Pictish Archaeology

Gathering together can be a ceremonial reaffirmation of community across time and space, a natural and spiritual communion with the past and with the land. The process of assembly can assert ownership, celebrate, release tensions, redress grievances or give sanctuary. Bringing the extended community together on traditional land is a process whereby the place of each individual within the community and within the world is re-established and reinforced. Pictland, the kingdom of northern Scotland which flourished between the fifth and ninth centuries CE, sprang from a fusion of the indigenous tribes of the region. Its citizens probably gathered for all of the reasons just listed. The Picts left little written explanation for their choice of sites for gathering. Theirs was an oral culture that prided itself on memory skills, genealogies recited at length, and landscapes described in epic tales. Literacy was embraced only in the later stages of the Pictish kingdom, along with Christianity and the monastic tradition. 1 Although the burial of the Pictish king, Bridei mac Bili, on Iona around 593CE is indicative of Christian influence, the first verifiable acceptance of Christianity, and with it the written recording of activities, was Nechtan mac Derile's proclamation of compliance with the Roman Church in 710. 2 Applying a multidisciplinary approach to the search for assembly sites in the Pictish region has yielded a clearer picture than relying on history or archaeology alone. Examining archaeological, historical and onomastic data together allows us to build on current theories by highlighting hitherto neglected aspects of Pictish culture. In recent years the field of onomastics has illuminated the Picts' shared cultural heritage with the wider Celtic milieu whilst highlighting the indigenous marks left in the placename record. So while nemeton links the Picts with Celtic-speakers across Europe, pett (a parcel of land) sets them apart. The placename sites, unless accompanied by documentary and/or material evidence, were relatively neglected as sites of interest by researchers until recent years when onomastics proved a rich vein for investigating some of the sacred and celebratory functions of the Pictish community. The combination of the study of the etymological derivation of placenames with their topographical study can aid in revealing elements of sacred and administrative importance within the landscape. Pinpointing these sites of assembly is a beginning, for as Barry Raftery pointed out, 'the complexity of religious beliefs and practices often defies easy reconstruction from material remains … [as] archaeology tends to uncover only the end-products of … ritual activities …'. 3

The Pictish symbols are here provided with a list of each symbol’s occurence, together with a distribution map of that symbol. 
The symbol lists are divided for convenience of size into two papers, Part One and Part Two.
This paper is PART TWO. 
Part One contains mostly high-frequency symbols, Part Two the lower frequency symbols. 
A table of symbol frequency is included in Part One. 
These lists and maps are offered to enable exploration of possible concentrations or peculiarities of certain symbols, which may point to their significance, provide an insight into their function, and take us a step closer to understanding their meaning. 
The papers here do not offer indepth analysis of the data, except for a few brief header notes.

This article presents a summary and interpretation of burial practices in Scotland in AD 400–650. Due to the dearth of documentary sources, mortuary archaeology provides a window on the changes occurring at the juncture between prehistory and history. Yet previous work has generally approached burial as evidence for a single aspect of this transition: the conversion to Christianity. Rather than signalling ethnic or religious affiliation, it is argued that graves should be understood as acts of structured deposition which enabled new relationships to be forged between the living and the dead at a local level. The composition of the grave with stone, sand, timber and earth can be seen as a form of furnishing cognate with the use of grave goods elsewhere in Britain and the continent.

The axe-wielding and / or beast-headed human figures in Pictish sculpture-such as the Rhynie Man or the axe-brandishing centaur and men locked in combat on the Glamis Manse stone-continue to fascinate audiences, but their original significance is only now being recognised. Axe-or club-brandishing figures on Class I monuments share notable connections with those on Pictish Christian sculpture, suggesting that they had a long-lasting significance in Pictish culture. The placement of these unusual weapon-wielding figures on cross-slabs share marked similarities with artistic representations of pre-Christian deities in neighbouring cultures, particularly with the mixed pagan and Christian iconography of Scandinavian sculpture in Britain and the Isle of Man. Such comparative material suggests that these figures in Pictish sculpture represent pagan Pictish gods.

Recent research into the representation of pre-Christian mythology in early medieval sculpture, the identification of a pagan Pictish motif, and new archaeological discoveries suggest novel ways of interpreting and understanding these figures and their chronology. On Pictish cross-slabs and sculptured panels, such figures are usually not found in isolation, but instead form part of a carefully planned artistic programme, incorporating multiple deities or otherworldly beings from what was clearly a well-known narrative in pre-Christian Pictish religion. The frequent association of this iconographic narrative with a cross, in comparison with the assimilated pagan and Christian iconography and literature of neighbouring cultures, may indicate that this visual narrative represents the pre-Christian Pictish tradition of the apocalypse.

