Ringfort
However, many hitherto unknown ringforts have been found thanks to early Ordnance Survey maps, aerial photography, and the archaeological work that has accompanied road-building.
In Cornwall,[1] parts of Devon, and south Wales, enclosed settlements share many characteristics with their Irish counterparts,[6] including the circular shape and souterrains (fogous), and their continuing occupation from the Iron Age into the early medieval period; the form later influencing the distinctive circular shell-keeps found across the medieval Severnside region.
The Viking forts all share a strikingly similar design and are collectively referred to as Trelleborgs, after the first excavated fortress of that type in 1936.
All the Viking ring fortresses are believed to have been built within a very short timeframe, during the reign of Harald Bluetooth, but for yet unknown military purposes.
Limbert argues instead, that the ringfort should be seen in the context of a variety of similar developments in Britain and the European Continent, particularly in Iberia and Gaul.
In support of this he notes that: "The other major Eoganachta ringforts [other than Cashel] of Ballycatten, Garranes and possibly Garryduff, despite limited stratigraphic discernment, have produced artefacts of ambiguously early origins.
Also, their defensive nature,... supports an intrusion of a Celtic warrior caste..." The similarity with South Welsh 'raths' and Cornish 'rounds' suggests a degree of cultural interaction between Western British and Irish populations, however differences in dates of occupation mean this cannot be confirmed.
[1] On the island of Öland, Sweden, nineteen ringforts have been identified, including Eketorp, a site that has been completely excavated and that one may visit.
At the opposite end of the spectrum to this, the argument has been put forward to suggest that ringforts were in use, if not being built in the Later Medieval and possibly Early Modern period in Gaelic Ireland.
From a morphological viewpoint, and probably also from the view of the contemporary person, there is little to distinguish a ringfort from a small earthwork castle or motte.
While this method has brought the dating of the ringfort phase of Irish history to an ever more accurate level, certain problems do exist with his analysis.
Finally, Stout's use of radiocarbon dating is to one standard deviation, which means that there is an approximately one third chance that the data offered is inaccurate by up to 100 years on either side.
Yet despite these difficulties, Stout's analysis has to a large extent brought a degree of finality to the debate of the dating and use of ringforts, with it being more or less certain that the vast majority were probably occupied and constructed in the second half of the first millennium.
It has traditionally been understood that the ringfort was a dispersed farmstead, the home of a free man and his family and the centre of a mixed agricultural economy to a large extent dominated by cattle.
However, this interpretation is still the most commonly held in academic, archaeological and popular debate, although pollen studies and other evidence have greatly modified the traditional view of the dominance of livestock as opposed to arable farming in early medieval Ireland, making it clear that cereal production was much more important than once thought in the Early Medieval period.
Furthermore, a number of aspects of the generally circular nature of the ringfort highlight the defensive advantages, most notably that a circle as a shape "offered broad perspectives of approaching attackers and allowed the maximum area to be enclosed relative to the length of the bank constructed."
[13] Kelly Rounds (Castle Kilibury) in Triggshire is often proposed as the location of King Arthur's Celliwig, known from the Welsh poem Pa Gwr yw y Porthawr?
Castle Dore is often proposed as the court of King Mark (Mergh Cunomor / Marcus Cunomorus) in the romance Drustan hac Yseult, the doomed hero sailing the seas from Brittany to Ireland to seek his love.
