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Pictish Rock Art with Hamish Findlay Lamley - Ep 135
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This week, Dr Alan chats to Hamish Findlay Lamley, Pictish specialist, leatherworker, and tattoo artist, about all things relating to the ancient Pictish landscape in Scotland. From carved stones and Pictish motifs, they discuss all things relating to rock art.
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- For rough transcripts of this episode go to https://www.archpodnet.com/rockart/135
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Transcript
Introduction to California Rock Art Foundation
00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network. Hello out there in archaeology podcast land. This is Dr. Alan Garfinkel. I'm the president and founder of the California Rock Art Foundation. And what we do is we identify, evaluate, manage and conserve rock art both in Alta, California and in Baja, California.
00:00:21
Speaker
We conduct field trips, we have trainings, exercise, we do research, and in every way possible we try to preserve, protect, and coordinate treasures of Alta and Baja California rock art, of which there are many, and diverse. We also work closely with Native Americans and partner with them to recognize and protect sacred sites.
00:00:41
Speaker
So for more info about the fabulous California Rock Art Foundation, you can go to carockart.org. Also, i'm I'm open to give me a call, 805-312-2261. We would welcome sponsorship or underwriting, ah helping us to defray the costs of our podcasts, and also membership in California Rock Art Foundation, and of course, donations since we are a 501c3 nonprofit scientific and educational corporation. God bless everyone out there in podcast land.
00:01:16
Speaker
You're listening to The Rock Art Podcast. Join us every week for fascinating tales of rock art, adventure, and archeology. Find our contact info in the show notes and send us your suggestions.
00:01:31
Speaker
Well out there, this is Dr. Alan Garfinkel, your moderator for the 135th episode of The Rock Art Podcast.
Hamish Landley and Pictish Stones
00:01:43
Speaker
We have Hamish Landley, who's got a historical craftsman and experimental archaeologist from Scotland, talking about Pictish stones. Wait till you hear this one, gang. What a joy and what a wonder. Kitchen the flip flop.
00:02:06
Speaker
Hello out there in Rock Art Podcast Land. This is your host, Dr. Alan Garfinkel. And continuing our efforts far field and globally, thanks to Ashley, who's been able to cultivate some but new and exciting guest scholars. And we have Hamish Landly, who's a historical craftsman and experimental archaeologist, as he calls himself. And we're going to hear a bit about his expertise, his knowledge, and some of the areas of symbolism
00:02:47
Speaker
that come out of Scotland. Are you there, Hamish? I am indeed. I'm very honored to be on the podcast. Thanks for having me. Well, no, we're we're honored to have you. I think this is the the first time we've had anybody from your esteemed country.
Who Were the Picts?
00:03:02
Speaker
And I guess tell me a bit about your background and how you got involved with this and how ah we might to think about your expertise and how it relates to the big element of rock art and maybe indigenous people throughout the globe. For sure, thank you. Well yeah, i'm I'm really honored to bring ah sort of my knowledge and journey of Scottish or ancient Pictish history to the fore.
00:03:33
Speaker
Yeah, I kind of wear many hats and ah at the forefront of everything I do is about sharing, exploring Pictish culture from Scotland, which is the sort of as indigenous as we can get to the northeast of Scotland. so so What does Pictish mean? P-I-C-T-I-S-H? Is that a a language? Is that a archaeological culture? What does that concept relate to?
00:03:59
Speaker
The Picts were the kind of indigenous people of North East Scotland. They began in the Iron Age and became a real polity in the early medieval period. and it's but also A lot of Scottish ancestry goes back to. Were they agriculturalists at that point?
00:04:18
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. They were, yeah. and And that goes back to what age, what what would you put it, like an AD or BC? So the the Pictish culture starts to come about during about the kind of second century AD, so around 200s, but really forms a polity in the between the sixth and the ninth century AD. I see. Yeah. And what remains from that culture that that put tugs at your
The Enigma of Pictish Symbols
00:04:45
Speaker
heartstrings?
