3,000-year-old Irish Bronze Age site may be one of Europe's earliest 'town-like' settlements Lisa Lock Scientific Editor Robert Egan Senior Editor A major prehistoric center in Ireland was among the first large, organized settlements to develop in Western Europe more than 3,000 years ago, new research reveals. The study, published today in Antiquity, identifies Haughey's Fort, near Armagh in Northern Ireland, as the focal point of a vast and carefully planned landscape where settlement, craft production and ritual were brought together at an unprecedented scale from around 1200 BC. The Navan prehistoric complex is best known as the Iron Age capital of Ulster and has early medieval literary connections, but the research shows that the area was already a thriving and complex hub in the Late Bronze Age.

Led by Dr. James O'Driscoll, University of Glasgow, and Dr. Patrick Gleeson, Queen's University Belfast, the research combines advanced remote sensing, geophysical survey, targeted excavation, and archival reassessment and analysis.

Evidence of a planned hub It identifies evidence for more than 200 possible wooden domestic structures at Haughey's Fort, indicating a dense and structured settlement far exceeding what would be expected of a typical hillfort. Sitting alongside these domestic structures are large circular buildings. Some of these are up to 30 meters (98 feet) in diameter and are highly likely to be institutional or communal spaces, reinforcing the idea that this was an "urban" center.

The paper also says the landscape points to a thriving and well-connected Bronze Age community. There is evidence of specialist bronze- and gold-working, large-scale feasting, and the presence of high-status artifacts. All of this highlights both economic activity and social organization, while imported objects indicate long-distance connections to regions as far away as the Iberian Peninsula and Central Europe.

Haughey's Fort formed part of a much wider complex including the King's Stables, a unique artificially constructed pool used for ritual deposition, where weapon molds, animal remains and fragments of human bone were placed; a palisade (or very large wooden fence)-lined ceremonial avenue physically and symbolically linked the fort to the pool, likely facilitating formal processions; and the Creeveroe Earthworks, reinterpreted in this study as a vast 109-hectare outer enclosure (the equivalent of 155 football pitches), making the site one of the largest known archaeological monuments in Ireland or Britain. Researchers recast the wider landscape Dr. O'Driscoll, lecturer in geospatial archaeology at Glasgow's School of Humanities, says, "Our research demonstrates a level of scale, organization and connectivity in Bronze Age Ireland that has not been fully recognized until now.

The evidence from Haughey's Fort points to a large, densely occupied settlement where craft production, exchange and communal activity were all closely integrated. "In a wider Western European context, this places Haughey's Fort among the clearest examples of a proto-urban center, showing that large, organized settlements were beginning to take shape around 3,000 years ago.