Dan Snow's History Hit - The Picts: Scourge of Rome

Episode Date: July 12, 2023

Emerging around the 3rd century CE and later designated official adversaries of the Roman Empire, the Picts wreaked havoc across the northern fringes of Roman Britain. But due to their limited presence in the archaeological record and the complexities of multiple kings, kingdoms, and languages involved, unravelling the true identity of the Picts and understanding why Rome harboured such animosity towards them can be challenging. So what sources can archaeologists turn to, and what does it show us about ancient Scotland?In this episode, Tristan welcomes Professor Gordon Noble from the University of Aberdeen to shed light on the enigmatic culture of the Picts. By examining Imperial sources, ancient artwork, and even the earliest known form of daily 'tweets', what insights can we gather about the Picts? And why have they been obscured by the passage of time?Discover the past on History Hit with ad-free original podcasts and documentaries released weekly presented by world-renowned historians like Dan Snow, Suzannah Lipscomb, Lucy Worsley, Matt Lewis, Tristan Hughes and more. Get 50% off your first 3 months with code DANSNOW. Download the app or sign up here.We'd love to hear from you! You can email the podcast at [e-mail] can take part in our listener survey here.

It's the Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host. And in today's episode, well, we're going back to ancient Scotland to talk about one of the most mysterious and enigmatic people of ancient Britain. A people that were also considered the bane of Rome in the north. I am of course talking about the Picts. The Picts were associated with striking art such as these beautiful carved stones called the Pictish stones. Just look up Pictish stones and you'll see what I mean. They are absolutely stunning. Pictish stones and you'll see what I mean. They are absolutely stunning. But overall,

I think it is fair to say the archaeological evidence for the Picts is limited. However, more recently, these extraordinary professors and archaeologists, especially in the north of Scotland, are unearthing more information about the Picts. and to explain all about our current knowledge about the Picts well I was delighted to interview one of the figures right at the forefront of this new research he is Professor Gordon Noble from the University of Aberdeen. Now Gordon he has been leading excavations at striking Pictish sites such as the massive hill fort at Tappo Noth near the village of Riney in Aberdeenshire. This was a fascinating chat and I really do hope you enjoy. So without further ado, here's Gordon. Gordon, it is wonderful to have you on the podcast today. Oh, thanks for inviting me Tristan, it's great to be here.

You're very welcome and anyone who knows me will know that any chance to talk about ancient Scotland or prehistoric Scotland, I will jump at. So it's wonderful to get you on the podcast to talk about the Picts. They're such a fascinating people, aren't they, Gordon? But they almost seem the name that's surely amongst the most elusive people who lived in the island of Britain in the first millennium AD. I think so. You know, we've made leaps and bounds in the last couple of decades in terms of uncovering new sites and new information.

But I think we're still light years behind what we know of, say, late Roman or early medieval England or early medieval Ireland, for example. So we've still got a lot of progress to make. So there is still that elusive and mysterious element to the Picts, I would say, for sure. And in some ways, long may that continue to an extent in terms of it really does attract people to studying the Picts and getting interested in Pictish research. But that's what's also so fascinating, Gordon, what you highlighted there,

and that's, you know, the last couple of decades in particular, there's so much that's been discovered, so much archaeological work that is revealing more about these people too. Absolutely. My background was in the history of art where I did my degree in that subject, and we did a little bit on the Picts there in terms of looking at their art styles and part of the broader insular art traditions that kind of thing and I almost went straight off to do a PhD in Pictish archaeology straight after

my history of art degree but people warned me they said you know don't do that there's nothing to find out there's no archaeology there's no point really in trying to do that and you'll just get lost really in things like the symbols and you know you'll find yourself in it at a dead end quite soon so it's really nice to have all this new information and to show the possibilities of actually having a more developed archaeology and history of the Picts. So it's exciting times indeed. Well, let's delve into all of this. We're going to get to the archaeology very soon.

