Here are all recorded prehistoric fort locations across Ireland. 

The map is populated with a combination of National Monument Service data (Republic of Ireland) and Department for Communities data for Northern Ireland. The map was built using some PowerQuery transformations and then designed in QGIS. Note the data isn't an exact match between the datasets as Northern Ireland doesn't have all the categories provided for the Republic.

I previously mapped hillforts using the Atlas of Hillforts data. Several commented about gaps. This was largely due to the way the data is categorised, with Raths and Ringforts far surpassing hillforts.

Any thoughts about the map or insights would be very welcome

Posted by Sarquin

13 comments

  1. For those who want to see the data sources check out NMS here [https://www.archaeology.ie/collections-and-publications/publications/monument-class-and-scope-notes/](https://www.archaeology.ie/collections-and-publications/publications/monument-class-and-scope-notes/) and the UK Open Data here [https://www.data.gov.uk/dataset/46240fa5-db15-469e-b1c8-0460504b951c/northern-ireland-sites-and-monuments-record](https://www.data.gov.uk/dataset/46240fa5-db15-469e-b1c8-0460504b951c/northern-ireland-sites-and-monuments-record) For the tooling, I used QGIS and PowerQuery (Excel).

    If interested in more background, I have summarised my research on Irish hillforts here: [https://www.danielkirkpatrick.co.uk/historical-sites/irish-hillforts/](https://www.danielkirkpatrick.co.uk/historical-sites/irish-hillforts/)

  2. That’s amazing. I had no idea there were so many. Were they essentially to life back then? (no pun intended)

  4. Fantastic OP! I’m fascinated by them. Is there a map available for us to use in real-time? Zoom in etc…

    If not, what program/site can I use to import the json? 

  5. I wonder why there appear to be relatively few (low density) in West (Connacht/Mayo+Galway) Ireland. What’s up with that?

  11. Why is the classification seemingly different in counties Westmeath and Waterford, among others?

  12. Sardinia has a big amount of prehistoric forts and other prehistorical sites, relatively to the continental sites.

  13. I think it would have been cool for this post to have example images for the different types of prehistoric forts. I think the average person (including me) doesn’t know what any of these mean.

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