The Ancients - The Picts: Rulers of the North

Episode Date: September 21, 2025

Tristan Hughes journeys up to windswept Scotland to uncover the secrets of the Picts — fierce warriors, skilled artisans, enemies of Rome and rulers of the North.In this special episode of The Ancients - recorded on site at East Lomond hill fort and National Museums Scotland - Tristan is joined by Professor Gordon Noble and Dr. Martin Goldberg explores how the Picts lived, fought, and thrived in Britain’s wildlands. From mysterious symbol stones and silver hoards to rare warrior artefacts, discover how archaeology is rewriting the story of Scotland's most famous warrior people.Tristan's new TV documentary 'Enemies of Rome: In Search of the Picts' is out now on History Hit. To watch, sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. Presented by Tristan Hughes. Edited and produced by Joseph Knight. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.All music courtesy of Epidemic SoundsThe Ancients is a History Hit podcast.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener survey here: https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello everyone. Just a quick message from me before we get into the episode. Thank you once again to everyone who came to our live show a couple of weeks back. And you can now listen to the audio from that event all about ancient Carthage with Dr. Eve MacDonald. You can listen to it now if you are a subscriber of the ancients because we have just released it as a special bonus episode for our subscribers. If you're interested in that and would like to become a subscriber, there is a link to press in the show notes. Now, on with the episode. What you can hear around me now is the sound of discovery. I'm in the far north of the British Isles at East Lomond Hill, the site of an ancient hill fort, filming for a new history hit documentary. Once a bustling hive of Iron Age settlement and activity, East Lomond Hill has lain dormant for thousands of years, that is, until now. Since 2017, this hill fort has been the subject of several archaeological digs like the one I'm visiting today.

Their aim is to uncover traces of a people woven into the legends and stories of ancient Britain, a people famed for their hardiness and fearsome brutality, but also their sophisticated artistry, their symbol stones and silverworking. They are the Picts, the scourge of Rome and rulers of the north. But who were they really? How much can we know of them? And what was everyday life like for one of Britain's fiercest peoples? Join me in this special episode of the ancients

as we embark on a northern odyssey to discover just how the Picts survived in Britain's ancient wild lands. The Picts were an ancient people who inhabited what is now northeast Scotland, north of the fourth river, River during the late Roman and early medieval periods. But deciphering who they were and where they came from is a fiendish exercise.

Very little that the Picts wrote down about themselves has survived the rigours of time. This means we have to rely on what the Romans and other British peoples said of them. The land that became Scotland that the Romans invaded in the first and second centuries was split into a colourful patchwork of tribes, from the Caledoni and Vacomagi living in the rugged highlands to the Venicones based just north of the Antonine Wall and the Firth of Fourth. Gradually, however, these disparate peoples were forced by the Roman threat to unite into larger, more centralized polities. Only by coming together could they hope to face up to the marauding legions raiding their southern flank. And so it was that

the Picts emerged out of this melting pot in the 3rd century AD as a new culture to oppose an empire on their doorstep. The word picked was first used by a Roman author writing in the year 297 to describe these northern tribes. It derives from the Latin word picti, which meant painted ones, perhaps referring to a practice of tattooing or body painting. Indeed, several Roman sources, including letters written by Julius Caesar himself, describe ancient Britons as half-naked and covered in frightful snaking blue patterns. Now I must point out that it is quite debated now whether the ancient Britons, including the Picts, dyed themselves with woed. And there is another possibility that the Picts

more regularly painted themselves a striking reddish colour. Red paint was easily made from iron ore or hematite, and we do also have a mention from the later Gothic historian Jordanez that the Picts wore iron red paint. But that debate is for another day. For some 600 years, roughly between 300 and 900 AD, Roman and British writers alike used the word Picti as an ethnic term to describe a people who inhabited what came to be known as Pictland, a region that at its height stretched from Fife in the south, up past the Moray Firth to Caithness on the northeastern tip of mainland Britain, and may have even encompassed the northern and western isles. As the descendants of many of Scotland's Iron Age tribes, the Picts were left

with a rich landscape in which they chose to settle and build their homes. In this period, Iron Age hill forts were reused and forts also built anew to provide a handy refuge from raids, and in some cases these became important centres of power. To find out how life unfolded in these hill forts and how important they were to maintaining power in the heartslands of Pictish Scotland, I travelled to Falkland Hill, also known as East Lomond, the site of an Iron Age hill fort that was inhabited continuously between the 3rd and 7th centuries AD.

