Gordon Noble - The King in the North: The Pictish Realms of Fortriu and Ce

Gordon Noble is Reader and Head of Archaeology at the University of Aberdeen. He has undertaken landscape research and directed field projects across Scotland. He is author of Neolithic Scotland: Timber, Stone, Earth and Fire (Edinburgh University Press, 2006) and Woodland in the Neolithic of Northern Europe: The Forest as Ancestor (Cambridge University Press, 2017). He was recently awarded a Leverhulme Research Leadership Award for a project entitled Comparative Kingship: The Early Medieval Kingdoms of Northern Britain and Ireland.

Nicholas Evans is a Research Fellow on the Leverhulme Trust-funded Comparative Kingship: The Early Medieval Kingdoms of Northern Britain and Ireland project at the University of Aberdeen. He is a historian whose research and teaching have focused on the medieval Celtic-speaking societies of Britain and Ireland and the texts they produced. He is the author of The Present and the Past in Medieval Irish Chronicles (Boydell Press, 2010), and A Historical Introduction to the Northern Picts (Aberdeen University/Tarbat Discovery Centre, 2014).

Author proceeds from this volume will go to the Tarbat Discovery Centre, Easter Ross. The Tarbat Discovery Centre is a museum, learning and activity centre dedicated to displaying and preserving the heritage of the Tarbat peninsula in northern Scotland. Housed in the refurbished Old Parish Church, it is the site of the only Pictish monastic settlement found in Scotland to date. The centre displays many of the spectacular artefacts and Pictish sculpture uncovered during the extensive archaeological investigations by the University of York.

Find out more about the centre at: www.tarbat-discovery.co.uk

First published in Great Britain in 2019 by
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ISBN: 978 1 78885 193 0

Copyright the authors 2019

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical or photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the express written permission of the publisher.

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The volume is dedicated to Don and Elizabeth Cruickshank and to all the students, volunteers and supporters who have made the fieldwork of the Northern Picts project possible.

1 Introduction: The king in the north The Pictish realms of Fortriu and Ce
Gordon Noble

2 A historical introduction to the northern Picts
Nicholas Evans

3 Fortified settlement in northern Pictland
Gordon Noble

4 Rhynie: A powerful place of Pictland
Gordon Noble, Meggen Gondek, Ewan Campbell, Nicholas Evans, Derek Hamilton and Simon Taylor

5 The monumental cemeteries of northern Pictland
Juliette Mitchell and Gordon Noble

6 (Re)discovering the Gaulcross hoard
Gordon Noble, Martin Goldberg, Alistair McPherson and Oskar Sveinbjarnarson

7 The development of the Pictish symbol system
Gordon Noble, Martin Goldberg and Derek Hamilton

8 The early Church in northern Pictland
Nicholas Evans and Gordon Noble

9 Coda
Gordon Noble

Frontispiece

The Tarbat Discovery Centre, Portmahomack

Plates

Figures

The studies that are included in this volume are edited versions of published work in a range of journals and edited volumes, but they are brought here together for the first time to provide a concentrated body of work for the specialist and general reader. An extended version of was specifically written for this volume. Thus, while much of the text is available elsewhere, the volume brings this material together for a first time to produce a cohesive extended narrative for considering the nature and development of society in northern Pictland in the period c. ad 3001000.

The authors of the book would like to extend many thanks. To all the landowners who gave permission for work on their land, we send the warmest thanks. Bruce Mann of Aberdeenshire Council Archaeology Service has provided continual support and advice. Gail Drinkall, Curator of Orkney Museum, helped arrange dating of samples from Orkney for . John Borland produced and helped source images for Chapters 7 and 8.

The Northern Picts project has been funded through the University of Aberdeens Development Trust, Historic Environment Scotland Archaeology Programme, the Leverhulme-funded Comparative Kingship project, The Strathmartine Trust, British Academy, the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland and Aberdeenshire Council Archaeology Service. The work on the Gaulcross hoard has also been supported by the ongoing Glenmorangie Research project at National Museums Scotland.

The writing of this volume was supported by a Leverhulme Trust Research Leadership Award (RL-2016-069).

The volume was funded by Elizabeth and Don Cruickshank, both born and educated in the north-east of Scotland, graduates of the University of Aberdeen and supporters of the Tarbat Discovery Centre in Portmahomack.

Gordon Noble

This book brings together a number of studies that demonstrate the ways in which new historical perspectives and recently discovered archaeological evidence can underpin fresh understandings of the development of Pictish society in northern Scotland. More specifi-cally, the volume tracks the rise of Pictish society from the first references in the late Roman period to the development of the powerful Pictish kingdoms in the early medieval era. The focus in the book is on the modern local government regions of Aberdeenshire, Moray, Inverness-shire and Easter Ross, areas that were probably included in the Pictish territories of Fortriu and Ce (See ). The volume builds on the work of the University of Aberdeens Northern Picts project, which was established to explore the archaeology and early history of 1st-millennium ad northern Scotland. The volume collects together scholarship compiled over the first five years of the project, representing the first consolidated book-length publication of the project. It is hoped that bringing together a series of publications based on the early results of the project will provide fresh perspectives on the Pictish period and the important roles that northern Pictland played in shaping the early kingdoms of Scotland, even though the work of Northern Picts is ongoing and the picture will undoubtedly change.