Navan Fort as Feasting Site For People From Across Ireland

A group of researchers led by Richard Madgwick of Cardiff University analyzed pig, sheep, and cattle bones discovered via excavation at Navan Fort in Armagh, Northern Ireland. The analysis included the bones of 35 animals (primarily pig, but also cattle and goat/sheep). After performing multi-isotope analysis on samples of tooth enamel to determine where the animals spent their formative years (water leaves a unique identifiable locality trace in the enamel), the researchers concluded that people brought animals over great distances with the intent of feasting at the Navan Fort ritual complex. This is important since in some cases the animals traveled 100 miles before being consumed at Navan Fort, indicating the importance both of feasting as a community practice, and of Navan Fort as a ritual site.

As the paper notes:

People brought animals from across Ulster and beyond to Navan Fort and it is likely that the great prehistoric regional centres of Ireland acted as lynchpins in the landscape and centres for large-scale connectivity. The bringing of animals from great distances to Navan can be explained in two different ways. Documentary evidence indicates that cattle raiding was as endemic feature of the medieval Ireland with some raids taking place on an inter-provincial scale. Navan Fort is one of the principal settings of the Ulster Cycle of legendary tales which has at its core a tale of cattle raiding. Such raiding, however, was primarily concerned with cattle while pig was primarily the food of feasting, as indicated in such legends as The tale of Mac Da Thó’ pig. Feasting, almost invariably associated with sacrifice, was a social necessity of early societies where the slaughter of a large domesticate necessitated the consumption of a large amount of meat in a short period of time. The results of the analysis of the pig bones from Navan provides evidence for such occasional feasting at the site, with participants bringing their pigs, for sacrifice and consumption, from a wide catchment area.[ref]p. 11[/ref]

Navan Fort, or Emain Macha in Medieval texts, is described in Irish mythology as the capital of Ulster. It’s one of the four ritual centers featured in Irish mythology, along with Tara, Rath Croghan and Dūn Ailinne.

You can read the research report in Feasting and Mobility in Iron Age Ireland: Multi-isotope analysis reveals the vast catchment of Navan Fort, Ulster.[ref]Madgwick, R., Grimes, V., Lamb, A.L. et al. “Feasting and Mobility in Iron Age Ireland: Multi-isotope analysis reveals the vast catchment of Navan Fort, Ulster.” Sci Rep 9, 19792 (2019) doi:10.1038/s41598-019-55671-0[/ref] Dr. Madgwick is also the lead researcher for the earlier project which analyzed the bones of 131 pigs found at sites near Stonehenge, revealing that  people brought there pigs from many places across the British Isles, even as far away as Scotland.