The recognition of a mainly pastoral zone in eastern and northeastern Britain, during the Iron Age, is relevant to the Irish scene. In that island, large prehistoric fortifications are rare, and of such as can be regarded as hill forts or oppida, some were never completed. They appear to have been the work of refugee communities who were not the bearers to Ireland of La Tene fine metal work, chariotry and other manifestations of heroic society. These things are revealed in the early epic literature of Ireland as the concomitants of a warrior society whose wealth was counted in cattle and whose heroic exploits centered on cattle raiding. The pagan festivals belonged more to a pastoral rather than an agricultural cycle. These factors, taken with the wetter climate of Ireland, show how cattle raising continued to be the livelihood of the more significant body of Celtic overlords. It explains too the essentially dispersed nature of the population and how there came into being the innumerable small circular earthworks that formed the defences of individual permanent households which could be operated the short range transhumance and general animal husbandry as determined by the Irish geography.