00:04:45
Speaker
The biggest remnant, and you'll love this, would be the rock carvings all across picked land. really That's kind of really what first sparked my passion for it. ah I'm from the northeast of Scotland and in Aberdeenshire. As a bear, I grew up playing on picked stones. but They're everywhere in Scotland. There's hundreds of them. ah Very detailed carvings of a very unique culture. Some of the carvings, you'll find these symbols nowhere else in the world.
00:05:16
Speaker
So there's something really kind of enigmatic about these carvings and a about this culture and a lot of mystery surrounding it as well. So it's a big part of exploring picturesque history is kind of exploring these mysteries and trying to bring some of them to light. so it's How big an area does the Pictish culture and the Pictish rock art and Scots? How many miles or how much? Roughly half of Scotland. Half of Scotland. Wow, that's huge, right? Yeah, you kind of had the Picts in the East and the Scots in the West. They were two distinct cultures. And tell me a bit about how you got involved in this and how this, you know, how you wrapped your mind around this. It sounds like you're interested in this from when you were a child.
00:06:01
Speaker
Yeah, so it's kind of growing up in the Northeast. You can't not be surrounded by by ah Pictish history and culture. And I think just as I grew older and developed more interests in history, it kind of led me down this rabbit hole.
00:06:14
Speaker
First and foremost, a craftsman, particularly a leather craftsman. I've always been in love with leather and leather items and reading a lot of historical books as a kid you hear about about leather work. So that's what first led me in. And it's spending more time in museums looking at historical leather work led me more down this historical path. I actually started by making a lot of Viking things.
00:06:38
Speaker
living in Norway and spending a lot of time there. And then it kind of led me to you
From Crafts to Pictish Studies
00:06:43
Speaker
know find more ah kind of interest in my own culture and start exploring that more. And then that has led me on this strange journey into academic circles. So I kind of work within archaeology. I do experimental projects. I work as a historical consultant for TV, movies and books. I've given lectures at universities to archaeology students.
00:07:05
Speaker
and And I'm now also a tattoo artist, so it kind of lends into archaeological research of tattooing and exploring cultures through that. But it's all come as a craftsman. Everything I do is first and foremost as a craftsman. And it's to kind of pick apart our past and it's it's always comes back to Pictish culture because it's a culture that not many people understand, even within Scotland. so just be So tell us a little bit about the subject matter and the various theories that have been foisted about
00:07:37
Speaker
you know, on what kinds of stones do these appear and are they intricate and well preserved? Is there, independent of the rock art, other ah ethnographic or historical information to glean? So, when we first encountered the Picts, we're we're talking around at the turn of the millennium when we have a collection of loose, what we'd call, you know, ah early Celtic Iron Age tribes throughout Scotland.
00:08:06
Speaker
and we see a Roman incursion into Scotland and this lasts several centuries and up until this point there's no evidence of stone carvings and it seems that the Romans would have brought stone masonry and stone carvings with them and through Roman oppression these Celtic tribes start to amalgamate into a have more solid polity and it's the Romans that give them the name, the picti, which could mean the painted
Symbolism in Pictish Carvings
00:08:31
Speaker
people. And there's mentions of tattoos and things which I can get into later. But it seems that this is when we start to see the birth of
00:08:40
Speaker
Pictish stone carvings with very unique symbols almost like a response to Roman oppression. Romans are erecting stone carvings and showing this culture so the local tribes then realise they have to put their own culture into a pictorial format on the landscape to really stamp their grounds. And we see these beautiful early rock carvings. They're just a peck marked in at this stage, just incised. But we see beautiful images of all sorts of animals and these very enigmatic symbols that we can go into. But for example, one we call the double disc and Z rod. So it's kind of like two circles joined.
