Deer Park Farms: The Excavation of a Raised Rath in the Glenarm Valley, County Antrim (Northern Ireland) by McDowell, C. J. Lynn, Northern Ireland Environment Agency (Paperback, 2011) for sale online

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A thousand years ago, generations of an early medieval (or Early Christian) community living at a place known today as Deer Park Farms, near Glenarm in the Antrim Glens, built, occupied and ultimately abandoned an early Irish rath, ringfort or settlement enclosure. They inhabited this farmstead between the seventh and the tenth centuries AD, building up layers of occupation and leaving behind them physical traces from hundreds of years of peoples' lives, daily work, economy and material culture.Between 1984 and 1987, the Deer Park Farms raised rath was entirely excavated, in advance of local farm improvements with the ready cooperation of its owners. Digging down through the raised rath, to its lowest, waterlogged levels, they uncovered startlingly well-preserved post-and-wattle houses, beds, occupation floors, crafts debris and artefacts and palaeoecological evidence for diet, economy and environment. It is amongst the most important Irish archaeological excavations of modern times.Partly as a result of what happened at Deer Park Farms, the programme of protection (known as scheduling) was reviewed. A revised programme was set up across Northern Ireland to identify the most significant sites and seek to save them for the future. New legislation through the Historic Monuments and Archaelogical Objects Northern Ireland Order 1995 strengthened this protection. Works to a site with this protection is controlled through Scheduled Monument Consent.