Creativity, History and Technology

Unveiling of History

From 1968-1975, apart from limited test excavation in the northern half of the enclosure and some trenches across the rampart and at the entrance on the east, excavation concentrated on the summit area.

Geophysical prospection consisted of a magnetometer survey of the whole area within the enclosing bank and ditch with intensive survey. On the summit where resistivity survey was also undertaken: the only substantial anomalies correlated with an area of intensive burning. The external bank and internal ditch are damaged in numerous places by small, recent quarries to extract the bedrock. The ditch is interrupted by a causeway on the east and this seems to be the original entrance.

Though this area had also been damaged by quarrying, excavation confirmed the existence of an 8m wide roadway with the remains of a drystone revetment or kerb on either side; it did not have a prepared surface nor did it show any ruts.

Its axis was aligned on the summit of the hill. This and the fact that the causeway proved to be undug bedrock confirmed the impression that this was an original entrance.The entrance appeared quite simple: the ends of the bank terminated without trace of revetting in either timber or stone and no evidence of a timber gate was found. The bank was of simple dump construction and the ditch was filled with natural silting.

Navan, Co Armagh

The name 'Navan complex' has been given to a concentration of archaeological monuments in an area of intense Late Prehistoric activity stretching for just over a kilometre around Navan Fort, Co Armagh.

This complex is considered to be the archaeological manifestation of Emain Macha, the Capital of Ulaidh in early Irish literary and pseudo-historical sources.

Agricultural and other activities have damaged the sites, but these events have also resulted in a large number of stray archaeological finds, many of them of Late Prehistoric date. Over forty sites of possible prehistoric date have been identified, many of them by aerial photography. Some 46 actual or possible sites have been recorded, and range from such substantial monuments as the enclosure known as Navan Fort to a number of more ephemeral cropmarks.

There are two zones of prehistoric activity: one comprises the Navan enclosure, which contains a mound, placed just centre, and a ring ditch. To the North are the sites of two mounds of possible 4th millennium BC date, thought to have been small passage tombs and to the northeast is a small natural lake now known as Loughnashade. The focus of the western zone is a multivallate hillfort known as Haughey's Fort, and to its northeast is an artificial pond traditionally known as the King's Stables. The eastern zone is represented by the ecclesiastical centre at Armagh, 2.6 km to the east.

The excavations in the Navan enclosure in the central zone suggests that this became the focus of later activity perhaps coinciding with the abandonment of Haughey's Fort in or about the 10th century BC. Some activity did continue there; it was recalled that one pit, which contained a small iron object, possibly a strap handle, produced charcoal samples with radiocarbon dates, which ranged from 400-200 BC.