00:09:21
Speaker
ah together and this rod in the form of a Z that threads its way through them there's many many different depictions of this there's also a crescent V rod so it's it's kind of like a crescent moon and with a rod in the shape of a V running through it so these are completely unique to the picks and we get all sorts of symbols all around Scotland some that we just still to this day can't explain what they are or what they possibly mean but they spring up around around picked land hundreds and hundreds of them and as the Romans carry on their kind of oppression the picks consolidate further and further become a stronger polity and then in the year 410 the Romans withdrew from the UK the kind of boot of oppression was removed from the local people's necks and what we have here is in the 5th century is this
00:10:11
Speaker
beautiful age of all these cultures springing up and the art flourishes, the craft flourishes and their borders go up and they're their culture and identity really flourishes and that's what we find in Scotland. The Picts in the East but really found this polity, they really came into their own, their art developed into this very unique style and it's reflected in the stone carvings. They become a lot more intricate a lot more symbols come to the fore and we are also now have a writing system introduced as well which ah kind of came from Ireland but was developed adopted by the Picts and we start seeing a really unique just beautiful array of stones across this region.
00:10:53
Speaker
in In that writing system, do they have much relevancy to the rock art vis-a-vis explaining the symbols or giving hints of why they're so ubiquitous and beautiful?
00:11:07
Speaker
If only we were that lucky, to be honest. Exactly. yeah I knew and knew the answer, but that's the question anyways. Yeah. The writing system is called OAM. It's often said as Ogham that stems from Ireland and it's, we have we have a stem line, one one solid line that's carved in and there is a collection of kind of dashes across the line or to one side or diagonally across it.
00:11:33
Speaker
And they're often just names depicting sons and fathers. Sometimes you might get something a bit more depicting an event. There's a lot more in Ireland that are more decipherable. There's just under 40 inscriptions in Scotland and only about half of them are eligible.
00:11:51
Speaker
Well, it's a whole study in itself, but it's beautiful to see the system and it's a really beautiful language and and way of writing and it's phonetic as well. So we can see the same names, but written differently in different regions of PIC plant just from the phonetics of it. So it's quite an interesting study. Are there descendants of PICS people that genetically are related or do we know that?
00:12:16
Speaker
Yeah, half of Scotland will be... just Half of Scotland. The Picts didn't go anywhere. This is this big question. We had the Picts in the East and the Scots in the West. What we have in Pictish culture is a ah unique form of leadership in that it was a matrilineer system. So Pictish kings usually did not have Pictish fathers. When a king died, they too chose the suitor and from the female line.
00:12:42
Speaker
And this, when we had lots of petty kingdoms within then Pickland, it meant a lot of the tribal chieftains were cousins or brothers. And what we had at one point was the picks on the Scots during the 8th and 9th century. yeah were uniting to fight off incursions of Norsemen from Scandinavia and in one of these battles the the Scottish king was killed and the Pictish king was killed and arose a Scottish king in the west called Kenneth MacAlpin who had a Pictish mother and so the Picts also accepted him as their over king. So we have both kingdoms under one kingship
00:13:21
Speaker
And slowly, because his royal court were Scots speaking Gaelic, we just see the Pictish culture slowly become amalgamated into Scottish culture. And Pictland slowly became Alpa, which is now the Kingdom of Scotland. So the the people, the Picts, never went anywhere. Just they started speaking a different language and adopting Western culture from s Scotland.
Preservation Efforts for Pictish Stones
00:13:47
Speaker
Now, you said there's many, many hundreds of examples of this Pictish rock art, and it's absolutely exquisite. What is the stone that these images are fashioned on? What kind of stone canvas?
00:14:04
Speaker
ah So i'm I'm not a stone carving expert, but there is some granite, but it it is mostly sandstone. mostly sandstone yes There is some harder stones, there is some granite stones here and there.
00:14:17
Speaker
But yeah, some of it is transported quite a way. Some of these ah stone carvings are six metres tall, completely carved with battle scenes, with figures being beheaded and kings and princes and royal huntings of of the the Lord the Laird's hunted deer with their hounds.