But I mean, let's start with the types of sources that we have for these people. What range of sources are available for us, Gordon? So in terms of our histories, we really only have one series of documents, and that's the Pictish king lists in terms of native or indigenous documents and that's pretty much as it's described it's a list of kings but it does have this fascinating origin myth appended to it which talks about Cruithne the father of the Picts and he has seven sons which have names like Fife or Fife or Kate for Caithness. So that's how we have a broad understanding of the kind of geographical spread of the Pictish

kingdoms. But other than that it's external sources. So in our early period it's Roman sources so our first references in AD 297. And then throughout the 4th century, there's repeated references to the Picts, usually in a negative way in terms of causing havoc north and south of the Roman frontier. And then in the post-Roman period, it's sources like Bede, Athavans, Life of Columba, and also the Irish Annals, which have the tweets of the day, sort of one-liners about certain Pictish kings dying or certain battles the Picts are involved in. So it's very slim sources indeed in terms of our histories. And then in combination with that is being the slimness of the archaeological record.

So the first book that I came across on the Picts was this famous book or infamous almost from 1950s, The Problem of the Picts. And in there, Wainwright, who's the editor of the volume, talks about, you know, there's no problem in Pictish archaeology because there's no archaeology of the Picts, or I paraphrase. But basically that was the situation. There were so few burials, there were so few settlement sites that you could really associate. And that's still a big problem. There's still very few settlement sites, for example,

and relatively few well-excavated or preserved burial sites as well. So that was part of the attraction, I think, for me, despite the kind of people warning me off studying the Picts, was, you know, what can we do in terms of the archaeology to actually change this situation and try and overturn that long standing situation of the lack of resources and sources for understanding the PICs? Well, we are going to probably spend the lion's share of this interview talking about all of that archaeology. But I want to keep on that literature for a bit longer because you did mention that mythological origin story surrounding the Picts. What is this mythology surrounding the Picts and where they come from? Well, there's lots of strands to that. So the name is probably a Roman name suggesting that they're painted or tattooed.

So it's this classic image of the Roman understanding of the barbarians in terms of their tattoo, their painting, their different, their other, their non-Roman. So clearly that's part of the kind of mythology and interest of the Picts is that kind of coining of the term and certainly in terms of their neighbours that is the term they adopt to describe the people north of the frontier and laterally in the post-Roman period. We don't know whether the Picts themselves called themselves that but it seems likely that they did or at least adopted that term later on. And then in terms of their origins, there's various origin myths about them coming from Ireland, and the most fanciful one is them coming from Scythia,

which is what Bede describes. And I can only presume that that's an indication of the kind of sources that Bede is able to access in that time period. He's reading classical references and sources and the like and perhaps comes across a reference to the Scythians being tattooed or painted and he puts two and two together to get five and describes the Picts as also coming from that part of the world. But every people, every community in late Roman and post-Roman

Britain and Ireland had some sort of fanciful origin myth some more fanciful than others again we don't have the pics voice to say what they thought but yeah again it adds to the kind of romance and interest i think in tracing pictish origins and trying to understand more about the evolution of that society i mean could there be any kernel of truth behind this idea of these people coming from a distant shore, let's say like the Vikings or the Angles and the Saxons? Or do we think now that they are an indigenous people and they are like the successors of Iron Age communities like the Maiatai or the Caledoni that we hear of earlier occupying the island of Britain, northern Britain?

Well, I think people had long dismissed the idea of them coming from Scythia for sure. But it's not to say that there couldn't be more closer to home migration streams that would at least contribute to Pictish society. But I think in general, people have expected them to have at least some relationship to the Iron Age communities that existed in that early Roman period. And we just published with colleagues this study on ancient DNA, which is amongst the first to really look at individuals from Pickland and looking at their genetic signature. And what that showed was that the genes are certainly distinctive to this part of the world. So they're different to what you find in England. They have some broad similarities to places like Ireland, Western Scotland and Western

