3,000-year-old Irish Bronze Age site may be one of Europe's earliest 'town-like' settlements

Article excerpt

A major prehistoric center in Ireland was among the first large, organized settlements to develop in Western Europe more than 3,000 years ago, new research reveals. The study, published today in Antiquity, identifies Haughey's Fort, near Armagh in Northern Ireland, as the focal point of a vast and carefully planned landscape where settlement, craft production and ritual were brought together at an unprecedented scale from around 1200 BC.