While Pictish history in particular was my inspiration for starting this webpage, I am choosing to complete this wing last, more slowly and more carefully, because I want to ensure that it is of quality construction. While many of the other parts of the Keep are simply brain dumps or previously developed class notes, I will be working on making this a well-researched, well-cited series of pages. Please keep checking back – I hope you find it worth the wait!
The most simultaneously interesting and frustrating part about Pictish history is that it often seems that there is so little evidence to be studied. The Pictish period occurs at the very beginning of recorded history in Northern Britain, roughly 500-850AD, and the remaining evidence of that time and place is scarce. There are few definitively Pictish burials that have been excavated in modern times and there are no extant documents, paintings or illuminations from Pictish Scotland. This leaves us to extrapolate much of Pictish culture from stray artifacts, carved symbol stones, Pictish documents preserved in later sources, comments about the Picts in documents from other cultures of the time period, and educated guesses based on what the other peoples of Britain and Scandinavia were doing during the same period. Happily, there have been a few recent excavations, like the one at Tarbat, that are starting to shed more direct light on the period.
Current Class Offerings on Pictish Topics
PictishBread
PictishGown.doc
PictishLife
PictishSymbols
Pictish World 2022 – updated and expanded Pictish basics (6 pages)
WellDressedPict
Iohanna found my Pictish Gown directions too long and so has made a short “cheat sheet” available here: Iohanna’s Quick and Dirty Pictish Gown Worksheet
Something to think about – spiral fibulae or spiral wrist clasps as a potential source for the double-disk symbol?
Online Resources:
Northern Picts Facebook Group – Actually posts current research and links to exciting goings-on.
Pictish News:
New stone found on the cliffs of Orkney – Autumn 2016 – Includes super-cool 3D model