A prehistoric site in Ireland was one of the world’s first towns and a major hub of production, according to new study.
Haughey's Fort near Armagh in Northern Ireland was a carefully planned settlement, which supported craft production and rituals on an unprecedented scale from around 1200BC. The region was already noted as the Iron Age capital of Ulster, with early medieval literary connections as well, and the latest study found that it was also a thriving and complex hub in the Late Bronze Age.
The study found evidence of over 200 possible wooden domestic structures at Haughey's Fort, pointing to the presence of a dense and structured settlement far exceeding what would be expected of a typical hillfort in the area nearly 3,000 years ago.
“Our research demonstrates a level of scale, organisation, and connectivity in Bronze Age Ireland that has not been fully recognised until now,” said James O'Driscoll, an author of the study published in the journal Antiquity.
There were large circular buildings, some up to 30m in diameter, around the domestic structures. These were likely institutional or communal spaces, bolstering the thesis that the region was a well-connected "urban" centre, archaeologists from the University of Glasgow said.
Digs at the site revealed evidence of specialist bronze-working, gold-working, large-scale feasting, and high-status artefacts, suggesting the “town” had thriving economic activity and social organisation. The imported objects found at the site indicated long-distance connections to regions as far away as Iberia and central Europe.
Haughey's Fort itself was part of a much wider complex that included an artificially constructed pool, where archaeologists discovered evidence of ritual deposition, weapon moulds, animal remains, and fragments of human bone.
A large avenue fenced in wood linked the fort to the pool and likely facilitated ceremonial processions, researchers said.
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The fort likely featured an 109-hectare outer enclosure, the equivalent of 155 football pitches, making it one of the largest known archaeological monuments in Ireland or Britain.
“The evidence from Haughey's Fort points to a large, densely occupied settlement where craft production, exchange, and communal activity were all closely integrated,” Mr O'Driscoll said.
The findings, researchers noted, indicated that Haughey's Fort was one of the earliest examples of an “urban centre”, where large, organised settlements were beginning to take shape around 3,000 years ago. “This fundamentally changes how we understand the site and highlights the extent to which communities in Ireland were connected to broader developments across Bronze Age Europe,” Mr O'Driscoll said.
