The previous blog post focused on a paper I
will present at an Agricultural
History Society of Ireland (AHSI) conference next month. The paper will investigate
archaeobotanical and other evidence for flax in prehistoric northern Europe. As
well as the lecture programme, the conference will include several excursions, one
of which will be a visit to Navan Fort. During the excursion, Prof. Jim Mallory,
Prof. Mike Baillie and I will present results from our research into the archaeology,
agriculture and environment of the Navan complex of archaeological sites.
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| Location of Haughey’s Fort, Co. Armagh within the Navan complex (after Mallory and Lynn 2002) |
Emain
Macha, the legendary seat of the kings of
Ulster, has long been identified with the Navan complex of archaeological
activity. This complex comprises more than a dozen prehistoric monuments. The
major portion of the Navan complex is anchored between two large enclosures. On
the east is Navan Fort, which is defined by a hengiform bank-and-ditch
enclosure containing a ring-work and a mound. The main phases of activity at
Navan Fort date to the Late Bronze Age to Iron Age. At the eastern base of the
drumlin on which the enclosure is located lies Loughnashade, a small lake from
whose marshy edge four large Iron Age horns were recovered. The western
monument is Haughey’s Fort, a trivallate Late Bronze Age hillfort whose
elliptical shape has a maximum diameter of c. 340m. Nearby is the King’s
Stables, a Late Bronze Age artificial pool from which both animal and human
remains have been recovered. Many of the archaeological remains within the Navan
complex appear to represent ritual behaviour rather than secular occupation,
assuming that such a distinction can be made. The only possible settlement site
is Haughey’s Fort. At the AHSI excursion, I will talk about my work on the plant
remains recovered from excavations at Haughey’s Fort (McClatchie 2014).
A large assemblage of cereal grains
was found at Haughey’s Fort. Naked barley was the dominant
cereal, with occasional evidence for hulled barley, possible emmer wheat and
possible naked wheat. Naked barley is often the dominant cereal at Late Bronze
Age sites in Ireland, but it fell out of favour over the following millennia. Hulled barley is the type of barley that is most often grown in modern-day Ireland.
It appears that the cereal deposits
from Haughey’s Fort were at a relatively late stage of processing. Most
‘contaminants’, such as arable weed seeds and cereal chaff, had been removed,
and the crop was largely ready for consumption. When I examined the arable
seeds that remained, I found that they reflected diverse ecological
environments, with both mildly acidic and slightly calcareous environments
represented, as well as wet and free-draining sediments. It is possible that
this mixed weed assemblage from Haughey’s Fort represents crops harvested from
a variety of environments or farms, perhaps representing the labours of different
communities and signalling the bringing together of crops to a centralised
location. The hillfort may therefore have functioned as a storage or distribution
centre, or perhaps an assembly location where large-scale consumption, such as feasting, took place.
Further
results from my work on the Haughey’s Fort plant remains can be found in the McClatchie
2014 paper. The conference, “Farming and local economies today and yesteryear
in north-eastern Ireland”, will take place from 5th to 7th
June 2015 in Armagh, Northern Ireland. For further information on the
conference, see here.
Reference
Mallory JP, Lynn CJ (2002) Recent excavations and speculations on the Navan complex. Antiquity 76, 532-541.
McClatchie M (2014) Food production in the
Bronze Age: analysis of plant macro-remains from Haughey's Fort, Co. Armagh. Emania 22, 33-48.
