Emain Macha, the pseudo-historical capital of Ulster and the principal setting of the Tain Bo Cuailnge (The Cattle-Raid of Cooley), lies three miles west of the ecclesiastical city of Armagh. It derives its name from the goddess Macha, who is also immortalized in the place name Ard Macha or Armagh, which translates as the "heights of Macha." Pseudo-historical texts claim that Emain Macha was established as the center of the Ulaid between the seventh and fourth centuries b.c.e. and that the power of its dynastic rulers declined in the fourth or fifth century c.e. Emain Macha comprises a concentration of forty-six prehistoric monuments, central to which is Navan Fort. The fort is a large circular earthen enclosure, 286 meters in diameter, consisting of a broad, deep ditch and external rampart. A ring ditch and an impressive mound 6 meters high, both of which were excavated by D. M. Waterman between 1963 and 1971, lie within it. The most exciting discovery within the mound was a very large multiring timber structure of radial plan, 40 meters in diameter.
The large central post of that structure produced a tree-ring date of late 95 b.c.e. or early 94 b.c.e., after which it was covered by a large cairn of limestone blocks. Additional elements in the Emain Macha complex include the sites of two possible passage tombs of fourth millennium b.c.e. date that lie to the north of Navan Fort, and a small natural lake called Lough-nashade is situated to the northeast. A multivallate hill fort known as Haughey’s Fort, occupied in the period 1300-900 b.c.e., and an artificial pond called the King’s Stables are located approximately 1,000 meters west of Navan Fort. The development of the Navan complex appears to have begun about the thirteenth century b.c.e. when Haughey’s Fort and the King’s Stables were constructed, while Navan Fort apparently became the new focus of ritual activity from about the tenth century b.c.e. onward.
It has been suggested that the mound within Navan Fort may have been purpose-built for kingly inauguration, but there is no evidence, as yet, that a sense of royalty and an established custom of inaugurating kings on mounds actually prevailed in the Irish late prehistoric period. Emain Macha is, however, frequently evoked as an ideal kingship center during the later medieval period. The Uf Neill kings of the fourteenth century, for instance, closely identified themselves with the heroes of the Ulster Cycle and particularly with Conchobar mac Nessa and his abode at Emain Macha. In an attempt to physically attach himself and his dynasty to the ancient seat of the legendary kings of the Ulaid, Niall Og Ua Neill had a temporary house built there to entertain poets and learned men in 1387. The perception of Emain Macha as the most desirable inauguration site for Ulster royalty is also evoked in later medieval bardic poetry. The thirteenth-century poet Gilla Brigde Mac Con Mide, in his aisling (dream or vision) on the desired inauguration of Roalbh Mac Mathgamna as chief of Airgialla, uses Emain Macha as the setting for the inauguration. In the dream he sees Roalbh made chief by the "poet bands of the world" who are arranged in order upon the mound within Navan Fort.