Analysis of the similar iconography on cross-slabs and panels that portray these figures thus indicates that a narrative sequence from pre-Christian Pictish religion has been assimilated into a new Christian context, and that the Picts, like the Scandinavian settlers, had an artistic culture that looked for parallels between pagan and Christian iconography, and used these parallels in meaningful combinations.

15th January 2020

It would be useful to
present a single, generic pattern for a nemeton, but the landscape
evidence confounds me. Uniformity is a nice idea but should not
be expected, and indeed, in Pictland at least, is not supported by
the evidence. From the classical commentators we can infer that
there was a substantial clearing most likely within a grove of trees,
possibly with perishable artefacts, like wooden carvings, bone or the
like. Equally, a nemeton in Pictland seems to have been a clearing
on a riverbank that was reasonably flat, where people from nearby
would have been able to gain access by travelling up or down river.
Nemeta didn’t need to be signposted, as they were known by the
peoples who used them for hundreds of years. When Christianity
became the religion of choice in Pictland, nemeta made ideal sites
for situating a church, where the judgement of the new god could
become known.

Dans cet article, l'auteur analyse comment les mois du calendrier de Coligny suivent de très près les lunaisons pendant les 62 mois des 5 années figurant sur la plaque de bronze, et, ce faisant, met en évidence la précision extraordinaire, au jour près, à chaque 'extrémité' de la lunaison moyenne. Cela signifie que chaque mois du calendrier lunaire commence toujours au même point de la phase de la lune, et que ce calendrier peut rester synchronisé avec la lune indéfiniment. La forme globale du calendrier est déterminée ensuite par l'attribution de 29 jours au premier mois intercalaire, ce qui fait du calendrier un calendrier métonique tout au long de 4 cycles successifs de 5 ans; cela montre aussi que, dans cet ensemble de 5 années, nous avons une partie complète, la seule nécessaire, du calendrier entier. Ce calendrier métonique pouvait aussi être intégré à une période de 30 ans, constituée de 6 cycles successifs de 5 ans, sans qu'il soit nécessaire de redéfinir le cycle de 5 ans.

This paper examines how closely the lunar calendar months of the Coligny calendar track the individual lunations over the 62 months of the 5-year bronze plaque, and in doing so, discovers an extraordinary precision to within a day either side of the average lunation. This means that each calendar month always starts at the same point in the lunar phase and the calendar can remain in sync with the moon indefinitely. The question of the overall shape of the calendar is further defined by assigning 29 days to Intercalary One, which then shows the calendar to be a Metonic calendar through four successive cycles of the 5-year base, and that in the one 5-year plaque we have the complete and only needed part of the entire calendar. This Metonic calendar could also be embedded as part of a larger 30-year age of 6 successive cycles of the 5-year base, again without the necessity of reshaping the 5-year base cycle.

This article is about the forms of rods on Pictish symbols, the V rod and the Z rod. Only four symbols have rods, each with a common form of rod ends. These rod ends change from their common form if the rodded symbol is the lower symbol of a pair of rodded symbols. This behaviour demonstrates that the upper symbol of a pair on a particular stone plays the dominant role which the lower subordinate symbol must respect. Each symbol pair is acting in concert on a stone. If instead the lower symbol is required to be given dominance, then special rules apply to acknowledge the changed condition, again demonstrating that the symbol pair is acting as a pair in an explicit relationship on each symbol stone.

Mathematically, the frequency distribution of Pictish symbols shows that the symbol stones as a body do not hold a personal name, acting as some kind of burial or memorial marker in the form X mac/ui Y, where X and Y are the symbols of a symbol pair.  The evidence for this is reviewed, and the proposal of di-thematic names where each symbol represents a word or ‘theme’ is analysed and this is shown also to be mathematically untenable.  A third possibility is raised, in which a symbol can occasionally be used to represent a name, if and whenever it is required, as part of a broader mnemonic system.

This paper reports on the discovery and excavation of a small long-cist cemetery at Auchterforfar Farm, Forfar. Although the archaeological evidence is not extensive the proximity of the cemetery to Restenneth Priory raises questions about its Christian origins and affiliations, and particularly its possible association with the ‘lost’ church of Egglespether. The evidence for these associations is explored, while the pre-Christian and Christian contexts for the development of these cemeteries in Angus and further afield are reviewed.

Edinburgh Rhynie 0 500 N km The date of unique symbolic carvings, from various contexts across north and east Scotland, has been debated for over a century. Excavations at key sites and direct dating of engraved bone artefacts have allowed for a more precise chronology, extending from the third/fourth centuries AD, broadly contemporaneous with other non-vernacular scripts developed beyond the frontiers of the Roman Empire, to the ninth century AD. These symbols were probably an elaborate, non-alphabetic writing system, a Pictish response to broader European changes in power and identity during the transition from the Roman Empire to the early medieval period.

