Ballynahatty

Excavations in a Neolithic Monumental Landscape

Barrie Hartwell, Sarah Gormley, Catriona Brogan , Caroline Malone

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Hardback

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English

Oxbow Books
01 August 2023

Sculpture; British & Irish history; Ancient history: to c 500 CE; Archaeological theory; Medieval European archaeology

Just six miles from the center of Belfast, County Down, on the plateau of Ballynahatty above the River Lagan, is one of Ireland's great Neolithic henge monuments: the 200 m wide Giant's Ring. For over a thousand years, this area was the focus of intense funerary ritual seemingly designed to send the dead to their ancestors and secure the land for the living. Scattered through the fields to the north and west of the Ring are flat cemeteries, standing stones, tombs, cists, and ring barrows ancient monuments that were leveled by the plough when the land was enclosed in the 18th and 19th centuries. A great 90 m long timber enclosure with an elaborate entrance and inner 'temple' was first observed through crop marks in aerial photos. Excavation of the site between 19901999 revealed a complex structure composed of over 400 postholes, many over 2 m deep. This was a building in the grand style, elegantly designed to control space, views, and access to an inner sanctum containing a platform for exposure of the dead. By 2550 BC, the timber 'temple' had been swept away in a massive conflagration and the remains dismantled. Ballynahatty was one of the last great public ceremonial enterprises known to have been constructed by the Neolithic farmers in Northern Ireland, an enterprise proclaiming their enigmatic religion, ancestral rights and territorial aspirations. This report reconstructs the remarkable building complex and explains the sophistication and organization of its construction and use. The report sets the site and excavation in the wider development of the Ballynahatty landscape and its study to the present day.

AUTHORS: Barrie Hartwell is Honorary Curator and formerly Senior Research Officer in Archaeology at Queens University Belfast. He directed excavations at Ballynahatty from 1990 to 2000 after discovering the site through aerial reconnaissance.

Catriona Brogan is a Research Fellow at Queen's University Belfast. She received her PhD in 2015 and has since gone on to work as a Research Assistant for the ERC funded Fragsus Project and was awarded a MSCA-IF grant in 2018 for the MaltaPot project.

Caroline Malone is Professor in the School of Natural and Built Environment, Queen's University, Belfast.

Edited by: Barrie Hartwell, Sarah Gormley, Catriona Brogan, Caroline Malone
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 298mm, Width: 210mm,
ISBN: 9781789259711
ISBN 10: 1789259711
Pages: 288
Publication Date: 01 August 2023
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Unspecified

Barrie Hartwell is Honorary Curator and formerly Senior Research Officer in Archaeology at Queens University Belfast. He directed excavations at Ballynahatty from 1990 to 2000 after discovering the site through aerial reconnaissance. Sarah Gormley is an archaeologist who has led a range of surveys, excavation and post-excavation programmes with the Centre for Archaeological Fieldwork, Queen’s University Belfast. Sarah organised the Data Structure Report for Ballynahatty and the excavations were the subject of her masters research. Catriona Brogan is a Research Fellow at Queen’s University Belfast. She received her PhD in 2015 and has since gone on to work as a Research Assistant for the ERC funded Fragsus Project and was awarded a MSCA-IF grant in 2018 for the MaltaPot project. Her main research interests are the Neolithic sites of Ireland and prehistoric pottery characterisation. Caroline Malone is Emeritus Professor of Prehistory at Queen’s University Belfast. She has undertaken archaeological fieldwork in Malta, Italy and Scotland, and since her first post as Curator of the Alexander Keiller Museum at Avebury, she has maintained a keen interest in ritual monuments in Neolithic Britain and Ireland and written extensively on European prehistory.