Standing here near the summit of East Loment, just north of Edinburgh, It's easy to see why this place was an attractive site to fortify. You can literally see for miles, with fields and fields stretching out below me, I can see the fourth estuary to my south, the beginning of the highlands to my north. It is quite the site. But this exposed hilltop also means it is very windy. The wind sweeps across the hills, and I'm having to make sure I've got a strong foothold as I do this. You can imagine these hardy Pictish warriors standing strong against the gusts and looking out across the vast countryside,

on alert for danger or for approaching traders with their goods from other places in the British Isles, maybe even from beyond Britain's shores. Any hostile forces, Roman or otherwise, who aimed to besiege this place, would have had little chance of approaching with any kind of surprise. Meanwhile, from the ground, the hill is visible for miles around. Any fort built atop its summit, therefore, was a significant symbol of strength. Fife, the region in which East Lomond is situated, was of great strategic. It is essentially an 85 mile-long peninsula that juts out into the North Sea, flanked to its north and south by the 4th and Tay waterways, vital arteries of trade into the very heart of the country.

Dominance of Fife meant dominance of these rivers and granted its ruler significant status as regional power brokers. Even though it's the height of summer, you can tell we're up against the North Sea because the wind is still biting. But this hill fort and the area surrounding it meant more. to its Pictish inhabitants than the mere strategy. First and foremost, it was home, and it played host to a huge variety of everyday life activities.

Since 2014, archaeologists have been delving into the soil around East Lomond in search of objects and artefacts that might shed light on how the Picts lived. So time for me to climb down from this hill and talk to the head of the Northern Picts Research Project, Professor Gordon Noble, to find out what exactly has been unearthed. Gordon, why did the Picts like Hillfort so much? Well, I mean, that's one question that we're trying to really establish an answer for. Certainly in our early sources for the Picks,

Hillforts do appear as reference places, which is very, very unusual and rare for this time period because we have so few actual places documented in our historical sources. So the classic view of the Picks has been that Hillforts are really central to power then governance. And I think that's probably true, but always a big challenge has been finding other types of settlement. So in the lowlands, there must be, you know, everyday farmsteads of the Picts, but for whatever reason they haven't survived well. So that's why we often go to Hill Forces, because it's one of the areas in which the everyday life of the

picks can be attested through archaeological evidence. And what would the Hillford at East Lomond? What would it have looked like 1700 years ago? Again, that's just really what we're trying to hopefully establish over the coming years. It certainly develops through time. So we've got a large settlement there in that late Roman period, third and four centuries, and probably enclosed within a lower wall, an annex wall. And we think that the hill fort itself would have been occupied in some way, but we just don't know how complex that would have been until we start excavating on the hill fort itself.

But certainly by the seventh century, we've got evidence for, you know, a really extensive settlement, lots of different houses and structures within the annex wall there. And that's really exciting because, again, because we have so little evidence for the everyday life of the PICs and what their buildings look like, what their architecture was like, then to have a site like this where you have deep stratigraphy with structures and buildings represented through four or five centuries of that hillfort's life, then that's an amazing evidence-based to work on. Would the hill fort have looked terraced with layers of houses and ramparts stepping down the hillside?

Yeah, certainly at one stage it would undoubtedly have looked like that, but probably developing over time. So that style of hill fort is called a nuclear hill fort with all these different enclosures, springing off the central focus of the hillfort itself. That's a fairly classic early medieval form, so you get major power centres like Dunad or Dundurn and the or sites mentioned in our sources that look like that. And East Lomond, certainly at one stage in its life, probably, you know, 7th century, at least it would have been that really complex hillfort style.