The Bell Beaker, the Cauldron of Regeneration, the Grail, are these all part of the same mythology?  There may be a reason for the strength and longevity of this story.  Around the start of the Bronze Age 5000 years ago, the stars around the north celestial pole had shifted, progressed, so that the northern pole star had moved out of the serpent we today call Draco.  A group of the same stars were then re-conceptualised as a cauldron or beaker, holding within it the north polar point, the cauldron we are told in story and shown in art in which people could be reborn to a new life, the Cauldron of Regeneration.

The Cat-stane, a Neolithic menhir bearing a Christian period inscription in Roman letters, has been traditionally taken for a Latin lapidary text commemorating a Roman General or a Pictish king of the late fifth century CE. Throughout the centuries, the inscription has suffered much from effacement resulting in uncertain interpretations for certain portions of the text. A British Celtic reading for this dedication should not to be ruled out inasmuch as it could very well be the only epigraphic artifact testifying to the historical existence of Uther Pendragon, not the least.

Aboriginal languages of the Canarian Islands (Guanche) were clearly belonged to the Afro-Asiatic macro-family. However, in addition to the traditional idea of the Guanche languages as Berber-Lybian, the Guanche-Chadic links are demonstrated. 
Pictish language might be close to the Siberian Yenisseian languages, cf. possible Yenisseian substrate in Proto-German and Hattic as a Sino-Caucasian language (of possible West European origin) closely related with Yenisseian. 
Remains of pre-Finno-Ugric substrate in Sami/Lappish (related to the I1 haplogroup?) demonstrate similarities with pre-Romanian substrate (related to the I2 haplogroup?). It might be a traces of an initial language of the I male haplogroup

This article re-evaluates the two inscriptions and the mirror symbol on the Newton Stone. The ogham is unusual in that it is read from the top rather than the bottom. The alphabetic inscription is intended to be read with, or to supplement, the ogham inscription. Close analysis demonstrates that the alphabetic inscription was painted onto the stone prior to carving. The carver may have followed an exemplum for the alphabetic inscription, possibly written on a wax tablet. Examination of the alphabetic script demonstrates that it is most closely related to informal scripts of the Late Antique period. The inscription is written in the Pictish language, and the stone probably dates to the 6th or early 7th century. The placement of the inscriptions and the mirror symbol may indicate that the two inscriptions were used in place of Pictish symbols.

Headstone TR33 from Tarbat Cemetery in Portmahomack presents an image that resembles a cross and also forms a rebus inscription similar to a Symbol Stone. It honors Olov IV, Defender of the Southern Border: Olov IV: Farewell from 10,000 men. When the disease began to confine, he made 2120 salmon lines. He brought skill likewise in battle. He delivered to the grey 20 men. Courageous man, champion of Hand, he guarded the border to the south.

The Picts carved a pair of trumpeters on two of their stones. These trumpeters do not play a typical Celtic horn or trumpet known from Celtic archaeology and artwork, but are a pair of Salpiktai, the Roman and Greek sacral trumpeters, used in warfare, pagan ritual processions, and male funerals. Why would the Picts reach into Roman art to use such an icon? What sacral context would be of relevance in the post-Roman world of the Picts?

The Pictish symbols are here provided with a list of each symbol’s occurence, together with a distribution map of that symbol. 
The symbol lists are divided for convenience of size into two papers, Part One and Part Two.
This paper is PART ONE. 
Part One contains mostly high-frequency symbols, Part Two the lower frequency symbols. 
A table of symbol frequency is included in Part One. 
These lists and maps are offered to enable exploration of possible concentrations or peculiarities of certain symbols, which may point to their significance, provide an insight into their function, and take us a step closer to understanding their meaning. 
The papers here do not offer indepth analysis of the data, except for a few brief header notes.