Britain. And the individuals seem to share broad origins and relationships to the Iron Age communities who lived in Britain. So it's really beginning to kind of cement the picture of, you know, the Picts being a local evolution or development of the societies who lived in that Iron Age and early Roman period. Well, there you go. As you say, it's not just archaeology that's now revealing more about them, but also science as well, genomicomic data it seems that when you mentioned the word Picts you can seem to cover quite a large area of Scotland this might be a too difficult

question to answer but do you have any rough idea where were the heartlands of the Picts do we know what part of Scotland they almost spread out from almost? Yeah so it seems to largely describe people who live north of what became the Antonine Wall, so north of the Firth of Forth, present-day regions like Fife, Perthshire, Aberdeenshire, up to the Highlands, and we think probably also including the Northern Isles, certainly Orkney, probably Shetland, and probably the Western Isles, although our sources for places like the Western Isles don't really come on stream until really the 13th century or later, really. So it's always difficult to tell. But in terms of things like place names, saints' names,

distribution of things like Pictish symbol stones, it broadly correlates with that area. So again, north of Firth of Forth, up to the Western Isles and up to the Northern Isles. You mentioned different kingdoms, but should we view the Picts, even let's say in the late antique period, before the early medieval, let's say after 500 AD, should we view the Picts all as one people

or a group of different peoples? Well, again, that's difficult to say for sure. I think there definitely would have been different language groups and different communities, regions, political identities. We have some evidence for regional kings. So in Athervan's Life of Columba, for example, which is either depicting this situation in the late 6th century

or late 7th century when Athervan's writing, he talks about King Berthay, a powerful Pictish king, living at or near the mouth of the River Glens, up near Inverness somewhere. And in his court, he has a sub-king or a little king of the Orpneys. So you can see already by that time period that the Picts had quite an extensive control over large regions of Scotland, including maritime connections and perhaps maritime control over places like the Orkneys.

So yeah, it's one of the unusual things about the Picts is that their kingdom seems to be relatively extensive compared to, for example, if you look at early medieval Wales or Ireland, where you've got hundreds of petty kingdoms and small-scale kingdoms. The fact that Picts were able to have this quite extensive area of land and landscape under the control of an overking, certainly by the 7th century, is quite interesting. Well, come on then, let's keep talking about the early Picts. Let's not go too far into the medieval period, or gone medieval and Matt Lewis will they won't be

very happy indeed but we've got plenty to talk about. Let's go Picts versus Rome, Picts versus Romans because what are our first literary mentions of the Picts? What's their context? Well the first one I say is in, is in that third century context. And then they are referenced in things like imperial sources listing enemies of Rome, for example. And then they're involved in various campaigns against the Romans. And most notably, in AD 367, they're involved in the barbarian conspiracy when they get together with the Scots and the Saxons and other groups and raid into Roman Britain and cause havoc for an extended period

of time. So it shows you the reach and the power of the Picts in that 4th century context. And it's really interesting if you think about the development of Pictish society. And again, we have to rely on pretty limited sources. But what's quite striking is that in our early Roman sources for northern Britain, things like Ptolemy's maps, you get lots of different groups mentioned, tribal groups or whatever you want to call them, more than a dozen names. But by the time we get to the third and fourth centuries,

it begins to reduce. So you've got the Caledonii and the Maetii. And then laterally, it's really only the Picts that get mentioned on a regular basis. So what might be happening, as you find elsewhere on the frontier, is that the Romans are almost creating their own downfall in terms of creating these more unified groups at the edge of empire who are actually able to come together and actually resist Roman rule and you know ultimately help bring that empire down or at

least cause it serious trouble. It's really interesting in the sources how you do get the portrayal of the Picts as you know being the enemies of Rome and I must therefore also ask about this extraordinary artifact that I don't believe it's from Britain but it relates the Picts you probably know I'm going to talk about the dice tower because what exactly is it it does look remarkable from images yeah yeah so it's from the German frontier and it's a bronze object a dice You know, you throw your dice at the top and it falls down the steps and it's part of a gaming tradition. And on the side of it in Latin it says, the Picts are defeated, play in safety.

