Large Hillfort Settlement Identified in Ireland

COUNTY WICKLOW, IRELAND—More than 600 possible dwelling platforms and a cistern have been identified at Ireland’s Brusselstown Ring hillfort by Dirk Brandherm of Queen’s University Belfast and his colleagues, according to a Phys.org report. The site, one of the 13 large enclosures in the Baltinglass hillfort cluster in eastern Ireland, is thought to have been occupied during the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age, between about 1193 and 410 B.C. The Brusselstown Ring features two ramparts—the outer ring also encloses a Neolithic hillfort. Nearly 100 of the possible roundhouse platforms in the Brusselstown Ring are within the inner rampart. The rest are situated between the inner wall and the outer wall. A stream once flowed into the possible cistern, which had a flat interior and was outlined with large stones, unlike the other structures at the site. “This pattern contrasts sharply with the more typical form of prehistoric Irish settlements, which generally consist of one to five dwellings,” said team member Cherie Edwards of Queen’s University Belfast. “Such evidence suggests that proto-urban development in Northern Europe may have occurred nearly 500 years earlier than traditionally recognized,” she explained. Read the original scholarly article about this research in Antiquity. To read about hilltop sites elsewhere in the British Isles, go to "Letter from Wales: Hillforts of the Iron Age."