provides a portrait of the blacksmith which highlights his mythic initiatory aspects. The blacksmith's range of skills combines control of elements with the roles of druid, bard, healer and hospitaller. The lite reveals an occasional prosaic account of the blacksmith at work, but strong link with the initiation of heroes indicates a mastery of secret ri' which echoes those found in other cultures. There is continuity in prestige and mystique surrounding the ironworker within folktales traditions up to the modem period. Ultimately the cultural and soc: importance of the blacksmith lies in the power of iron to civilise conquer. 278 Nation and Federation in the Celtic World Nemeta: town halls and village churches Kristen Erskine The fabled sacred groves of the Celts, studded with oaks and mistletoe, tended by white-clad and white-bearded druids, were in reality far more prosaic. On the outer fringes of Europe where Celtic influences waxed and waned, these sacred groves, known as nemeton (singular) and nemeta (plural), took root in the placename landscape and remain there today. They were the sacred sites of sanctuary and assembly of the later bronze age peoples across Europe who adopted and adapted Celtic languages, material culture and social customs. The nemeta's role in the cultural landscape as places where the people assembled to hear judgements, to worship and to gain sanctuary meant that they were one of the primary sacred site-types to the people who became collectively known as the Picts. The placename appears across the European continent in its broadest sense as far east as Galatia in modern Turkey and as far west as Ireland. Pictland appears to preserve the greatest number of these sites in the modern placename record. Contextualising the part played by these sacred groves in Pictish life requires an examination of a number of factors, so this paper is divided into several brief sections. Firstly, the word itself is explained and then an argument is made for continuity of use in a sacred context. Distribution of the sites surviving in the landscape encompassed by the old Pictish borders is then outlined, followed by a discussion of a number of similarities and differences between the sites. Finally,. I provide a detailed look at four Pictish nemeta to illustrate their place in the cultural landscape. Some conclusions about the nemeta and the extent to which they reveal Celtic cultural strands in Pictish national identity close this paper.

In the grounds of Newton House near Insch in Aberdeenshire are two Pictish monuments. One is an inscribed stone that also has an incised Pictish mirror symbol, and the other is a Pictish symbol stone with a notched double-disc above a serpent and z-rod symbol. The inscribed stone, commonly referred to as the Newton Stone, has an ogham inscription on one edge that continues onto an added stemline, and on the top front is a unique horizontal, six-line alphabetic inscription. This article examines the documentary record for these two monuments, which were moved from their original location in the 18th and 19th centuries respectively. Through analysis of the documentary evidence, and in comparison with the local geology, the area of the original findspot of the Newton Stone and associated symbol stone is identified. The original landscape of these stones is compared with the topographical features of other Pictish monuments, particularly those in Donside. This comparison reveals that the topographical and liminal features in the original vicinity of the Newton Stone and symbol stone correspond with the wider pattern of the siting of Pictish symbol stones and Pictish cemeteries, and the association between a potentially Pictish-age settlement and these monuments may be suggested through examination of local place-names.

Dissertation written for Cambridge MPhil in Archaeological Research (2019):
In light of current climate change, it is increasingly imperative to construct highly resolved long-term climate models to understand the historical dimensions of climatic variability.  It is especially desirable that these models be interpreted alongside archaeological data, in order to examine the human dynamics of climate change and the ways that past societies have adapted to changing conditions.  Most proxy records for historical temperature variability are annual in resolution and only reflect a single season—to understand the full complexity of climate systems, it is thereby necessary to supplement these records with records that can capture intra-annual seasonal variability, with both summer and winter maxima.  This dissertation analyses over 1,150 isotopic samples from 35 shells of Patella vulgata to reconstruct seasonal sea surface temperature (SST) during the Late Antique Little Ice Age, Medieval Climate Anomaly, and modern period on sites of archaeological significance from Orkney in northern Scotland.  The results illustrate the seasonal variability of these periods, and show Late Antique cooling and Medieval warming.  They also highlight the need for further attention to the influence of microenvironmental factors such as a shell’s tidal zone in making use of intertidal paleoclimate proxies.

This paper presents the results of an archaeological survey of the fort on East Lomond Hill, where at least five lines of defence are identified. Reinterpretations and some new questions are raised, and space is also given to the methods used to create the plan that draw heavily on 3D data. Recent excavations at the site have indicated activity from the Bronze Age to the 7th century AD but they have been limited to the
annexe and have not explored the development of the defences. Though severely disturbed, there is the remains of a two-phase Bronze Age burial cairn on the summit. Later activity on the hill includes extensive
quarrying of the scree slopes and the erection of a toposcope on the summit in 1928.

The Pictish beast symbol is prevalent in over fifty stone sculptures and can be found anywhere from Orkney to Fife. While the symbol is interesting in and of itself, the focus of the research presented concerns the utility of the monuments on which it is found rather than the form of the symbol. Through the exploration and analysis of each monument distributed in Aberdeenshire, it can be hypothesized that these monuments containing the Pictish beast symbol are political statements due to their function, based on the local landscape and adoption of sacred spaces. The information presented is preliminary research done in aid of my master's dissertation.

This paper examines the iconographical background of Adam's skull beneath Christ's cross in Byzantine art, its appearance as a motif in Irish texts and its possible occurrence on two Pictish artworks, the Portsoy whetstone and the Dunfallandy cross-slab.