The site of a 3,000-year-old pre-Celtic hilltop fort, which served as a regional capital in the southwest, should be declared a national monument and protected as such, according to the archaeologist who led a three-year dig at the site.
Prof William O'Brien of the department of archaeology at University College Cork said the oval-shaped fort near Knockavilla, Innishannon, overlooking the Lee Valley, was built about 1200 BC, making it the oldest known prehistoric hill fort in Ireland.
Prof O'Brien led a team of archaeologists from UCC on an extensive survey and excavation of the 169-metre high site. The team is writing up its report which it hopes will help to persuade the Government to declare the site a national monument.
"This is a particularly significant site. It dates from some 500 years before the Celts arrived in Ireland so it was built by the indigenous Irish," said Prof O'Brien.
"Its antiquity and size, covering about eight hectares, suggest it was one of the most important prehistoric settlements in the southwest."
Prof O'Brien paid tribute to the Irish Research Council for Humanities and Social Sciences and the Royal Irish Academy for providing financial support for the project while he also thanked the owners of the hilltop site, the O'Sullivan and Healy families, for their co-operation with the dig.
According to Prof O'Brien, the site of the hill fort in the townland of Clashanimud (Trench of the Timbers) gave it commanding views as far away as the Galtees and the Boggeraghs to the north, the Sheha Mountains to the southwest and to the Paps and Reeks to the west. Its defences included an outer enclosure 1.02km in perimeter and surrounded by a stone-faced field bank topped with a wattle palisade, and an inner 0.8km enclosure, comprising an earthen and stone bank topped with a heavy oak palisade.
According to Prof O'Brien, the late Bronze Age period in Ireland was a period of great political turmoil and endemic warfare, marked by the emergence of chiefdom societies whose territories centred on hilltop forts located in rich agricultural lands.
"You are talking here about warfare at an interregional level. There would have been hill fort groups up in the area which is now Limerick and Tipperary, or even Kerry, and they would have been in warfare with this Cork political group.
"Arguably this was Cork's first capital but our excavations reveal evidence of deliberate burning of the inner palisade fence shortly after the hill fort was built and this appears to have been a deliberate act of war and it was never rebuilt or occupied after its destruction."