought that the doorposts might have been high enough for a tall person to walk through without stooping. To be this high the doorframe would have changed the angle of part of the roof and so would have had to support a considerable weight. The Oak doorposts were placed in the excavated post-holes of the Iron Age originals with packing stones. The bark and outer sapwood of the posts rotted away and the packing stones of the post-holes became loose. This has resulted in the doorposts gradually being pushed outwards by the pressure of the roof structure. It is probable that the original, Iron Age door-posts were stripped of their bark and sap wood to ensure that only the resilient, hard heartwood was placed in the ground. Experiments to determine whether charring the heartwood would help preserve it are currently underway at Castell Henllys. By 1992 the inner ring of posts had rotted away below ground due to the acid soils in west Wales. It was immediately apparent that, far from the posts helping to hold the roof up, the ring beam was actually holding the posts up. The posts had survived below ground for little more than ten years and we decided to replace them as if they actually were important in supporting the roof. We would expect the thatch on the roof to have survived for much longer than ten years and so each post had to be replaced without damaging the thatch. To achieve this a ramp had to be dug leading down to the bottom of each post-hole so that the top of the replacement posts could be placed under the ring beam and the base of the post knocked into the post-hole via the ramp. When the post-holes were excavated by Dr Mytum, his team found no evidence for ramped post-holes so we are quite sure that the internal posts were not replaced in this way. It seems most likely that the internal posts were not put in place to support the roof. The most likely use was to form internal divisions and an upper floor platform. It is also possible that the post-holes represented supports for a raised floor. A less likely scenario would be that they were used as a scaffold frame in the construction of the roof of the roundhouse. |
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