Overview
- Airborne surveys in 2017 and 2022 mapped more than 600 anomalies consistent with house platforms, with excavations confirming the settlement’s dense layout.
- Researchers located 98 potential roundhouse footprints within the inner enclosure and a possible further 509 between the inner and outer ramparts.
- The complex enclosure spans multiple hills with two widely spaced embankments that also encompass the Neolithic site known as Spinas Hill 1.
- Excavations revealed a stone-lined feature likely fed by a stream that may be a water cistern, a first for an Irish hillfort if confirmed.
- The Queen’s University Belfast study, published by Cambridge University Press and awarded the Prehistoric Society’s James Dyer prize, argues for earlier proto-urban development and notes that fieldwork continues.