Excavation of Iron Age settlement sites in Wales shows that the population was spread across the landscape. Instead of living in big sites that supported large communities, Welsh Iron Age settlement mostly consists of dispersed small farmsteads and hamlets (small villages) that would have supported one or a few families. The dispersed nature of the settlement suggests that there were no large political centres. It therefore seems that there was no distinctively hierarchical element to social organisation in Iron Age Wales.

There are a variety of types of these family settlements. Concentrated in the south-west of Wales are small hillfort-type enclosures which were hamlets surrounded by a large rampart or wall. The site at Walesland in Haverfordwest has evidence that a tall wooden gate tower adorned the entrance to the site. Inside, these settlements had a number of structures including wooden built round houses and four post granaries for storing grain. These structures are found in many of these settlement sites including the site at Castell Henllys in Pembrokeshire.