 So my talk is a bit of a follow-on from Gordon's earlier, but here I'm going to talk more about the reemergence of fortified settlement in Ireland around the time of 400 to 680. And I'm going to specifically look into something that Patti touched on earlier, which is the reuse and integration of earlier prehistoric sites and their integration into elite settlements at this formative period of Ireland. So this is something that's really touched upon in Northern Britain by Richard Bradley and Steve Driscoll and in Anglo-Saxon England by Sarah and to a lesser extent in Ireland by Conor Newman. But when we look more deeply into the actual archaeology of all this we see that they are actually selectively appropriating hilltop fortified sites which they may deem as ancient seats of power and using that as a way to legitimate their contemporary place in society. But before we go into all that we'll look what's going on with enclosure in later prehistoric and early medieval Ireland. So a few people already today have noted that in Ireland we have a huge amount of settlement dividends in the form of up to 76,000 recorded ring forts thought to be up to 60,000. But when we look more specifically at the excavated sites so there are well in excess of 330 excavated examples and that really shows us that there's a much narrower chronology than just early medieval period. So usually what we see is univalent ring forts which are single bank and single ditch are built around 600 to 900 AD and then multi-valent examples which tend to be slightly larger may originate slightly earlier around the 4th 5th century AD. And when we look further back we see that there's quite a considerable gap in enclosure building and occupation up until this period around the 4th 5th century AD. All of our big hilltop sites tend to date to the Bronze Age and over the course of the last seven or eight years we dated quite a lot of these and rather than push that chronology forward we pushed it back into the Middle Bronze Age. And then we look at other internally ditched enclosures these famous ceremonial enclosures that are iron age and date. Very few of these have been dated but those that have like Navinfort and Tara tend to date around 400-100 BC and then very similar to what we see in Britain after about 200-100 BC we see an almost complete drop-off in fort building and occupation. So we have a period in Ireland of about 500 years where we see very very little in terms of enclosure. And then pretty much at the exact same time as in Scotland all of a sudden we get these much smaller forts tend to be multi-valid and they tend to appear around 350-400 AD. So unfortunately very few of these have been excavated on any rate scale but those that have like Grants and County Cork which has links with the Uiek moment which are a royal sect of the Oganut. And this enclosure has produced internal settlement with dates to around the 5th, 6th century AD but unfortunately the actual enclosing arms of this have never been dated. But excavations in 1940s have shown quite a considerable amount of high status prestige metalworking in the form of bronze working ironworking, glass, tin, lead and so on as well as it produced one of the largest symbolages of Roman ceramics in Ireland known to date. So obviously there's a very important elite settlement going on here and it's linked to high status craftworking and Roman material. But all of this material was found in the lower levels of bottom of the bank and that material would give a date range of about 450-500 AD so that suggests that the enclosure itself may predate that slightly so maybe even around 400 AD. And the latest excavations in the 1990s by Mario Donald actually produced a middle bronze age date from one of the excavation pits you see there in orange on the top right and that sealed other unexcavated layers and pits that potentially might suggest that there's some bronze age activity going on here. So when we look at these multivalent closures, tribal quadrivalent closures in general, we see this linked with Roman material and then also at other sites we see links with these much larger hilltop fortifications. So the Rathen of Sinence for example in Tara we have the latest phase of enclosure which is a quadrivalent enclosure linked with Roman material and this probably dates around the third century AD. More recently the Hill of War test excavation by Steve Davis produced some early medieval dates around 400-500 AD but also showed that the enclosure is surrounded by a much larger hill fort that's late bronze age in date. So even these newly constructed enclosures are being built either with reference to much larger hilltop settlements or with reference to earlier prehistoric monuments and activity in the landscape. And we see this on a broader level at some of the famous bronze age hillforts in Ireland at Dunengas for example which is late bronze age in date. We see the inner rampart of the fort being heavily reworked at the beginning of the early medieval period at which time they placed two burials at either side of the entrance to the fort. At down Patrick we see a large probable bronze age hillfort being reoccupied after a considerable period of silting up of the ditch. We see iron working within the ditch and we have early medieval pottery and then whenever there's small-scale excavation at these sites like at Nakana Kuig, Highs Fort, Mohan, Rahali we see early medieval activity. But it's really not until we get to the very large-scale excavations that we see really interesting things going on. So freestone hill here for example in Caldeekal Kinney. Again this is a fantastic uni valve hill fort, most likely late bronze age in date so no redder carbon dates but some of the material culture found underneath the bank in the ditch fill and within some of these circular hut platforms are proper late bronze age artifacts. So we probably see a period here of about 1,200 years where the site is abandoned, we see no activity and then all of a sudden in the third-port century AD we see the construction of a 40 meter diameter sub-circular enclosure and that delimited a considerable amount of Roman material and when I say a considerable amount I mean a very small amount of Roman material but for Ireland it's very considerable. So we have a Roman coin fort century AD, we have some toilet implements, a brooch and so on. And this has led people like O'Floin and Cahill to suggest that freestone hill, the enclosure we see here is actually a Romano-British rural shrine but that's quite tentative and really what it's showing here regardless of if it's a shrine or not is elite activity within an ancient seat of power after a considerable