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Dyfneint's District of
Durnovaria
Ceann mor:
Position is currently vacant
Dorchester caries the name of its pre-historic inhabitants the Durotriges into the modern day. The modern county of Dorset is at the heart of their tribal area, which from the distribution of their coinage also included parts of Somerset and Wiltshire
At Mount Pleasant on the southeast edge of Dorchester lies one of the great henge monuments from the period of around 2000 BC. It bore some resembalance to Avebury, but its uprights were of timber rather than stone.
Another henge of a different sort was present at Maumbury Rings also on the outskirts of Dorchester (near the old Brewery) but this was converted into an amphitheatre by the army during the Roman occupation. Deep pits were one of its features perhaps to make contact with the gods of the underworld.
'Dorset' was identifiable in distributions of Pottery and (later) coinage by about 1000BC during the early Iron Age. The Romans when they arrived recorded the name of these people as the Durotriges. Their territory ran roughly to the Avon in the east, the Wyle in the north, and the the Axe in the west. The Durotriges were the builders of the most significant collection of Hillforts in Britain, (Maiden Castle, Hod Hill, Ham Hill, Hambledon, Eggardon, Badbury Rings and South Cadbury all belonged to them). Suetonius the Roman Historian says that Vespasian Captured 20 of them during the Claudian conquest.
These defended hilltops were in the process of developing into towns (Suetonius calls them oppida). Excavation at Maiden Castle suggests intensive occupation, and an arial photograph of 1924 shows the site of Hod Hill to be closely covered with the foundations of round huts which have all since been lost to modern ploughting. Smaller sites seem to have included a larger proportion of un developed land and were probably still places of refuge in time of trouble for surrounding farms rather than places of comerce.
There was an expanse of heavily populated settlement between Durnovaria and Maiden Castle but is is not clear whether this appeared before or after the Roman conquest. The tribal name appears in two work-party stones on Hadrian's Wall and in Ptolemy's Geography (AD 150). Ptolemy and one of the wall stones use the spelling Durotriges, the other stone says Durotrages.
In their later period the Durotriges minted silver stater coins, but unlike their eastern neighbours the Belgic(?) Atrebates and Trinovantes they never used alphabetical marks on the coins either for the names of kings or settlements. As far as it known they may have been illiterate. In the last centuries BC they were significant traders between Britain and Gaul with contacts with the Veneti of southern Armorica and the Coriosolites of the north. During the occupation the Venteti and Durotriges trade seems to have lost ground to the Dover Boulogne route perhaps because they had both opposed the Roman conquests. Sources: Roman Dorset, Bill Putnam, Tempus Publishing 2007, ISBN 978 07524 4104 7
The Discussions of Durnovaria:
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