Badbury Rings

Badbury is a strong candidate for the location of Arthur’s battle of Baddon. It is a large Iron Age hillfort located at the intersection of Roman roads. These connect it to Poole Harbour, the Ridgeway, Salisbury (Sorbiodunum) and Dorchester (Durnovaria). The entries for Cerdic and Cynric in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle suggest it would have been an area fought over by the emerging kingdom of Wessex. It is close to the Roman military base at Hod Hill which is next to the River Stour and used the port at Hengistbury Head.

An archaeological excavation took place at Badbury in 2004. Besides the expected material from the Iron Age, the finds included a late Roman bronze spiral ring on a chalk floor which had charcoal, all three samples of which were dated to the period 480 to 520.

Shapwick, a site close to Badbury rings, has been identified with the name Vindocladia which appears in the Antonine Itinerary. The site was the second largest in Roman Dorset, after Dorchester. Finds discovered near the ring indicate the presence of a Romano-Celtic temple. The structure’s religious purpose was first identified in 1975 by Bryan Pybus. Its location is identified in figs. 1 and 2.

Martin Papworth. 2014, Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History & Archaeological Society Vol. 135

Fig. 2. National Trust Heritage Records

Fig. 3. Epigraphic Database Heidelberg

Koch wrote Badon- appears to have the Gallo-Brittonic divine suffix as can be seen in the names of goddesses Epona and Matrona.¹ This temple may well have been dedicated to the goddesses Badones Reginae as they are probably identified in the name Mons Badonicus.²
Gildas talks of obsessionis badonici montis which contains the adjective Badonicus, suggesting the possibility the hill was named after individuals.
There is a votive inscription from Apulum, that is modern day Alba Iulia in Romania, with their names, see fig. 3.

Badbury rings 2000 years ago. ‘Wessex Hillforts and Habitats Project’.

Badbury rings lidar image. ‘Wessex Hillforts and Habitats Project’.

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1. Koch, J.T., (ed.) 2006, 152. ^˄
2. Szabó, C., Boda, I., 2019, 11. ^˄

The word ‘map’ in the Welsh genealogies

E. W. B. Nicholson explained the origin of the use of the word ‘ap’ in the Welsh genealogies, see The Dynasty of Cunedag and the ‘Harleian Genealogies’. Take HG 1b. Notice the repetition in the names: Cein, Guorcein, Doli, Guordoli, Dumn and Gurdumn. In the manuscript the names are listed in columns preceded by the word ‘map’ as indicated by Phillimore, see The Annales Cambriae and Old-Welsh Genealogies from Harleian MS 3859. These six names appear thus:

map. Cein.
map. Guorcein.
map. doli.
map. Guordoli.
map. dumn.
map. Gurdumn.

Nicholson explains (p. 65) that the manuscript we have is a copy of an original which was of a different form. He writes:

My next point is that in their original form these were not all of them certainly ‘genealogies’ in the modern sense of the word-that, in fact, No. 1 is not a genealogy but a table of succession. Part, at least, of the original table had no map’s, but the preposition guor, ‘over’, in their place.

He then presents how the original table would have shown these names:

guor cein doli
guor doli dumn
guor dumn Amgueryt

In the later versions of the manuscript, the word ‘guor’ was replaced by the word ‘map’ at the start of each line presumably because it involved less repetition, there being no need to restate the last name in one line as the first name in the next. However, accidently the ‘guor’ in just the above three lines of the text were left in, thus generating three fictitious names: Guorcein, Guordoli and Gurdumn. Nicholson goes on to state:

In other words, we have before us what may not be a table of direct blood-descent at all, but only of succession

The above three lines of the text would thus read:

Before Cein, Doli
Before Doli, Dumn
Before Dumn, Amgueryt

showing no assertion of a son-to-father relationship.