Navigating complexity: new discoveries in the Bronze Age landscape of Haughey’s Fort, Northern Ireland

Adjacent to the well-known Iron Age ceremonial centre of Navan Fort in Northern Ireland, an expansive<br/>complex of Late Bronze Age monuments was discovered in the 1990s. Centred on the hillfort known as<br/>Haughey’s Fort, this complex includes several unusual monuments, such as an artificially constructed<br/>ritual pool and a linear earthwork. Recent re-analysis of this landscape, incorporating a suite of methods<br/>including new targeted excavations, geophysical prospection, topographical surveys, and isotopic<br/>studies, has begun to transform our understanding. These investigations, combined with previous<br/>studies, have revealed a multifaceted system of large-scale settlement and craftworking, long-distance<br/>trade, agricultural centralisation, and ritual and religious activities, all integrated within the complex,<br/>which itself is enclosed by a massive, newly discovered 109-hectare hillfort. This paper presents these<br/>new findings, contextualises them within the Irish and European Bronze Age, and explores how the scale<br/>of the evidence challenges previous models of social complexity.