The series of earthworks known collectively as the Bokerley Dyke straddles Dorset and Hampshire, near Martin Down and Cranbourne Chase, where another earthwork known as the Grim's Dyke runs. The dyke was first constructed either in the Late Bronze or Early Iron Age, possibly marking a tribal boundary between the Durotriges (the 'inhabitants of the hard ground') and the Atrebates, a Belgic tribe with connections to mainland Gaul.
Archaeological evidence and Caesar's accounts testify to the Belgae being a well-established confederation that expanded across the Channel between 200 and 100 B.C.E, establishing tribal centres in Venta Belgarum (Winchester) and Calleva Atrebatum (Silchester). The Durotriges may well have been forced out of their homeland by the Belgae, and to avoid further conflict, constructed the Bokerely Dyke (as well as the Grim's Dyke nearby) to clearly demarcate their territory. The dyke was probably not guarded as a military frontier, but it must have held a symbolic importance, as shortly after the Roman conquest the Ackerely Dyke, a road running from Sorviodunum to Vindocladia, was paved right through the old dyke, as well as through neolithic barrows, a clear message that Rome would not recognise 'barbarian' boundaries and ancestral sites.
For the next three hundred years, little changed, until around 325 C.E, when the Roman road running through the dyke was blocked. No usurpers or local rebellions are documented for this period in Roman Britain, so it's unclear why this happened. Perhaps it had something to do with Constantine's reorganisation of the army in 326, with forces split into tribally-aligned comitatenses and limitanei in frontier provinces. By the later fourth century at least, the Durotriges were regarded as a distinct tribal entity who were recruited for repairing Roman infrastructure such as Hadrian's Wall; Constantine's reforms might have emboldened local tribal elites to restore their old defences. Archaeologist, C.F.C. Hawkes, drawing on the research of Pitt-Rivers. Limitanei also served as an ad-hoc police force in some areas, and tended to their own farmland. The Bokerley dyke's rebuilding might then have been a response to local banditry.
The next stage in the development of Bokerley Dyke happened, according to C.F.C. Hawke, Pitt-Rivers and others, after 364, where the Roman road was fully blocked and the dyke was extended northward. This can probably be connected with the Great Conspiracy of 367 - 9, where local tribal authorities, who were entrusted with Britain's defence and are called by Ammias Marcinellinus areani or arcani, (meaning 'sheep-farmers' or 'the secret ones'), openly collaborated with Picts, Scots, Saxons and Attacotti (probably Irish tribes) to overthrow Roman civil administration as far as Londinium. The fact that part of the dyke that blocked the road was apparently a decade or so later removed suggests that its construction was either an emergency barrier against the invaders and their Romano-British allies, or that local Britons rebuilt the dyke, exploiting the sudden absence of Roman authority to restore old tribal boundaries.
At some point after 393, the dyke was again extended; the usurpations of Magnus Maximus and Eugenius must have had a considerable affect on the local population, particularly conscripted soldiers and their families who had been poorly paid and sent to fight in faraway provinces for poorly understood religious motives, which was evident at the Battle of the Frigidus in 393. Welsh tradition in the form of genealogies imply that Maximus organised, or allowed the independence of, frontier kingdoms with their own dynasties, incorporating Irish immigrants as foederati in Demetia (Dyfed), Venedotia (Gwynedd), or restoring pre-Roman polities such as Venta Silurum (Gwent), once the tribal capital of the Silures. A similar situation occurred right after the Great Conspiracy north of Hadrian's wall, with the genealogies of Strathclyde and Gododdin (Lothian) listing regional rulers called Clemens and Paternus, respectively. Perhaps the Durotriges, like the Dumnonii were to later, attempted to run affairs independently as Roman rule disintegrated, although no written evidence proves this.
In the immediate post-Roman period, civilian life clung on to major urban centres, as it was not until the end of the 5th century that major hillforts in and around Dorset and the West Country, such as the famous South Cadbury/Camalet hillfort, were reoccupied as watchpoints and power centres of regional lords. Gloucester (Glevum/Glouvia) remained a bustling urban settlement for some time, as did Winchester (Venta/Cair Guinntguic), where in the 420s St. Germanus most likely converted Elafius, one of the 'leading men of the country' according to his vita, as well as Dorchester (Duronovaria/Cair Durnac). This might explain why the Roman road was not closed off in these period.
Pitt-Rivers' discovery of cattle bones buried in nearby enclosures suggests a possible function for the dyke as a defence against cattle raiding, as pastoralism became more widespread with the collapse of trade and exchange. The importance of cattle is evident not just from archaeology, such as at Yeavering, where an enclosure built to store cattle carcasses given as tribute was used in the late fifth and early sixth centuries, but in the heroic poetry of the period, both in Britain and Ireland.
Overall, though, it likely returned to being a tribal defensive boundary as it had been before the Romans arrived, much like the Wansdyke to the west, although that was mostly built in the post-Roman period in two stages; in the late 5th century, during the low point of the Romano-British defence before the Battle of Mons Badonicus and other victories, and in the late 6th century, as a doomed measure to hold back Wessex and the Hwicce after the Battle of Deorham in 577.
The fact that Anglo-Saxon charters refer to Bokerley dyke simply as the 'long ditch', and that lowland British culture appears (as the Lady St Mary's Church in Wareham has shown) to have survived into the mid-7th century, might give weight to the idea that the dyke became a recognised barrier between Saxons and Britons - especially since only one or two Brittonic inscriptions have been found west of the dyke. When it fell out of use is impossible to tell, but the effectiveness of the dykes was clear to later Anglo-Saxon rulers; Offa's dyke, for instance, was built to demarcate Mercia from Powys using existing Iron Age and post-Roman earthworks.
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