[Latin ‘rampart’]. Properly, a heaped rampart of earth as, for instance, around Roman military camps, towns and regional fortifications. These were often topped with stakes. The early English historian Bede (673-735) also used the term, as is sometimes done today, to describe the whole ‘assemblage’ of two ramparts and ditch which back Hadrian’s Wall.
The Macmillan dictionary of archaeology, Ruth D. Whitehouse, 1983Copied