2001:027 - NAVAN, Armagh

A further small investigation was carried out by EHS on the junction between the newly discovered, triple-slotted Site C and the triple ring-slots of Site A, Phase A, which lay to the south. The excavation in 2001 showed that the rings were contemporary, forming a large figure-of-eight, 50m on its long axis, and that in the west the rings came together, outer to outer and middle to middle. The inner slots appear to end before joining. The joining slots formed a ‘nesting’ set of inward-pointing Vs and the fills of the pairs of joining slots merged indistinguishably. The earliest slots, the middle ones of both sets A and C, were relatively shallow with clean infilling of redeposited subsoil. The outer slots contained a dense seam of red-burnt material (including fuel-ash slag) running down their inner slopes for up to 0.6m. Some of this material had certainly burned in situ, presumably before being covered by the main fill of the slots (but there was no indication that the burnt material represented remains of a formal structure in situ). The innermost slots in both sets of rings contained clear evidence for ‘post-and-plank’ walling which had burned down, evidently the same conflagration that produced the burnt material in the inner slopes of the outer slots.

It is assumed that there was a narrow gap between the ends of the inner slots, on east and west, to allow communication between the two rings on a north–south axis. It is also assumed that the merging of the two sets of three concentric ring-slots on the east side of the gap mirrored the arrangement uncovered on the west.

Analogy with the other Iron Age figures-of-eight uncovered at Navan Site B and Knockaulin, Co. Kildare (‘Rose’ phase), suggested that there should be a gap in the east side of the newly discovered 30m-diameter ring-slots of Site C. A small trench was opened in the appropriate location and the ring-slots indeed terminated, forming the northern side of a gap. The outer slot ended some metres to the north of the gap, in advance of the other two, and a 2m length of palisade slot, probably containing closely spaced posts, ran off at right angles to the east from its terminal. This appears to replicate the plan of the equivalent feature at Knockaulin (although the features are less substantial) and may indicate the position of an original entrance to the Navan enclosure, low down on the east side of the hill. No further work on the ring of Site C is contemplated, and future fieldwork will concentrate on tracing the course of its associated palisade(s) and on locating the original entrance to Navan Fort.

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