The Northern Picts: the Rise and Fall of a ‘Lost’ People of Early Medieval Northern Europe
The first millennium AD in northern Europe witnessed the transformation of small-scale tribal societies into medieval kingdoms, changes that laid the foundations for the modern nation states of Europe. In northern Britain, the Pictish Kingdoms that emerged in northern Scotland in the post-Roman period (c.AD 400-900) were important political players both regionally and on a European scale. Indeed, the major legacies of the Picts include some of the most spectacular archaeological sites and artistic achievements of Early Medieval European society. In northern Scotland the Kingdoms of the Northern Picts spanned an area from the Northeast of Scotland mainland to the northern Isles of Shetland and Orkney until the late 9th and 10th centuries when pressure from Viking incursions and political ascendency of gaelic kingship and identity led to the absorption of the Picts into the political entity known as Alba. This project aims to track the rise and fall of the Northern Pictish Kingdoms through a sustained programme of archaeological and historical research.
Image: A figure, possibly a warrior king, from Northern Pictland at Rhynie, Aberdeenshire, 6th century AD. © Aberdeenshire Archaeology Service
The Rise and Fall of Northern Pictland: Landscape Case Studies
Uncovering the ways in which power centres (secular and sacred) developed in the post-Roman world is key to understanding the emergence of the early European kingdoms. The Northern Picts project will involve three case studies tracking the evolution of three key landscapes of power in Northern Pictland: the landscape context of the Pictish monastery at Portmahomack, the largest identified, but poorly understood Pictish stronghold at Burghead and a ‘royal’ palisade and ‘villa’ at Rhynie.
The Tarbat Peninsula
Excavations by Martin Carver at Portmahomack on the Tarbat peninsula from 1996 onwards gave unprecedented insight into life in a Pictish monastery of the 6th-9th centuries. The Portmahomack project was one of the largest research excavations ever to have taken place in Scotland. The excavations identified an early Christian monastery dating to the 6th-9th centuries AD and discoveries included evidence for a scriptoria and the creation of some of the greatest stone sculptures of early medieval Europe. The monastery was destroyed during a Viking raid between 780 and 830 AD and slowly uncovered over a millennia later in the excavations.
From 2013 the University of Aberdeen in association with the Tarbat Discovery Centre will be investigating landscape of the peninsula and wider environs conducting surveys and fieldwork at the great cross slab monuments on the peninsula, evaluating the presence/absence of secular power centres and the prehistoric landscapes of Tarbat. All these endeavours will be key to understanding the context of the development and demise of the monastery.
Burghead Environs
Burghead, in popular tourism billed as the ‘Capital of the Picts’ – the fort is over three times the size of other known early medieval forts from Scotland. Burghead has consequently dominated discussions of enclosed high status sites in Northern Pictland, despite the obscurity that surrounds many of the basic facts surroundings its chronology, function and wider setting. However, this is a crucial site to interpret. The recent location of this area of Scotland as the territory known as Fortriu, the most commonly cited Pictish kingdom (Woolf 2006) raises the possibility that Burghead was a major node of royal power in the Kingdom of Fortriu in Northern Pictland.
A new programme of research and fieldwork at Burghead and its environs will aim to place this major secular landscape of power in its wider context and will track its origins and demise as a stronghold of the Northern Picts.
The Rhynie Environs Archaeological Project
In 2011 the first ever research excavation was carried out at a Pictish symbol stone in Scotland. The excavations revealed unprecedented information on the siting and context of the symbol stones at Rhynie. Rhynie has long been known for its distinct group of stones which include the in situ Craw Stane. The excavations at the Craw Stane showed that the stone sat within a palisaded enclosure containing a series of timber buildings with strong parallels to important royal sites in Northumbria. Finds included exceptionally rare late Roman imports of wine amphora dating from the 6th century AD and a fragment of a Continental drinking bowl – finds like these are generally found on sites with royal associations elsewhere in western Britain and Ireland. The Rhynie finds are the only examples of their kind in the whole of eastern Britain and the northernmost in the world. The architectural evidence and the imports suggest that Rhynie may be a lowland defended settlement of a local king of Cé – the northeast province of Pictland referenced in the Pictish kinglists.
REAP is co-directed with Dr Meggen Gondek, University of Chester.
Image: Excavations underway at Rhynie – the stone on the right is the Craw Stane decorated with a fish and ‘swimming beast’.
Work at Tarbat peninsula is funded by a major private donation and will be supported through collaboration with the Tarbat Discovery Centre www.tarbat-discovery.co.uk
Work at Rhynie has also been supported by The Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland, Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, Society of Antiquaries of London and Historic Scotland.
If you would like get involved please contact Dr Gordon Noble.
Publications:
NOBLE, G. & GONDEK, M. 2011. Symbol Stones in Context: Excavations at Rhynie, an Undocumented Pictish Power Centre of the 6th-7th Centuries AD? Medieval Archaeology 55: 317-321.
NOBLE, G. & GONDEK, M. 2011. A Dark Age Power Centre at Rhynie. British Archaeology Sept/Oct: 36-41. http://www.britarch.ac.uk/ba/ba120/feat2.shtml
NOBLE, G. & GONDEK, M. 2010. Together as one: the landscape of the symbol stones at Rhynie, Aberdeenshire. S.Driscoll, J.Geddes & M.Hall (eds) Pictish Progress: 95-110. Leiden: Brill.
Further Reading:
Carver, M. 2008. Portmahomack Monastery of the Picts. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Foster, SM. 2004. Picts, Gaels and Scots. B.T. Batsford, London.
Woolf, A. 2006. Dun Nechtain, Fortriu and the Geography of the Picts. The Scottish Historical Review 85(2): 182-201.