But again, we're not sure just how that develops through times. That's what we're hoping to establish over the coming years, is how complex a hillfort was this in the late Roman period? Was it actually a hill fort or was it an open settlement that later developed into a complex hill fort like that? And through tracking that kind of development, we can say a lot about how society is developing through time, how complex the hierarchy might be within the settlement. And, you know, it's long distance and local connections through material culture and the like. And do we know anything about Pictish lifestyle?

Were they pastoral, rearing livestock, were they agricultural? How do they live off the land? Yeah, well, we're starting to build more and more evidence about. that so again with the traditional lack of settlements have been really difficult to even say the basic things about society but with East Lomond and some of other digs like a burghead up on the Murray Coast were able to really tell us a lot more about the economy and society so yeah they were agriculturists an economy very much based on arable agriculture and animal economy so they have

cattle, pig, sheep is the kind of main dominant speech but they're also certainly at some of the elite sites they're hunting and they're fishing. So we're gradually building up a view of the Pictish economy. And also in terms of, you know, their everyday life, we've got things like gaming pieces turning up at East Lombent and other sites. So they're playing boar games within their houses at these sites. We've got agricultural tools emerging. We've also got, you know, weapons of war as well.

So we can see the kind of warrior elements of society and how that underpinned some of these elite centres in this late Roman and post-Roman context. So you mentioned some of the archaeological discoveries from Easter Lomond. What are some of your favourites? I mean, those gaming pieces sound fascinating. Yeah, oh God, it's like asking what your favourite child is when you've got lots of them like me. Yeah, I don't know, it's hard to say what my favourite find would be. I love our diggers finding objects, but what's important to me is understanding the context

or those objects, you know, are they coming from a house, or are they coming from a external midden? And that's for me is when objects get really exciting, is when we can piece them together with the kind of evolution of that site through time and begin to understand, you know, how these objects fit within the everyday context of, you know, a house or a structure or the like. So I think the range of evidence we're getting at East London is really quite exceptional. There's not many hill forts with this, you know, well-presenting. of evidence as we're getting at East Loment, you know, getting complete spearheads or complete agricultural tools is really, really exciting and just shows you that this was, you know, quite

a wealthy community. There was lots of material culture kicking around in the settlement of fact that it could lose some of these things and, you know, not care too much or that sounds terrible. But, you know, I mean, just there's so much material culture going around that they leave some of the stuff behind for us, our gel was just to find, you know, 1,500 years later. What started the Civil War? What ended the conflict in Vietnam? Who was Paul Revere?

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So here in Fife, we are close to the upper limits of Roman settlement in Scotland. We're not too far away from the Antonine Wall line and the Gaskeridge, places like Ardoch-Romanford. Is there any hint of diplomatic relations between the Picts and the Romans here? Well, definitely some sort of relationship there, although the real kind of part of the chronology really kicks off in the third century. And by that time, the Roman frontier would have been back at Hadrian's wall. But we do have hints of maybe first or second century finds, but that could have been created into those later phases. But certainly from that late Roman period, we've got things like Neen Valley Ware, Oxfordshire, where these are pottery types that have been made in Roman Britain. So there's some sort of connection there, whether those are gifts in terms of fine tableware and food stuffs, or this is stuff that the picks and their predecessors are gaining through raiding or other less positive relations, I guess, with the Romans.

But certainly it's really interesting that this site is really starting to take off in that third and fourth century context, and it's a bit like Tappanoff up in Aberdeenshire that we've worked on before, where we've got these very long. large hill forts just emerging in that mid to later third century context when that Roman military influences is lesser, I think, in this parts of Northern Britain. So we've got the River Tay to our north and the river forth to our south. Given how important rivers were as nodes of trade back then, do we see Roman pottery and amphora being brought into Picksland via these routes? Yeah, absolutely. So in that late Roman period, we've got the Oxfordshire wares and Neen Valley wares, so they may well be coming in through sea connections or other means. But I think what's particularly interesting in that respect is the kind of post-Roman

evidence. So we've got a late Roman amphra. We've got a couple of sheriffs that we need to get specialists to look at, but we think they're fairly convincing. And that's amphra vessels, big storage vessels that are coming from the Eastern Mediterranean in the late 5th century or early 6th century, and they're coming up the Irish seaways and they're found at really high status sites and normally royal sites where we have documentary evidence in places like Ireland

and so that's really exciting because there's literally a handful of sites in Scotland that has that material and then kind of late 6th, early 7th century we've got eweir coming from Western France those are vessels for things like exotic foodstuffs or dyes or other goods that are again coming up that western seaways.

