Though clearly shown on the 1902 Ordnance Survey 25 inch map (Somerset XXXV.14, Revised: 1902, Published: 1904), the site was "identified" in 1983 after some schoolboys found eight silver-plated coins dating from 102BC to AD350.

[6] Hill forts developed in the Late Bronze and Early Iron Age, roughly the start of the first millennium BC.

It has been argued that they could have been military sites constructed in response to invasion from continental Europe, sites built by invaders, or a military reaction to social tensions caused by an increasing population and consequent pressure on agriculture.

[8] Archaeologist Barry Cunliffe believes that population increase still played a role and has stated "[the forts] provided defensive possibilities for the community at those times when the stress [of an increasing population] burst out into open warfare.

They would be functional as defensive strongholds when there were tensions and undoubtedly some of them were attacked and destroyed, but this was not the only, or even the most significant, factor in their construction".