So it shows that that Pictish identity isn't just a very regional one found or only relevant to the northmost frontier. It's clearly an identity that is having a wider currency one found or only relevant to the northmost frontier. It's clearly an identity that is having a wider currency as a kind of noted enemy of Rome. So that's one of the reasons we began to toy with this kind of provocative title of our latest book, The Scourge of Rome, which is probably maybe slightly overblowing it. But certainly they were a noted enemy of Rome,

and it is something that you get repeated throughout the four centuries, the Picts causing trouble north and south of the frontier in getting together with these other barbarian groups. And it's really interesting in terms of, again, if you think about, you know, how did those barbarian groups actually communicate? And perhaps it might be through individuals who served in the roman army and picked up latin and were able to communicate with one another again to kind of come together to resist roman rule and to try and get some of that power and wealth for themselves it's a really really interesting process isn't it it really is

and it's fascinating to think that perhaps you know the Picts were almost the bogeymen of the Romans as you said with the dice game and them being well known beyond the north of Britain but almost saying to a Roman soldier you know don't misbehave or you'll get sent to Hadrian's Wall or whatever and you'll have to deal with facing with this terrible enemy in the north

Yeah absolutely That's a good description. Rob smacking details and latest groundbreaking research from the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings, Normans, Kings and Popes, who were rarely the best of friends, murder, rebellions and crusades. Find out who we really were by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. if we keep moving on therefore because you did mention a bit earlier about

pictish societies what is the archaeology we're feeling about the types of settlements that these early Picts in the late antique Roman, ancient Britain period, what is the archaeology revealing about the types of settlements that these Picts lived in? Yeah, well, again, that's been one of the big problems about the Picts is finding their settlements. And that's a situation that really begins to become a big problem around about the third century, exactly the time period in which the Picts are first mentioned. So for northern Britain, particularly north of the Antonine Wall, our settlement record really just falls off the radar in terms of we go from a situation where we have hundreds of roundhouses, hillfort settlements from the iron age to a situation

where we you know have virtually no unenclosed settlement from that kind of third century onwards with a few exceptions but really it is a big big shift and that had led people down the road of actually questioning and that whole idea of the pics being a kind of amalgamation and coming together of groups to create a kind of amalgamation and coming together of groups to create a kind of more powerful group, people began to argue opposite. You know, this was a big collapse in society and the like. And I think the problem is the way that Picts built their structures is very difficult to recover archaeologically. So where we do find them, places like hill forts or places that haven't been ploughed, then we find these

really ephemeral structures, which were turf walled, probably crook frames. So you can imagine in a lowland context, you know, that, you know, a single season of modern ploughing would just completely remove them. So that's one of the big challenges really is finding the settlements. But we have began to make progress on that note so we've been looking at a lot of hill forts and promontory forts because again that's probably where it's going to survive and we've began to find a lot more sites particularly ones or what's most interesting is the ones that actually broach that traditional divide between the late roman and early medieval period and that's becoming much

much more obvious is that there's much greater continuity between these traditional divides than we had probably countenanced. So at sites like Dunacare which is a coastal promontory site we've got settlement there from the second century through to the fourth century, maybe earliest fifth century. And that's the site type, Promontory Forks, which really become a big thing in the post-Roman period and seem to be elite centers in some cases. And you can imagine this kind of site that they might also be launching raids on the Roman Empire from these coastal locations. But really they're kind of of real eye-opener in terms of our understanding of Pictish settlement and late Roman into post-Roman context has been

our work at Tabanoth, which is a site just overlooking the village of Rynie, about 40 minutes west of Aberdeen, so up in northeast Scotland. And we've been excavating at Rynie, about 40 minutes west of Aberdeen, so up in northeast Scotland. And we've been excavating at Rynie for about 10 years, and we found this very high status, probably an early royal centre of the Picts. And that in itself extends back into the late Roman period, so probably starting in the 4th century and going through to the 6th century. So that in itself is fascinating. So again, it shows the kind of late Roman foundations

