This excavation project aims to investigate the chronology, form, character and occupation of the hilltop enclosure of Meillionydd, near Rhiw, on the Llŷn peninsula in northwest Wales.
Meillionydd is a double ringwork enclosure – this is a type of hilltop enclosure that is found mostly on the Llŷn peninsula. These settlements are found on low hilltops and they consist of two circular banks of earth and stone with a handful of internal roundhouses inside. The enclosures are likely to have been the permanent homes of several family groups, and they were places where larger communal gatherings took place.
Our excavation seasons, carried out in July in 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013 as well as in June and July in 2014 and 2015, have demonstrated that Meillionydd was occupied for a relatively long period of time and that we have evidence for early wooden roundhouses and a ditched enclosure, and later stone roundhouses and concentric enclosure banks. Radiocarbon dating suggests that Meillionydd dates at least from between c. 800 – 200 cal. BC – from the end of the Late Bronze Age to the middle of the Middle Iron Age.