period of inactivity and importantly we see this elite activity associated with Roman material and at this time we see the reintroduction of the building of enclosure and we see a very similar picture at Clare in in County Tyrone, again a probable Bronze Age hill fort that's been reoccupied in the 6th century when a very large univalent ring fort is built and this is associated again with Roman material and and Mediterranean material later on and it's also used most likely as a panannular brooch workshop and this site like ronds and and like ratham citizens is probably associated with some elite royal settlement as well and even some of the traditional Bronze Age hill forts like Ratgal here we see Roman Iron Age and early medieval activity so here again we have 48 radio carbon dates from here the majority of those are late Bronze Age but we do see a large stone-built castle right in the middle of this and some of the excavation material produced some late Iron Age or Romano-British material like glass beads, a strap tag, bar toggle and so on and even prior to these excavations Orkin has suggested that Ratgal was the center for the E. Kinsler around 400 AD and later on he suggested that Ratgal was actually the Dunem identified in Ptolemy's map but more recently scholars would suggest that that Dunem is probably Brossestown Ring but regardless Brossestown Ring is another likely late Bronze Age hill fort so we're seeing regardless where it is it's probably linked with an ancient seat of power but looking more generally at this we see quite a number of these Bronze Age hill forts being reused as royal settlements most notably of which is the groan of Alec in County Donegal where you see this amazing univalent ring fort and that's surrounded by a very very large tri-valent widely spaced likely Bronze Age hill fort again so as well as the archaeological evidence we have the historical connections with some of these hilltop enclosures so for example we have the commons of Lloyd where Queen Maeve is supposedly to have camped in the epic Vatan, Fawn Hill is traditionally known as the burial place of Nile of the Nine Hossages, Friarstown Hill in County Limerick is associated with Tara Lucra which is described in the intoxication of the Ulstermen, we have Keshgorn here which is surrounding a very large cairn and is linked with Cuckolin and most notably then we have Caharokonry which is traditionally or in the historical texts is seen as the settlement of Koury who is one of Cuckolin's main antagonists but as well as the historical connections we do have some very nice archaeology linking this all together and and all of this comes together really at Nav and Fort where we see quite a lot of historical evidence suggesting this is an important ancient royal site and we see some evidence in the 4th to 7th century AD that this is being potentially settled by elites so we have some 4th century AD dates from the upper fill of the Psyche Ringditch here and we also have some material culture that dates around 6th, 7th century AD more recently we've done geophysical survey and we've found some potential rectangular structures abutting the ditch so this might suggest that we actually have early medieval settlement at around this important time period of four, five, six hundred AD but not only that, not only are these elites potentially settling these ancient royal sites but they're also integrating them into royal inauguration and assembly practices so Paddy's work at Nakh Glang and Rahina Madra has revealed a very large oval enclosure surrounding Rahina Madra Ringfort and he suggested that this is the core of Onak Lager which is an important assembly site in Kassel and although Paddy has suggested that this finds its closest comparanda with some of the Iron Age provincial sites like Navin and Tara it could just as easily be late bronze age but regardless what's happening here is these elites are integrating these large hilltop fortifications into their way of manifesting and exercising power and status during this period and I would suggest that there's probably a lot more of these enclosures to be found here's the one we found earlier at the Wrath of Don Mace and this is a site that's very similar to some of the nuclear hill forts we see in Scotland and we have this craggy outcrop that's terraced excavations by Hodgkinson has shown that there are eight century or eight ninth century earthworks surrounding the site and then some aerial photographs and some photograms here have shown some large probably ceremonial enclosure here on the hilltop next to it and then we have very like Rahina Madra we have this Unibelt Ringfort and then we have a very slight large oval enclosure surrounding that so as well as elites using these places for settlement but they're also using them for assembly practices and ceremonies so putting this all together here we're seeing in Ireland very similar to Scotland and Wales and the reuse of ancient seats of power to legitimate elite culture and the status of an elite and this is particularly important at an early stage of the early medieval period where we're seeing quite a lot of change in terms of political and cultural activity and Richard Bradley has suggested that this link with the past this physical link with the past would have been particularly important at this traditional period throughout early medieval Ireland Britain and in other parts of Europe but more specifically he notes that these elites were very selective in their appropriation of older monuments and we're seeing that in Ireland too where at the beginning of the early medieval period they're specifically targeting these large hilltop fortified ancient sites as settlements and integrating them with other royal practices and on a broader note with regards to the newly created enclosures we see similar things happening in Ireland and in Scotland so we see multivalent closures like Iran's which are much smaller than earlier hilltop sites very similar to Scotland where you see places like Rhine which are much much smaller than the Iron Age sites they're multivalent they're associated with Roman elite material they're springing up around 350 400 AD and very although very few have been excavated those that have shown that they are going out of use around 600 AD and that's when we're getting a separation of our settlement patterns in Ireland we're getting what's probably seen as the more traditional hierarchical level of settlement where we have univalent multivalent closures associated with free farmers and and kings whereas in Scotland we're just seeing the elite centers the hilltop sites so I'm going to leave it at that I'm well over time so thank you very much