for some of these elite centres of the Picts. But then just before lockdown in 2019, we began working on this huge hill fort at Tappanoth, which overlooks Rhinie. And it was always being assumed it was going to be late Bronze Age or early iron age and you know to be honest we were largely over that opinion as well and it's a huge hill fort it's about 17 hectares in extent so that's the second largest in the whole of northern Britain. It looks extraordinary just online it's massive yeah and it's well previous

survey work has just there was a few hundred house platforms inside. But using LiDAR imaging and drone-based imagery, my colleague James O'Driscoll identified more than 800 of these house platforms inside this enclosure. So incredible settlement. And so we tested this in 2019. And we put a section across the rampart and we dug a couple of the house platforms and already in that kind of early days of digging there we were like well there's a lot of objects here that look really like the objects down at Riney but we're like maybe it's just gonna a little bit later reuse and then we got the radiocarbon dates back just before the kind of

first major lockdown I've never been so surprised by some radiocarbon dates in my life. So they were second century through to sixth century. So they were directly contemporary with what we had down in the lowlands. And we were like, wow, that's quite something. But obviously, you know, we'd only dug to the house platforms. So we're like, all right, well, we need to increase the sample sample and so that was massively delayed by covid and you know we're still working there but now we've dug i would say at least a dozen more house platforms and every one of them is of that date so we've got late roman dates particularly third fourth century through to the sixth maybe into the seventh century so again it's just really eye-opening gone from a settlement record of i think literally if you're

being generous a couple of dozen structures from lowland eastern scotland in that canal late roman to post-roman period to a site that potentially has 800 or more in one location. So really, it just, again, it makes you wonder about the scale of society in that late Roman through to the kind of late antique period and about our models of, you know, social collapse. I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Eleanor Janaga. our models of, you Murder, rebellions. And crusades. Find out who we really were. By subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit. Wherever you get your podcasts.

That needs to be reworked. And again, maybe that idea of centralisation is actually what's happening in that late roman period and it might be another reason why it's so difficult to find settlement is because you are getting centralization at some of these sites but so whether they are year-round settlements or whether they're kind of assembly places where you come it's particular times a year to you know give tribute to your king or your late Roman leader is difficult to know. And it's something we're trying to figure out and get some ideas on. Right, because my next question was going to be like, what do we think the purpose of a massive place like Tapenoth is?

Do you think it's associated with defence or is this a symbol of power and majesty? Like maybe Maiden Castle further south, an Iron Age hill fort? Or is it all year round? The purpose of this amazing centre, Pictish centre, it's still a bit unclear from the archaeology that you've done so far. Yes, it is a real head-scratcher in terms of trying to figure out its role. So we do have, you know, in our medieval sources, reference to sites of assembly where you come and give tribute to your king and the like. But in terms of, you know, the archaeological signature of those, those are generally thought to be open air sites with not much in the way of infrastructure or settlement. So if this is an assembly site, it's an altogether different scale to what we knew before.

It's an altogether different scale to what we knew before. And also there's some elements of the archaeology there that might argue against that in terms of, you know, just the sheer investment in that hill fort is incredible. So the rampart around it is about four metres wide, a metre high, and it supported a palisade, which, you know, if that goes all the way around, it's one and a half kilometers of timber, you would have to find to build that defense or enclosure. And then inside, all the platforms are quarried into the hill slope.

There's well-developed floor layers, multiple hearths, five, six hearths built up on top of one another. So again, it doesn't really strike you as somewhere that's just being used for a couple of days per year. But you might have both. You could have smaller communities living there year-round, and that's augmented by people coming at certain times of the year. But yeah, it's really hard to get our heads around.

