Drumanagh Promontory Fort – First Ever Intact Roman Pot Found in Ireland

Intact Roman pot (at right) in excavation pit, Drumanagh, Ireland

DRUMANAGH, IRELAND—Last year, Irish archaeologists working at  the Iron Age fort on the Drumanagh promontory north of Dublin uncovered a 2,000-year-old charred fig, providing the oldest evidence of the exotic Mediterranean fruit ever found on the island. RTE Ireland has reported that more recently they have made yet another remarkable discovery—an intact Roman pot. the first one to be uncovered on Irish soil, and providing more tantalising clues about ancient Roman-Irish interactions.

Although the Roman Empire they never reached Ireland (except, seemingly, in myth). That does not mean, that Roman influence and goods did enter Ireland, and it means that Drumanagh continues to headline as one of Irelands most tantalising archaeological sites for that same reason – exactly what were the Romans doing in Ireland?

Archaeological work at Drumanagh has shown that although there was not a settlement located there, people with a Roman background or with strong Roman trading contacts frequented the site. Artifacts found include glass beads, gaming pieces, and a bone comb, but the intact Roman vessel seems to crown the collection so far.

Drumanagh Promontory Fort

Drumanagh Promontory Fort, perched on a Limestone headland just north of Loughshinny in County Dublin (OS grid O 239 104), has long fascinated archaeologists as a unique place of Iron-Age fortification and Roman-period exchange. Though the site was never formally colonized by Rome, successive investigations—both rescue digs and chance finds—have revealed a surprisingly rich set of indigenous and imported material.

Site and Setting

The fort encloses roughly 44 acres with three parallel earth banks and accompanying ditches cutting across the peninsula’s neck; sheer sea-cliffs guard the other sides. Geological evidence shows the headland sits on Carboniferous limestone, making it both defensible and a ready source of durable stone for ramparts. Coastal erosion has claimed substantial ground over the centuries, so the original enclosure may once have been even larger (en.wikipedia.org).

Major Past Finds

• Amphora Sherds: From the 1950s onward, ploughing and illicit metal-detecting turned up imported tableware’s and broken amphora necks, firmly placing Drumanagh within a network of trade or exchange with Roman Britain (en.wikipedia.org).
• Glass Beads, Gaming Pieces and Bone Comb: Systematic fieldwalking in the 1990s catalogued dozens of small finds pointing to repeated Roman-style activity—perhaps seasonal fairs or elite gatherings—rather than permanent settlement (archaeology.org).
• Copper and Brass Ingots: Over 40 ingots recovered by detectorists, coupled with evidence of prehistoric copper mines at nearby Loughshinny, imply that Drumanagh was also an Iron-Age metallurgical hub. These ingots (some still unprovenanced) suggest smelting and trade in native metals long before Roman contact (en.wikipedia.org).
• 2,000-Year-Old Charred Fig: In late 2024, archaeologists unearthed a charred fig seed—Ireland’s earliest exotic fruit—demonstrating direct links in consumables and lifestyle with the Mediterranean world (archaeology.org).
• First Intact Roman Pot (May 2025): Christine Baker and her team from the Centre for Irish Cultural Heritage at Maynooth University revealed the first ever complete Roman ceramic vessel in Ireland—a textbook-style pot found upside-down beside an amphora fragment. “We have found five or six different types of Roman artefacts here, including the neck of an amphora, but nobody has ever seen a pot like this before in Ireland,” Baker enthused (heritagedaily.com).

Archaeological Interpretation

No structural remains of a villa or fortification contemporary with Rome have been confirmed beneath these finds, leading to two leading hypotheses:

Trading Colony/Fair Site: Drumanagh may have hosted periodic markets where native elites traded local metals, furs and foods for Roman goods—glass, fine pottery, wine and luxury foods.

Roman Bridgehead: A more contentious theory posits that Rome established a temporary “bridgehead” here (c. AD 82), possibly under Agricola, to probe invasion options—though no direct military artifacts (weapons, fort timber) have been found to date (en.wikipedia.org).

Significance

Drumanagh stands at the crossroads of Iron-Age industry and Roman-period globalization. The intact pot not only enriches our corpus of Roman imports but also underscores how peripheral Ireland was far from isolated.

Hints from the Classical and Mythological Authors

Classic and medieval Welsh traditions hint at contact—diplomatic, military or mercantile—between Roman Britain and Ireland, but always through a veil of legend rather than hard fact.

Tacitus and Juvenal

Tacitus (c. AD 98) records that Agricola, governor of Britain, considered an Irish expedition and even entertained an exiled Irish “regulus” as a potential client ruler for a future invasion. The same historian notes that arms had been carried “beyond the shores of Hibernia” by some of his officers, suggesting at least reconnaissance or raiding rather than full conquest (en.wikipedia.org). Centuries later, the Roman poet Juvenal echoed this idea, implying that Roman forces may have ventured across the Irish Sea, although no archaeological trace of a formal military presence has been found in Ireland (en.wikipedia.org).

Early Medieval Lore

In Ireland’s own Early Medieval lore, the legendary high-king Túathal Techtmar is said to have been exiled as a boy and raised “beyond the seas,” then returned at the head of a foreign army—often interpreted as Roman-sponsored—to reclaim his throne in the first century AD. Though preserved in Irish annals, this tale was also known to Welsh chroniclers, who incorporated Túathal’s story into works like the Historia Brittonum and genealogical tracts, blending historical memory with myth (en.wikipedia.org).

Welsh Prophetic Poetry

Welsh prophetic poetry likewise casts the Irish as allies in a shared future. In the 10th-century poem Armes Prydein (“The Prophecy of Britain”), a unified Brythonic host joins Scots, Irish and Vikings to expel the Saxons—an imaginative reversal of Roman-era dynamics that nonetheless reflects a long-standing sense of kinship between the Britons and the Gaels (en.wikipedia.org). While Armes Prydein post-dates Rome’s withdrawal by half a millennium, its very invocation of Irish-British solidarity hints at enduring cultural memories of earlier contacts.

Place-name Evidence

Finally, place-names and field-names in Wales occasionally preserve echoes of Irish links—Cantref Gwladys “Land of Gladz,” for example, is said in local legend to recall an Irish princess’s dowry lands—but these are folklore, not secure evidence of Roman-era relations. In the absence of direct archaeological proof for Roman bases in Ireland, these myths remain tantalizing reflections of cross-channel awareness rather than concrete testimony.

Together, the classical allusions in Tacitus and Juvenal, the mythic saga of Túathal Techtmar, and the later Welsh prophetic vision in Armes Prydein form a patchwork of sources suggesting that Irish-British contacts during Rome’s tenure in Britain were romantically remembered.