The Celts lived in fortified settlements surrounded by banks and ditches known as hillforts. As the name would suggest, these hillforts were usually built on high ground but many of them have also been located on low-lying land. While these hillforts can be found across Europe, there are over 4,000 of them across Britain and Ireland alone. Iron Age Britain was a violent place to live and hillforts were easier to defend, although there has generally been little evidence to prove there was fighting at the hillforts that have been excavated so far.
The large communities and extended families who lived in hillforts had simple homes called roundhouses, which only had one room. Thanks to archaeological excavations of hillforts over the years, we have some understanding of what roundhouses looked like in the Iron Age. However, a lack of conclusive evidence also means there are many aspects of a roundhouse, such as the inside, that we can only speculate about.