And if it is a more year-round settlement or a large-scale settlement then you know how is that actually resourced and in that case you would have to think that it's been resourced by a much bigger polity who are indeed you know giving tribute to the to the people living in this landscape and allowing them to live in this you know fairly marginal landscape today but equally one that's got access to you know great resources down down the valley it's a very rich agricultural area despite being kind of on the edges edge of the cairngorms and then it's got access to the kind of hunting traditional hunting grounds up in the uplands as well so so the short answer is we don't know how it functions in society but we're having great fun puzzling through all the

different possibilities and that's just amazing to be in that situation full stop because you know if you told us a few years back that we'd you know kind of overnight find a site that had 800 houses from the you know late roman immediate post-roman period you know i think it just would have been nonsense really it's amazing isn't it i mean i've got to ask about artifacts themselves discovered there i mean actually of course you've got the trepane treasure and trepane law further south which kind of shows that connection between that local people and the Roman Empire. Have you found any evidence from atop Tapanoth that shows connections, trade links with the Roman Empire at that late time in its ancient history?

Yes, and that's, you know, before we dug there, there were a few objects from Tapanoth which were quite unusual and suggested Roman contact. And from the house platforms, we are finding Roman objects, Roman pottery, things like Nean Valley, colour-coated pottery, and bits of Roman glass. Not huge, huge quantities, but again, if you think about the site being, you know, 200 kilometres north of Hadrian's Wall, it's amazing we're finding anything, really.

So it is suggesting, again, those contacts with the Roman world extend way beyond what we thought before into an area that we had very, very few Roman finds from before. But now it doesn't occur, we've got a few Roman finds there. So I think, you know, again again the picture can maybe change quite quite rapidly and then in the kind of post-Roman period we have at Rhinie down in the lowland we've got pottery coming from the Mediterranean late Roman amphora which is the first time that material has been found that far north and we actually got a couple of shares of that material from Tappanoth as well right near the top of the hill fort. So about 550 metres above sea level, they were lugging these big, probably wine amphora, knowing the pics, up to the top of this hill and clearly drinking Mediterranean wine. Which again, if you said that a few years back, I think, you know, it would have just, again, seemed crazy to even think of such things.

Absolutely. These Picts drinking wine from Amphora atop a massive hill in Aberdeenshire. Who'd have thought? It is remarkable because I think when most people think Picts, they will think, you know, the Anglo-Saxon period. They'll think early medieval Britain. And of course, you know, it is early medieval Britain that you see the Picts reach their zenith. But it is so fascinating how this recent archaeological evidence, it's pushing the Pictish story back into the late antique period in Britain too. Our mind might immediately go to Pictish stones, so beautifully carved, once again associated with a medieval period. Do we think that actually maybe these stones, these artefacts may have their origins further back in the late antique period too? We think so.

So this came from our work at Dunacare. So this is this promontory fort just south of Aberdeen, next to a famous castle called Dunottar Castle, which itself has references in the early medieval period to being under siege in the Viking Age as well. And just along from that castle, which is a pretty big promontory, you can imagine it would be quite impressive, a promontory fort, presumably, in the Pictish period,

there's this very small sea stack just in the next bay to the north. And from that site in the 19th century, this sounds like a lot of fantastical story, a bunch of youths from the nearby village got talking to the local grave digger who said that there was gold buried on top of the sea stack. So, you know, in days before television, they were like, right, let's go find this out.

And it's quite a dangerous spot to get to. You have to scrabble up the cliffs, essentially. And they got on top and they started digging. They didn't find any gold, but they found these carved stones, which look like the kind of classic later and indeed early medieval traditions of the symbol tradition, but they're quite rough and ready. And so they're always thought as being either quite expedient or early examples of this tradition.

But no one had visited the site or no one had investigated the site since that discovery in the 1830s. And when they found these stones, they say that they found them from a low stone wall along the edge of the sea stack. So that gave us the target. So in 2015, we went up, climbed on top, which is one of the scarier, more adventurous archaeological expeditions I've been involved in. And we dug some test bits. And again, we had no real expectation of what we might find.

But I did wonder whether it could be part of a promontory fort, but incredibly eroded. So and that turns out what it was. It was a promontory fort, but it's been very extensively eroded because it's quite a soft, conglomerate rock. So it looks like we've lost a huge, huge chunk of land, essentially. But what was left was part of the rampart for the fort. And that was the kind of classic timber-laced rampart. And that appears to be where the stones came from. So built into that rampart fort.

