The Western Stone Forts Project: Excavations at Dun Aonghasa and Dun Eoghanachta

Dun Aonghasa is one of the best-known archaeological monuments in the west of Ireland and stands at the cliff-edge on the island of Inis Mor, the largest of the Aran Islands off the coast of Co. Galway. The site is a late Bronze Age hillfort built ca. 1000BC and remodelled in the early Medieval period, possibly sometime around AD 800. It has been a National Monument in state care since the late nineteenth century. The fort was excavated in 1992-1995 by Claire Cotter as part of The Western Stone Forts project, one of a number of projects set up by The Discovery Programme, a state funded archaeological research institute. The Western Stone Forts project focussed on a distinctive group of large stone forts, many of which were considered (at the time) to date to the late prehistoric period.
Dun Eoghanachta, also on Inis Mor and also a National Monument, is a much smaller stone fort and belongs to the ringfort class. A single short season of excavation carried out there in 1995 showed the fort to have built in the early Medieval period, possibly during the ninth century.