And there's about 20 odd sites in Scotland that's got that material, but again, they're really significant sites. So it really puts East Lomond in that bracket of the kind of upper status sites of this time period. So the Picts are famous for their symbols, carved onto stones. It begs the question, have there been any stones discovered at East Lomond with Pictish patterns on them?

Yeah, absolutely. So there's a number of older finds from East Lomond and roundabout. So there's a carving of a bull from the fort itself that was found in an earlier time period. And that's of the kind of Pictish tradition. We find bulls carved at other major power centres like Burghead up in Murray. So that's really exciting. And that's in the National Museum now. And then just down towards Falkland, the village down below East Lomond,

And there's two class one, Pictish symbol stones, were found, again, in a later context, built into a barn. And those suggest that, again, there might have been a lowland focus in this landscape that's, you know, tallied with the power centre on the hill itself. And then just from this year, we got an amazing tiny little stone object that appears to be a little face, has got eyes and a little almost like Bart Simpson's style haircut. So we need to get that looked at, but it's kind of similar to how they depict certain people within things like illuminated manuscripts in the early medieval period. So that's super exciting. I mean, I don't really have any parallels for that stone object. So, yeah, it'd be really exciting to see what else shows up in the coming years.

Now, one of the most fascinating finds made in East Lomond is of a rare bronze spearbutt, uncovered by a volunteer archaeologist last year. Experts identified it as a spear butt from depictions on Pictish carved stones, including one at Colessie, a few miles down the road from the East Lomond dig site. These carvings suggest that the spear butt may have been used in close combat. Imagine a dull bronze doorknob about the size of your palm that has a slight green tinge to it due to oxidation on the metal. One end is flat and rounded at the edges like a mushroom.

It then narrows severely into a tube that can be attached to the end of a wooden shaft. I sat down once again with Gordon Noble to find out what this spear butt tells us about how the Picts waged war. Gordon, firstly, what is this spear butt? So it's basically just the base of the spear. So you've got the spearhead at the top, you've got the shaft, and then sometimes they have just little metal spikes, so you can spike that into ground. or in this case this is looks, it's called a really romantic

name, it's a doorknob spear button literally looks like you're an old-fashioned Victorian door handle but it's really cool because the Romans talk about the Caledoniae who are predecessors of the picks having a spearbut that looked like a globe so a kind of

circular shape that rattled when they were in battle so almost kind of psychological warfare and you also see these depicted on pictures warrior carvings. So there's one at Colessate, which is only seven miles from East Lomond. There's one at Rhinni, which we think is this early Pictish Royal Centre, and one at Tullet,

which was found recently. And so you see warriors carrying these spears with the same spear butt there. And we found across Northern Britain there's, you know, moulds and there's literally, I think, you know, two or three of these actual objects known. and so for one to come up East Lomond is super exciting so that just came from near a hearth from one of the upper phases of settlement that we exhibited last year so it's great to get it in context we'll be able to vary carbon date

the settlement layers and we've actually got what looks like the remains of the spear shaft actually partly preserved within the object itself and that's a fruit wood that's kind of what you would use to make a spear shaft today so we could probably directly date that as well so that would be fantastic to say when were these spear types in use and that can help us date the sculpture that shows these spears as well

so yeah it was a super exciting find in terms of you know like if we create a checklist of things we'd like to find on this kind of site that was definitely one of them and you said there that it's one of the only ones we have and how it can help us date all sorts of other objects does that add to the significance of this find? It does. Again, it's fantastic to have context in regards to objects. So we know it's

coming from a building, so it's near a hearth. So someone, you know, laid it down within this house or something happened within that building or they deliberately left it there. So we can tell something about the life history of that object. But again, we can date it as well. If things have no context, then we can't get any dates from it. And obviously, we can't direct. date the sculpture, you know, it's just carved stone. And so the fact that we might be able to date the, you know, the wood within the spear butt itself is, yeah, hugely exciting and begins to, again, help us place the Pictish stone carving tradition into chronological horizon. So that's super exciting. When you imagine Picts, you imagine these painted warrior