And then inside, we had lots of buildings and structures hearths roman fines and again it was a really surprising series of dates because promontory forts are kind of classic you know early iron age or you know post-roman phenomena in northern britain and then we got the dates back and they were second third fourth century a.d whoa and then made us think oh god what about these stones from the ramparts we're able can't date stones but we're able to date the rampart makeup from you know the charred timbers of the timber lacing that kind of thing and the dates there were thirdrd-4th century, so we can't prove it for sure, but it seems likely those stones are 3rd-4th century built into this rampart, and it makes sense of that early

association of this kind of quite rough and ready carving, but at the same time it's the classic symbols you find later on, it's the crescent, it's the double disc symbol, it's the fish which you find on these later stones. So although they're not carved particularly expertly, they are the same tradition as this kind of later manifestation. And so, you know what's the most likely origin for a symbolic system and a kind of carved stone tradition would be in the Roman period and that's what you find in Ireland in terms of the Aum tradition that's what you find in Scandinavia and in those two cases they're more directly adopting a Latin-inspired tradition. But again, it's in that late Roman period that they're doing that

because of contact with literate cultures to the south. So it seems very likely that it is a late Roman tradition or could even extend earlier than that. But I think our best evidence so far of that early origins is the evidence from Danicaire. And we certainly have evidence now that it's certainly a vibrant tradition in the 5th and 6th centuries through our work at Rhynie and dating objects from the Orkney Isles as well. I'll mention Rhynie in a bit because I've got the Rhynie man in my notes,

which I feel I need to ask about too before we completely wrap up. But I mean, these symbol stones, they are so iconic of Pictish culture, aren't they? Do we have any idea what their purpose was? Short answer is no. The longer answer is, well, this is, again, one of the things that people said to me when I first started getting into the Picts was like, well, definitely don't do that PhD on the symbol tradition

because, you know, that's where madness lies. And again, definitely don't do that PhD on the symbol tradition, because that's where madness lies, and again, you won't go anywhere, and there's lots of craziness surrounding it. So it's a tradition that's been recognised since the mid-19th century and associated with the Picts around about that time. It's found in the Pictish regions, as far as we know, in areas north of the Antonine Wall. And it has a range of symbols. Some of them are animals or objects, but many of them are abstract,

things like these double discs or the crescents, these strange kind of tower-like symbols almost. So it's been a real puzzle since they were first rediscovered, I guess, in the 19th century. What on earth do these mean? And you can imagine there have been lots and lots of ideas about what they might mean. What we can say is that there's no local or regional concentrations of symbols, so they're unlikely to be territorial markers. They're found in presumably pagan contexts, if indeed they

go back into third, fourth century, and even in the fifth century places that are highly likely to be pagan, but they're also later found on Christian monuments. So it seems unlikely that they're pagan symbols per se, something that was appropriate in both contexts. So people have, in the last couple of decades, particularly through the work of Ross Sampson and Catherine Forsyth, have began to look at these as maybe kind of being part of a symbolic system that might indicate something like names or status. So if you look on the later monuments,

you see individuals on horseback or sitting on chairs, and they're labelled by these symbols chairs and they're labeled by these symbols and they're usually one or two symbols so if it is you know representing part of a written language or or something along those lines then the message must be really short so names does seem most likely and if we look at the the Ogham tradition or the runic tradition in Scandinavia, even though they are based on the Latin tradition, so they could write whole novels using the Ogham or the runic tradition in general, particularly in the early period, they are names. So it does, again, seem likely that's what the symbols are representing. But what's really interesting about the Pictish tradition is that they're definitely not using the Latin alphabet.