00:14:37
Speaker
huge embossed spiral panels, knot work panels, tree of life, all sorts of creatures under the sun. Wow. These can be enormous stone carvings. So are these well preserved? I would presume that the weather and the circumstances have affected some of them certainly, or are they ah able to weather the natural environment? We've been finding them for for centuries. So a lot of the time we find them because farmers have ploughed over them so many times, they decide to finally get rid of them out of their field. So we get beautifully carved stones that have got plough marks all through them and they're right they damaged. But those that have ah survived intact in situ have survived quite well. But ah now that historic environment Scotland
00:15:30
Speaker
for the past 50 years have been trying to preserve as many. So some of them that we like to keep in situ during the winter, we encase them in boxes to protect them. Some of them get encased in glass cases. But what tends to be the the case now is we remove it from being in situ into a museum or a church and then a full scale replica is carved and replaced on the hill. Oh, fascinating.
00:15:58
Speaker
Is there any push pushback about that particular way of conserving these monuments? In other words, go ahead. I think there is, in ah in a spiritual sense, with it not being the real stone in place. Yeah.
00:16:13
Speaker
Nobody can really you know say that ah it's not worth it because some of these stones, you can see the degradation in 10 years sometimes on these stones. They go from well-carved stones to almost unrecognizable and we just have so many modern factors to consider. I think you know modern farming practices and all sorts and various chemicals and all sorts that are really yeah affecting the degradation of them. So the the only way to really preserve them is to fully encase them in situ or get them into a protected area i like a museum or church. Many of them are preserved in church. But as as much as we can, but we'll get them into museums. Fascinating. So I guess we should cut it off there and then we'll pick it up.
00:17:04
Speaker
on the next segment. yeah I'm yeah very, very much intrigued. See you in the flip-flop, gang. Welcome back all you archaeology podcast lovers. This is your host, Dr. Alan Garfinkel. And we we are blessed and honored to have Hamish Landley, an historical craftsman and experimental archaeologist.
00:17:29
Speaker
all the way from Scotland talking about Pictish rock art. And this is something I know virtually nothing about. And I'm learning as we go. Needless to say, I'm fascinated with this Hamish. Let's continue our story here. So you've got this data set at your fingertips. What are the most engaging and important questions one might ask?
00:17:57
Speaker
ah in terms of trying to understand this dataset? Well, it's difficult to understand when it's standalone. The the difficulty is there's not much remains from the pics. There's not much written evidence, but there is some other evidence. This this is the archaeological evidence of the pics. And then there's manuscripts such as the famous Book of Kells, which is in Ireland, but is not from Ireland. It was actually produced in Pictland by Pictish monks.
00:18:27
Speaker
which is a pretty big sweeping statement but when you study the imagery of it as well you'll see it very similar to the the Pictish stone carvings and what we're seeing is when we have the earlier Pictish carvings we're seeing a lot of rudimentary carvings but unique symbols, and this is set in pagan context. This is all pre-Christian. Once the Romans leave, the Picts actually Christianised from the 6th century onwards, and this is where a lot of the rock art changes as well. We get a lot more Christian stones, but they all still have the pagan imagery on them as well.
00:19:06
Speaker
So it's really kind of interesting to look at when this transition happened and how it happened and why. And it's really fascinating because with the church becomes comes language, comes training, comes economics. And we start to see craft centres of Pictish art craft. We see the monastery of Potmohomoc up by the Black Isle suddenly producing manuscripts and all sorts and we have Aberlemdo and Angus that is suddenly a stone carving school.
Cultural Transition in Pictish Art
00:19:39
Speaker
ah school sorry And we we believe that ah with Christianisation they were bringing up Northumbrian stone carvers, potentially running kind of training centres there producing these beautiful big Christian monuments that were full of pagan imagery and these were then spreading throughout pig land.
00:19:58
Speaker
So who was really ordering these stones? Because before the church, was it just chieftains? Was it sort of communities that we have going? And then the church kind of took hold of a lot of that. And was there still localised chieftains ordering stone carvings to themselves in essence? Because we have a lot of stones with symbols and names and not really any idea why they're there. But who put them there?