people. Does this spear butt hint at a warrior culture? No, I think, you know, all societies that we know of in this time period in terms of Britain and Ireland. They were a warrior kingdoms, they were warrior cultures. Prouress on the battlefield was certainly something that was factored into leadership and kingship in this time period. And a lot of our iconography from this time period involves, especially in Pickland, involves warriors, often with spears. Occasionally with swords, but spears much more commonly. And the sources we have, the Irish annals, you know, life of Colomba, beast history, they all talk about warfare and battles being, you know, obviously quite prominent within society. Not to say that they were always

constantly fighting, but certainly warrior hood and battles were important in terms of the power politics of this time period. And we have, in terms of objects, we have so few actual weapons again because the lack of settlement sites and in Pickland they don't bury their dead with objects as a general rule unlike in Anglo-Saxe in England. So we don't really have that kind of range of evidence to draw upon. So anything that we do find in that respect is really exciting in terms of interpreting the character of Pictus Society. What started the Civil War? What ended the conflict in Vietnam?

Who was Paul Revere? And did the Vikings ever reach America? I'm Don Wildman, and on American History Hit, my expert guests and I are journeying across the nation and through the years to uncover the stories that have made America. We'll visit the battlefields and debate floors where the nation was formed. Meet the characters who have altered it with their touch. and count the votes that have changed the direction of our laws and leadership.

Find American History Hit twice a week, every week, wherever you get your podcasts. American History Hit, a podcast from HistoryHit. Now, so many of our sources about the Picts are written by people who weren't Picts. We've got the Romans, you've got the venerable bead, you've got Irish Chronicles. Is that why these artefacts being unearthed at places like East Lomond are so valuable for learning more about the Picts? Because they were clearly owned by Picts. This is more direct evidence. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. And that's why archaeological evidence is so important. So we have these, you know, external sources. I think the only thing we do is, you know,

have them picks themselves as this king list, which is literally more or less just a list of kings through time. So that's why archaeology is so key. This allows us to illuminate the lives of everyday people, whether they be high status or not. So yeah, it's great to begin to have these very rich sites with this rich stratigraphy and architectural evidence and material culture evidence from the pics. And do we have any idea just how widespread and developed metal working was at East Lomond. Yeah, no, it's another exciting element of the site is we're getting lots evidence for smelting iron, but we also have crucible fragments and a few mould fragments as well from

precious metal working, so things like bronze and silver probably. So a whole range of different craft activities and industrial processes being carried out on site. So again, we'll be able to map the. that in terms of the settlement through time, is there particular industrial areas or are the particular craftworking areas? What range of metals are they producing? Are they actually making tools and weaponry on site? I strongly suspect they are just because of the character of this hill fort, but we need to begin to kind of pin down those areas and pin down that evidence. And we'll only do that to more digging, I guess. Gordon, thank you so much for your time.

No worries. Like many Iron Age societies, metalworking was central to life among the Picts. But their smiths were skilled in far more than just crafting brutish weapons, spear butts, tools for agricultural use. It was their work with silver, refined into intricate jewellery, that's truly showcased the sophistication and artistry of Pictish craftsmen. Roman era silver has been discovered at archaeological sites across Scotland, The D'ercy Horde, for example, was discovered a few miles away from East Lomond. Whilst the largest horde of Roman haksilver ever found anywhere outside the borders of the Roman Empire,

was discovered on the hill fort of Traprain Law in East Lovian, not far from Edinburgh. Much rarer, however, is silver smelted by Pictishmiths. That is why the Norris Law Horde, discovered in 1819 in Largo, is so spectacular. Along with several pieces of Roman haksilver, it contains a remarkable leaf-shaped oval plaque with Pictish symbols, similar to those you find on the iconic stone pillars. Also uncovered was a Celtic brooch and spiralled fingering. The hoard is on display at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, along with some other jewellery from another hill fort at Berghead, near Moray, overlooking the North Sea.

