Dorsey, County Armagh

Dorsey (also Dorsy, Dorsey Ramparts, Irish Na Doirse - called gates) are next to Navan Fort one of the largest earthworks in Northern Ireland. Plants of this type are referred to as enclosure. The irregular, roughly tildenförmige, Iron Age structure was in 100 BC dated and located in the village Drummill in the south of County Armagh. It is part of a line of earthworks, the Ulster surrounds the south, and are known as the Great Wall of Ulidia.

It is a 0.8 x 1.6 km wide formed of walls and ditches earthwork that encloses an area of ​​about 100 hectares. Surveys and excavations have shown that Dorsey in the middle of a bog is located, has the following elements:

• On the south side there are two sources separate larger sections consisting of a wall between two large trenches, with traces of other Wall course.
• On the north side there is a wall was but he was not as massive as the one in the south with only a ditch.
• In the East, a 500 m long, large wall with a moat ran mostly parallel to the river Ummeracam
• On the west side of the excavation revealed a ditch with palisade.

Dorsey can be neglected and overgrown, perceived at different points along the course. However, it is virtually unknown and an important cultural monument hardly recognizable.

The analysis of the wood of the palisade and a sheet pile wall in the swampy southwestern area showed a dating to the period of construction of Navan Fort This meant that a cultural connection between the two sites believed and Dorsey was considered as controlled access to Armagh. The enclosure is located on the southern approaches of the Fews mountains, on an old north-south route in Armagh.

Although it is described as a coherent structure, the archaeologist Ch Lynn assumed that Dorsey evolved in several construction phases, to which also the around 40 years later dating of the wood in Nordwall indicated. He also believes that the name " The Doors" or "gates", suggesting that it Néill is at the ramparts and ditches of Dorsey to the border fortress of the Kingdom of Uí in Ulster, whose capital was Navan Fort ( Emain Macha ). Declan Hurl, who led an excavation on Dorsey in 2002, is based on a use as a settlement, Pasture, Fortress or a plant for ritual purposes. Hurl points out, however, that the findings so far do not yet allow an unambiguous classification.

When Dorsey was built, said to have been the greatest power of the Ulster kings. Some time later, Ulster was threatened from the south and Dorsey may have been part of a larger system, which is known in counties Monaghan, Cavan, Leitrim and Fermanagh, especially in reference to mythical events as one of several "The Black Pig's Dyke " in Ireland is. A menhir near the Dorsy River is called " Calliagh Berra 's Stone " (or Cloghfin, irish At Chloch Fhionn, " the white stone ").