88 INTRODUCTION Until recently, the archaeology of the Gaelic experience of the Nine Years War (1594–1603) in Ulster has remained a neglected subject. This inattention is more than just the general undervaluing of post-medieval archaeology in Ireland as a discipline before the mid-1970s (see Donnelly & Horning 2002, 557). Since the mid- 1970s, much greater interest has been shown in the study of fortiications built by the Crown’s forces and English planters and adventurers during the late 16th and early 17th centuries than in the military forts constructed by the Gaelic confederacy led by Hugh O’Neill, the second earl of Tyrone (for example see Williams 1977; Gowen 1980; Ó Baoill 1999). Although it must be admitted that sites associated with the Gaelic confederacy represent a minority of the total number of military sites of this period, the reasons for such a marked preference in interest are not obvious, especially given the focus on the martial and political leadership of Hugh O’Neill within the work of military historian G A Hayes-McCoy (1964; 1969). Writing on the subject of 17th-century artillery forts in Ulster in 1980, Gowen complained that ‘we unfortunately have little record of what the Irish forts were like’ during the Nine Years War (1980, 246), but such a position is untenable. Whilst the vast majority of surviving contemporary documentary sources are state papers directly associated with the administration and campaigns of the Crown’s forces during the Nine Years War, this bias in the historical record does not justify the almost total neglect by archaeologists of the Gaelic forts. For example, as demonstrated below, these sources can be used to throw considerable light on the function and status of Gaelic forts, whilst the ‘Bowlby maps’, a collection of cartographic images attributed to Richard Bartlett and which, amongst a number of subjects, depict several of the Gaelic fortiications of the Nine Years War, have been widely accessible since their publication by Hayes-McCoy in 1964. Recent interest in the archaeology of the Gaelic experience of the Nine Years War has been prompted by the work of the historian Hiram Morgan, which has focused new light on the capabilities of Hugh O’Neill (Morgan 1993), as well as the recent occurrence of four-hundredth anniversaries of the latter events of the Nine Years War and its immediate aftermath such as the Flight of the Earls. 1 Morgan’s critical reassessment of the early career of Hugh O’Neill and, in particular, his demonstration that O’Neill was one of the most adept politicians in Irish history, who was able to form and maintain a broad coalition of Irish leaders (1993), has prompted historians to reconsider other aspects of his career. This recent work has acknowledged that not only was O’Neill a capable military leader able to ield an army whose core was equipped and trained to the best contemporary standards (Hammer 2011, 643) and whose tactics were skillfully adapted to exploit the particular character of the Ulster landscape (James Ulster Journal of Archaeology, Vol 71, 2012 ARCHAEOLOGICAL EXCAVATION AT INISLOUGHLIN, COUNTY ANTRIM: IDENTIFYING THE GAELIC FORT OF ‘ENISHLANGHEN’ PHILIP MACDONALD Macdonald Archaeological Consultancy, The Moor House, 12 Tullyglush Road, Banbridge, Co Down macdonald.archaeology@gmail.com with a contribution by RONAN McHUGH and SAPPHIRE MUSSEN, and an appendix by DAVID M BROWN The second part of Fynes Moryson’s Itinerary (1617) contains a detailed account of the capture by Crown forces of the Gaelic fort of ‘Enishlanghen’ in August 1602. This engagement of the Nine Years War was also the subject of a cartographic image attributed to Richard Bartlett. Prior to the ieldwork reported upon in this paper, the precise location of the fort within the townland of Inisloughlin was unknown. Reassessment of Bartlett’s map of the fort led to the identiication of a potential site; geophysical survey followed by archaeological excavation in 2008 conirmed that it is almost certainly that of the Gaelic fort described by Moryson and depicted by Bartlett.