I went to the National Museum of Scotland to speak to Dr. Martin Goldberg, principal curator for medieval archaeology, to discover what these finds tell us about Pictish society. Martin, it is such a pleasure to be here. Can you tell me, first of all, what exactly is the Norris Law Horde? The Norris Law Horde is a collection of hacksilver, and we call it a Pictish horde, but our recent work has allowed us to redate it

and pull it much closer to the late Roman world. And so whereas previously based on art historical dating, it was thought to be perhaps six or seventh century, we can pull it several hundred years earlier into the fifth or sixth century as it's accumulating. And there's the odd fragment of late Roman silver in there, but a lot of the material is fragments of things that we otherwise don't see anywhere else.

It only really occurs in this hoard. And it wasn't till we made a new discovery in 2013 of another hack silver hoard that we started to find comparisons between the two. And this other discovery from Gaul Cross had even more late Roman material in it. And so we're now looking at a spectrum of hack silver material

that's coming out of the late Roman world. That silver is being reused and remade into new objects and some of those are being hacked up and traded and passed on and accumulated into collections like the Norris Law Horde. And how much variety is there in the objects which have been hacked up in the Norris Law Horde? So there's huge amounts of things. We've got fragments of various categories of objects

from pieces of silver sheet. We've got pieces of vessels that we other... otherwise don't know anything about. We've got lots of pieces of arm rings, and the arm rings are a type of object that is only found in these two hordes from Norrislaw and Golcross, and they seem to be operating as some sort of proto-currency, so not coins, but probably made from melted down late Roman coins, worn on the wrist, and used as currency in larger exchanges beyond the Roman frontier. could actually potentially this hoard give us an insight into the Pictish economy at that time as well.

Certainly the sort of status economy, yeah, the gifting of silver, whether that's by a war leader, you know, whether it's extracted from the late Roman world or whether it's used as pay or subsidy. But yeah, it's telling us about the Pictish economy, how important silver became in the display of wealth and status. And also how that display and status still maintain some sort of connection with the late Roman Empire, with the origin of where this bright, shiny material came from. Do you think horns like this, do you think it helps bring the story of the Picts further and further back into ancient times, as well as its continuation into the medieval period? Well, if you rely on the very few historical fragments that refer to the Picts,

you've got the late Roman sources and then you've got a gap of several centuries. before you get people like the Northumbrian monk bead writing in the 8th century about the Picts. The thing about the silver, the silver hordes like Norris Law, is that they help us to fill that gap, those couple of centuries where the historical sources aren't actually telling us anything. So these are like new historical documents, especially when new research can look at this material in different ways, make new theories about it, use new scientific. techniques to explore the quality of the silver. We can learn a lot more by looking at some of these older discoveries and, yeah, shuffling the dates about and allowing us to fill gaps in

our knowledge. Now, I noticed that some of these objects, they have Pictish artwork on them. Can you tell us a bit about this? Well, it's the Pictish artwork that allows us to more clearly define them as Pictish hordes. So the Norris Law Horde is found beyond the late Roman frontiers it's found in what is modern day fife and so it has that association beyond the frontier but the Pictish symbols and the way that those symbols are decorated they help us connect the picks with their own past this form of communication through the symbols that is used on large stones in the same way that the Ogham script is used in Ireland or runic script is used on objects in the Germanic-speaking world. We see symbols on silver, like the runes,

how the runes are used. We see symbols on large stones like Ogham is used. So we think that this is a form of communication that is unique to the picks. So they're taking the idea of literacy and monumental literacy and status literacy. They're doing something different though. They're not creating an alphabetic script. So Ogham is an alphabetic script. Latin is an alphabetic script. We can translate between Latin and Ogam because we have stones that have both sets of scripts on them. The Pictish symbols retain this sort of enigmatic quality because we haven't yet deciphered them. And can you tell us what these Pictish symbols are that we see on the Norris Law Horde and on what object they're shown? So the Pictish symbols, because we don't

know what they mean or what they say, they tend to have quite obscure modern names that have been given to them that kind of describe what they are. So there's lots of animal symbols and one of the symbols on the Norrisaw plaque is a sort of beasthead, but it has a fin, you know, or a flipper, so it looks like an aquatic creature. The picks from all of their art seem to be very into creatures of the imagination. It's like a seahorse maybe or something like that, mythical sea horse.

