A fun day yesterday, despite the arctic conditions that saw us waking up to a covering of snow again. (I am SOOO bored with feeling cold and am badly missing my best duvet)
My personal tour guide Tom and I went to a lecture of the Picts at the museum in the next town. We sandwiched the lecture between with before and after trips to Wetherspoons. Alcohol first to sharpen the brain (er...um?) then a delicious curry after.
The lecture hall was packed to the rafters showing how many of the grey and grizzled are fascinated by the mysterious Picts (or are bored in the afternoons.) We were delighted to learn that the densest concentration of Pictish settlements are in this very area. Gives us a sense of being at the heart of something at last, rather than on the edge of everything. Nearbye Burghead is probably the largest settlement and has the famous Bull carving which is taken to be the symbol of a royal, cultish site.
What is so odd about these people is the lack of evidence of themselves they have left behind, apart from crop markings which reveal, in arial photography, the sites of their Ringforts. All their building was in wood, with a few carved stones marking goodness knows what, possibly entrances to their most royal settlements. The timespan uncovered by the most recent digs have shown them to be inhabiting this land for a relatively short period, 340 - 600 AD. They made intricate metal goods and jewelry; used roman style amphora, also found at Tintagel, drank from conical flagons which couldn’t be put down so had to be passed around (at feasts one imagines.) They made vellum but no manuscripts written on it have survived. Eumenius in 297 AD described them as ‘painted men’ or Picti (hence Picts) but that hasn’t been proven. They straddled the Pagan-Christian era and Rhynie Man, engraved on a stone, is carrying an axe-hammer of the sort associated with animal sacrifices. The place name Rhynnie is said to mean 'very royal place.'
The very young Senior Lecturer in Archeology from Aberdeen Uni, galloped through his stuff proficiently, which suited us as we were looking forward to our curry. I suspect he upset a few locals during question time by debunking the claims that genetic lineage can be traced down to the present day indigenous population as ‘crap.‘
I won an Easter egg in the raffle! Sandy will be pleased. It has ‘Elgin Museum’ written on it, but I don’t think it’s an antiquity.
2 comments:
no matriarchal line............
No material to test; it's too easily contaminated. I think that was his reasoning.
Interestingly the Picts are believed to have had a matriarchal society. Not sure how they worked that one out.
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