So again, it's a very non-Roman, maybe deliberately so, tradition as far as what the Picts are innovating. So again, that's really, really interesting. And I think I'm in broad agreement, it must be some sort of identity marker and a naming tradition does seem most likely. But unless we find a Rosetta stone we're not going

to know for sure and i'm kind of almost like what you know maybe we shouldn't find a rosetta stone because again a part of that kind of mystery and drive to find out more might be lost if you knew it was something really dull yeah who knows who knows who knows a Pictish rosetta stone who sees well come on then before we have to completely wrap up, I will ask you quickly about the Rhynie Man, because you mentioned Rhynie a few times, and this particular simple stone is unique and extraordinary. So quickly, because we don't have much time, but what is the Rhynie Man that we've got here?

Well, actually, I think we can probably credit the Rhynie Man was really inspiring the whole project, because it was the first site that we really worked on. So the Rhineman is this carved stone. It was found in 1978 by the farmer ploughing his field, going happily about his business and hitting this huge stone with his new plough and uncovered this stone with this carving of this man, or maybe man, or figure, mythical figure maybe, and they are carrying an axe over their shoulder, this really thin shafted axe, and they've got big pointy teeth and they're wearing

a kind of tunic. So again, it might be a god or a mythical figure or hero figure of some kind. And so it was part of that discovery that really inspired the project. And the same year it was found, 1978, the regional archaeologist Ian Ralston flew over the site and took some aerial photographs of the find spot and revealed this crop mark enclosure round about where there's a current Pictish stone that's still unusually standing in its original position called the cross stain.

And so we set about to find out more about these enclosures and try and date those and see if they were contemporary with the stones. And again, we had no real concept of what we might find. We thought we might find a few burials or the like. And it turns out this was this incredibly high status settlement of the 4th to the 6th centuries AD. status settlement of the fourth to the sixth centuries AD. Basically the cross stain and maybe the rainy man because we found another stone socket next to the cross stain were standing at the entranceway to this enclosure complex which would have had a big wooden palisade and inside we found the kind of foundations of big wooden buildings and the artifact assemblage was just quite incredible. It had this late Roman amphora, it had glass from Western France, it had glass from Anglo-Saxon

England, and huge amounts of production evidence, things like crucibles, moulds, including objects that resemble what you see in the stones. Again, we're not able to date the stones, but again, able to make a close association between stones and archaeology. So we found a little miniature axe that resembles the axe the Rhiney man carries. We found little moulds for making animal figurines that resemble the animals you see on the Pictish stones. And again, that helped us kind of put the chronology of the symbol tradition on more firm footing in terms of definitely in operation in that fifth and sixth century and perhaps fourth century context of the

Rhinie site. So yeah again it was a real eye-opener of you know what you can find if you actually look at some of these sites and find spots of monuments like the Rhinie Man. Well exactly and it bodes really exciting for the future for archaeological work going forwards to learn more about the Picts and how far back they stretch into late ancient history. Gordon, this has been absolutely fascinating

and I've no doubt people listening have also found this so, so interesting. Last, but certainly not least, as we wrap up now, you have written a book, a very recent book with updated information about the state of archaeology, about the Picts, which is called? Picts, Scourge of Rome, Rulers of the North. Well, there we go. Gordon, it just goes for me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast today. Thanks, Tristan.

cast today. Thanks, Tristan. Well, there you go. There was Professor Gordon Noble explaining all things The Picts. I hope you enjoyed that episode. I really enjoyed recording that one. Anything Scotland in either prehistory or ancient history, maybe even into the early medieval period too, you know me, I'm there. It's just such a fascinating area of the world with an incredible ancient history. Last things from me, you know what I'm going to say. If you've been enjoying the ancients episodes recently, whether it's the Picts or the First Spears or Boudicca or Australopithecus or any of those recent episodes and you're thinking, you know what, I'd love to give something back to the ancients,'d love to help out well you know what you can do you can leave us a lovely racing on apple podcast on spotify wherever you get your podcast from it really helps us as we continue to grow the podcast

but also regardless to share these amazing stories from our distant past with you and with as many people as possible that is our mission and we will continue doing that for as long as we can. But that's enough from me and I will see you in the next episode. Thank you.