Perhaps, yeah. But it's the more abstract symbols that tend to sort of pick up modern names. So the one that is on the Norrislaw plaque is called a double disc and Zedrod. And that's pretty much describes what it is. There are two discs connected

and then a sort of slashing figure of S or Zenshi. It's like a Zoro kind of thing. Yeah. So it's one of the most of the most. more common Pictish symbols. You see it on a lot of the Pictish stones. You see it on one of the massive silver chains that are found in Scotland. So it's a symbol that certainly meant something in different places, but across a wide area of what we would think of as Pictland. And you mentioned

this plaque, and that was one particular object from the hoard where we have those decorations on? Yes. So Norris Law is famous for this one leaf-shaped plaque that has, a pair of symbols on it, beautifully incised. The decoration of the double discs is minute, triskel spirals are interconnect. You know, the craftsmanship is stunning. When you see that same symbol on a massive silver chain from Whitecluke, it's actually taken to an even smaller scale and another appreciation of the minute, delicate workmanship that goes into these things.

We'll certainly put a link to an image of that astonishing plaque in the description of this episode. We have all this array of artefacts from the Norris Law Horde, very rich, very beautiful artefacts made of silver. I mean, do we have any idea what they would have been used for or who would have used them in pictures society?

So when we're trying to sort of extract information from these hack silver hordes, we are looking at what the objects might have originally been used for and some of that is zones of use that we don't fully understand yet, because a lot of this material is only found in this horde or in the Gull Cross Horde, then we've only recently analysed both in relation to each other. But because they're fragments, they often don't tell us the full story.

We've tried to piece together as much as we can. There are dishes that would have been used as vessels. There are the arm rings. There are forms of jewellery like finger rings or pins or penangular brooches. But often there are fragments of other. objects that we don't fully understand often fragments have folded up sheet and what tends to have happened is they've been packaged up into parcels and so they have a second life they're valued for their material as bullion rather than the original objects that they were designed as so you're trying to

explore the sort of multiple lives of these objects as they've made their way into this sort of greater collection of hax silver. And we think that the bullion weight of the hack silver is telling us something about payment, about the economy, about relations with the late Roman world, where certain standards of weight and certain standards of quality were very important, and this seems to have filtered into the Pictish connections with the late Roman world. So if you move along from the Norris Law Horde to another set of artefacts, which are extraordinary and do seem to have a link to the Picts, which are these brilliant, pretty unique silver chains.

Can you tell us about these? Well, the massive silver chains are sometimes miscalled Pictish silver chains, and that's because two of them have pairs of Pictish symbols on them. But the vast majority of them are plain. They represent huge amounts of silver that are making their way north of the late Roman frontier, but they are unique to Scotland

and particularly found in southern Scotland, so almost between what we would think of as the Pictish zone north of the fourth and the late Roman frontier on Hadrian's wall. So is that between the Tweed and the Firth and Fourth today, that area? Yes, so that part of Southern Scotland is where the vast majority of these silver chains are found, and they obviously represent some sort of zone of interaction

between the Pictish world and the late Roman world. and some of them will have been worn by people who were important in the Britonic-speaking kingdoms that were developing in that late Roman world too, but that were also interacting with the people beyond them, the people that they called the Picts. So who do we think would have been wearing those massive silver chains as necklaces? Well, again, this is something that has come out of our more recent research. Regardless of the size of the links of the chain, there is a pretty common size diameter of the neck that they would have been worn around

and that isn't the neck of a big large warrior it's not even the size of neck of you and I a modern male neck it's much smaller and it's these objects are probably worn by either adolescence or women and this is common across the whole range of these silver chains but they still have a clear link you know with those two which show pictures shimbals onto the Pictish world. And I know it's only a theory at this time, but could potentially these chains be evidence that in the Pictish world, there were communities ruled by strong queens? That's one possibility. And it's certainly a tantalising one. You know, as soon as you make

