3,000-year-old Irish Bronze Age site may be one of Europe’s earliest ‘town-like’ settlements
Published: 30 June 2026
A Bronze Age site in Ireland may be among Western Europe’s earliest organised settlements
A major prehistoric centre in Ireland was among the first large, organised settlements to develop in Western Europe more than 3,000 years ago, new research reveals.
A 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.
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 metres in diameter and are highly likely to be institutional or communal spaces reinforcing the idea that this was an “urban” centre.
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 artefacts. All of this highlights both economic activity and social organisation, 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 moulds, 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.
Dr O’Driscoll, Lecturer in Geospatial Archaeology, at Glasgow’s School of Humanities, says: “Our research demonstrates a level of scale, organisation and connectivity in Bronze Age Ireland that has not been fully recognised 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 centre, showing that 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.”
Dr Patrick Gleeson, Senior Lecturer in Early Medieval Archaeology, at Queen’s School of the Natural and Built Environment, comments: “The study makes it clear that we are not looking at isolated monuments, but at a single, highly organised landscape. Our work shows that Haughey’s Fort, the King’s Stables, and the Creeveroe Earthworks were all part of an interconnected system, carefully structured to bring together settlement, production and ritual.
“This allows us to reinterpret the entire complex on a new scale. It represents one of the most extensive and coherent Late Bronze Age landscapes in Western Europe, and shows how communities actively organised movement, belief and authority across a monumental setting.”
The study also shows there is a clear functional zoning across the landscape, with production, feasting and settlement focused at Haughey’s Fort, while ritual deposition and ideological practices were concentrated at the King’s Stables. Together, these elements reveal a highly organised system and engineered landscape.
Dr O’Driscoll and Dr Gleeson in their paper conclude: “Individually, Haughey’s Fort, the King’s Stables and The Creeveroe Earthworks are unique and important monuments. Collectively, they constitute an unparallelled interconnected monumental landscape, serving as a regional hub of power, production, and ritual in the Late Bronze Age. The scale and uniqueness of this landscape offer valuable insight into the complexity and influence of Late Bronze Age communities, significantly contributing to our broader understanding of social organisation, economic activity, and ritual practice within European prehistory.”
First published: 30 June 2026