QUADRAT

QUADRAT researcher Cherie Edwards has published a joint article with Dr. Dirk Brandherm (Queen’s University Belfast),  Dr. Linda Boutoille (Queen’s University Belfast), and Dr. James O’Driscoll (University of Glasgow) in Antiquity. The paper will appear in Volume 99 (408) of Antiquity as an Open Access publication. It is available at: https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2025.10247 

Titled Brusselstown Ring: a nucleated settlement agglomeration in prehistoric Ireland”, the Antiquity article highlights the excavation work undertaken by Cherie’s PhD during excavation seasons in 2024 and 2025.  Based on the earlier LiDAR identification of more than 600 suspected house platforms on aerial survey data from Brusselstown Ring hillfort, four test excavations revealed evidence of Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age occupation, positioning the site as the largest nucleated settlement so far identified in prehistoric Ireland and Britain.

The confirmation that 600+ micro-topographical anomalies as house platforms dating to c. 1193–416 BC prompts a reassessment of Irish Late Bronze Age social and economic organisation, resource procurement and sustainability, and the respective role of dense settlement agglomeration. The identification of an agglomerated settlement of unmatched Irish scale that persisted for nearly seven centuries—including the transition from Late Bronze Age to Early Iron—has significant implications for understanding the foundations of proto-urban and early urbanisation in both Ireland and Europe.

The excavation and radiocarbon dating were funded by QUADRAT DTP.

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Cherie Edwards is a Doctoral Researcher in Archaeology & Geography at Queen’s University Belfast. She researches through examination of various elements such as field systems, settlements, ritual sites, trackways, and sites associated with industrial production/natural resource exploitation,n the project seeks to evaluate landscape memory, climate change and socio-economic drivers as factors in shifting upland settlement patterns previously observed in the archaeological record in the Bronze Age in Ireland and Northern Britain.

Dirk Brandherm is a Reader in Prehistory and Archaeology at Queen’s University Belfast. His research focuses on modelling methodologies to investigate earth systems.

Linda Boutoille is Dr. researcher and teaching assistant in Prehistory and Bronze age at Queen’s University Belfast. Her research focuses on tools of metalworkers (lithic and metallic) from the Atlantic Bronze Age, metallurgy of the Bronze Age from the mining to the object, image and position of the metalworker and the craftsman in the Bronze Age society and lithic and metallic Hoard.

James O’Driscoll is a Lecturer in Geospatial Archaeology at the University of Glasgow. His research focuses on, from a practical setting, how new technologies can be used and integrated into archaeological practice. He then uses these techniques to research a diverse set of thematic and period-specific interests.

Notes for Editors