00:20:23
Speaker
So you always ask more questions. yes So you're saying that a lot of these monuments, even though it's going through a period of Christianization,
00:20:34
Speaker
are full of pagan symbolism. Did I catch that correctly or no? Absolutely, yes. I think what's often happened with Christianization around the world is that the best way to show people if you're not scary is to include their imagery and weave it into your own tales. I mean, that's just part of it. And I think it would have put people at ease quite a lot. So you had this religious syncretism as as we use it in the term in anthropology. And tell me you know, a little bit about what sorts of pagan images they have that are twinned with classic Christian images. It's fascinating.
00:21:14
Speaker
Well, we suddenly see ah a huge big Christian cross carving, but next to it will be all the pre-Christian symbols, the double disc Z rod, the crescent V rod. A lot of this imagery will be in there, and then it will be mixed in with a lot of the Christian ah tales ah of sort of a King David and but all sorts of these tales. i I don't study Christianity, so all I really glean is what I see from the stone carvings. But it's tales woven around though the pre-Christian pagan symbols. They're all put into the same stories on the s stones. Sadly, we're just not quite speaking the same language as the people back then. I'm sure it all made perfect sense. Now, yeah do they have any particular indexical animals that are favored during this time?
00:22:06
Speaker
Absolutely, the picks really favored carving boar, bear, deer are on many, many stones. ah So we see a lot of like these kind of animals that would have been in a lot of scenes, but then we do have with the introduction of Christianity, a lot of like almost looks like my of mythical creatures enter into the four. There's a lot of Christian tales of, you know, the sort of like chimera beasts and things. So we have a lot of there moles, have you know, different heads to the bodies and things that's introduced quite a lot. Because I'm Catholic.
00:22:42
Speaker
is Is Mary ever represented? There is to date, there ah I will point out, we are on average finding one new Pictish stone every year. So to date, we only have one stone that has a definitive carving of a woman.
00:23:00
Speaker
only one. Oh, oh my word. And this is out of hundreds and hundreds of stones and fragments of stones. However, this one, this one's ah stone carving, it's the help of the plaid ballstone. And the woman is the most important person on the stone. It's not a religious figure.
00:23:20
Speaker
ah hu it definitely seems to be a royal figure. It seems to be some sort of a matriarch riding side saddle on a horse with trumpeteers behind her and her royal court and princes around her. And she is the most prominent figure on the stone, but it's the only carving we have of a woman and it's not religious.
00:23:41
Speaker
um Fabulous. that One would think that this was a rather androcentric culture with representations exclusively of male-related figures and male-related things, yes or no? Yeah, quite potentially. There's one quite strong theory about ah the symbols that relates, it seems, to to men more than anything. and The symbols are often found in in pairings, so we usually call them a a symbol pair.
00:24:13
Speaker
Okay. There is one stone at Dunfalandi that has two figures at the top facing each other in thrones and above each figure is a symbol pair. They each have a pair and then beneath them under a Christian cross is a royal figure on a horse and he has a symbol pair above him and each of his symbols is one of those from the pair above. So we think it's it's a joining of two families with the figure beneath and so it's believed that the symbol pairings are a naming system for sort of like your symbol and your father's symbol potentially, some kind of family naming system. So
00:24:55
Speaker
all The only evidence we have on the stones relates to men with that, unfortunately. We're always kind of slim pickings on them, more depictions of women, sadly. Not very politically correct, Hamish. No, it's a real shame, I'm afraid. Nothing we can do with it. The archaeological record doesn't take sides, does it? Sadly not.
00:25:21
Speaker
Well, this is fascinating, fascinating a subject of study, I would say, and a dataset I had absolutely no background in at all. And it sounds like it's a very robust one and one that could be endlessly engaging, as I say.
00:25:40
Speaker
Am I correct? You can study these stones your entire life. There's um there's many members of the Pictish Art Society. ah he but and but The Pictish Art Society is a wonderful society and some of its members have been studying Pictish stones for 70 years and some of the members, they make it their life's mission to find stones.