that realization, yes, you want to reconsider the historical narrative that has talked about matrilineous succession and things like that. But again, because of the zone of where these things are found between the Pictish world and the late Roman world, these objects can tell us about other processes that would have been important, and those might be kinship relationships. Silver might have been exchanged in return for people, important people, and that might have encompassed other processes, social processes, things that were important to create in relations between groups of people, like when you foster your children or when you arrange a marriage, Alliance. And so there are other ways of thinking that may well feed into that wider historical

narrative once we have more evidence of the importance of the female in these societies. How important would you say today are these beautiful silver artefacts, whether they be in the Norris Law Horde or these remarkable silver chains with new research and so on? How important are they in helping us learn more about the Picts? Well, what's they help us do, particularly as archaeologists, is fill a gap that has always existed between the historical records of the late Roman world that talked about Picti, the people beyond their frontiers. And then the 7th and 8th century, when other later historical sources, often written by their neighbours, start referring to the picks again. And this silver material and the importance of that

material in the 5th and 6th centuries helps fill this gap in our historical knowledge. It helps us look at the objects that were important to people. It helps us learn about the types of processes that were important in gluing these societies together. I'd like to finally ask about the symbol stones, about those stunning Pictish stones that have come to epitomise the Picts today. Why were these stones, why were they so prolific amongst the Picts? Why do they hold so much importance to them?

Well, we have an amazing collection of Pictish symbol stones and the later use of the symbols on Christian monuments here at National Museum Scotland and seeing them in the context of the objects that people used and the societies that were part of the historical background helps us learn about the picks, but also helps us dispel some of the mysteries about them. So, yes, we haven't deciphered this material. yet. We haven't deciphered

the Pictish symbols yet but we can look at them in comparison with other types of monumental literacy like the Ormstones or like runic inscriptions on smaller objects. We can make that comparison and that

helps us understand what we think the Pictish symbols are doing. They're communicating between groups of people. They're communicating in a way that the picks would have understood. So if the symbols stone sort of create a geographical zone that overlaps with where the historical record tells us the Picts were. We know that that form of communication worked within that zone.

We know that other types of literacy helped people from Ireland communicate with people in southern Wales. We know that the remnants of Latin literacy helped people connect with the late Roman past. But the Pictish symbols are doing something distinctive in Northern Britain, beyond the River Forth. They're doing something that meant the same thing or meant similar things to the way that literacy is used elsewhere. We just haven't deciphered it yet. It's not alphabetic, so it doesn't directly translate. But we can point to the symbols of power, whether those are the symbols on silver objects or whether they're on these. beautiful monumental stones that are found across Scotland.

Martin, this has been so interesting. Thank you so much for your time. Thanks for your interest. It's been great. The story of the Picts is not one of complete darkness, nor total clarity. It's a tale told in fragments, carved into stone, buried in hordes, and echoed in the contours of ancient hill forts like East Lomond and Berghead. What we do know is that theirs was a life shaped by both houses. hardship and ingenuity. They farmed the land, raised cattle, crafted tools and jewellery, and built fortified homes atop commanding hills, all while navigating the complex realities of trade,

diplomacy and war on the edge of the Roman world. Their enemies painted them as wild and fearsome, but the objects they left behind reveal a culture just as refined as it was rugged. From the mysterious symbols etched into stone to the intricately worked silver of the Norris Law Horde, the Picts weren't just survivors, they were storytellers, artisans, warriors and innovators. Their hill forts weren't just strongholds, buzzing with life and tradition. And although the Picts eventually faded from the historical record, absorbed into the emerging kingdom of Alba in the 9th century, their legacy lives on. not only in the landscape of Scotland, but in the craftsmanship, the symbols and the mystery they left behind.

If you want to see more of what life was like for the Picts, from the dramatic views atop their ancient hill forts to the treasures they left behind in the earth, then don't miss our brand new documentary on History Hit Out Now. Thank you for listening to this episode of The Ancients. Please follow the show on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. That really helps us and you'll be doing us a big favour. If you'd be kind enough to leave us a rating as well, well we'd really appreciate that. Don't forget, you can also listen to us

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