A Hillfort Through Time : Excavations at Rathgall, County Wicklow

Rathgall Hillfort is a site of exceptional importance for Irish archaeology, with its concentration of artifactual evidence unmatched by anywhere else in the country.

This publication presents the excavations at Rathgall, Rath East, Co. Wicklow, conducted by Barry Raftery, retired Professor of Celtic Archaeology at University College Dublin. Raftery published aspects of the site, primarily in the 1970s (Raftery 1970a; 1970b; 1971; 1972; 1973; 1975; 1976; 2004; Raftery and Henderson 1987), and was working on a comprehensive account but fell ill and passed away before he could finalize the publication or integrate the results of the specialist analysis. The present volume aims to present his work and to integrate it with these new data, augmented and expanded in a final phase of post-excavation analysis conducted between 2010 and 2013.Raftery’s voice is conserved in this as much as possible. In places, editorial comments add new information or clarifications. In other sections, his draft text is presented and juxtaposed with the discussion of alternative scenarios that emerged in the recent phase of post-excavation work. In fact, significant parts of the post-excavation analysis were finalized as part of this last phase of the publication project, including the finalization and integration of site drawings and photographsRaftery’s discussion of aspects of the site is presented as topical discussions where draft text was present in the archive. He also left a list of questions or ‘points to ponder’, and it is hoped that the work done as part of this project will provide answers to some of these.