00:26:01
Speaker
I was part of finding one stone two years ago. It was somebody I knew was just cleaning an old gravestone face down in an old graveyard, flipped it over, and lo and behold, they said sent me some pictures and said, ah I think there's a pictures carving on that, which I confirmed sent it to the images to the head of archaeology in Scotland. And they were there the next day getting it classed and and organized to go into the local museum.
00:26:29
Speaker
It can happen very fast when people think they have a Pictish stone carving in front of them. So, to to find these now is rare. It is rare, but it's not unheard of. Some people, they search a lot of records, they go to old church grounds that they think potentially they haven't been searched or they look for old settlement sites and they can dig around and try and find them. Sometimes churches have them built into the walls and when they are doing their repair work on the church, they suddenly unearth these carved stones that at some point have been set into the walls and nobody knew about them. Fantastic. Fantastic. So what would you say is your overall mission?
00:27:12
Speaker
with your study of Pictish rock art. I think it's to to understand the people more. My particular study comes through recreating leatherworks. I produce and replicas for museums and for study and for reenactors too. For me, I like to learn about the life of the picks by making the items that we have and trying to use them. And that's a really lovely way to learn about the people with everyday items. And we can do the same with rock carvings
00:27:43
Speaker
by trying to understand why they are in this place and who made them. And I think just identifying with the imagery, the people that ah carved these stones, they left this legacy of the the landscape they saw around them, not just the physical landscape, but the the political landscape, the spiritual landscape.
00:28:02
Speaker
And I think there's many, many ways to reconnect with that. And for me, it's just about trying to spread Pictish culture and kind of trying to like thin the mists of mystery that are kind of surrounding them and just to help people really connect to it. And I think honor honor those ancestors that are often quite forgotten. I think there's many avenues I can do that. So I kind of have my fingers in many pies to try and bring people closer to their other kind of Pictish culture or heritage, you could call it, I guess.
00:28:31
Speaker
How is this viewed by the general public? What what do they think about these stones? and Are they aware of them or are they familiar with the Pictish ah records and are do they understand how unique and valuable and remarkable they are? Most people are. They're aware of Pictish stones and roughly of Pictish culture. The the sad thing is is that I think our our education of the Picts is still catching up.
00:29:02
Speaker
Most people, the general public and even some people who study Pictish culture, they are still mired in this Victorian mindset of the Picts. They are still thought of as these naked blue barbarians clashing against the Romans. They're often really down-topped and we have these horrific stereotypes and people think there's not we don't know any more than that.
Rethinking Pictish Culture
00:29:26
Speaker
Whereas the last century, the last 50 years, the last 10 years has shed so much more light on all these things. Research is always ongoing and our education is just catching up to that. So I think it's just for for us that study it is to just be out in the forefront to really say to people what you think you know about the PICS has been dated and it's so much more fascinating than you could ever imagine. What would you say is the most revolutionary discovery about the PICS?
00:29:54
Speaker
that has come as a result of the recent scientific studies? So up to up to the last 10 years, and we believed we had this kind of dating system for the the stone carvings. So the earliest Pictish stones, which were typically called Class I stones, just in size stones, were always believed to be from the 5th and 6th century.
00:30:20
Speaker
and this is generally because Victorian historians looked at them and and kind of said that and it's been propagated and never really changed. ah Recent studies by Gordon Noble and those at Aberdeen University have completely changed this view from studying the sites and the stone carvings and then studying organic remains from the same sites and finding the same carvings. They were able to date a lot of the organic material and discovered that these sites were centuries earlier than believed, some of them coming out third to fourth century. So that's really rocked our entire understanding of these stone carvings and when they were being erected and by who. So that's put our knowledge two centuries earlier than we believed. So that's very groundbreaking research.
00:31:06
Speaker
do archaeologists integrate the study of Pictish stones and rock art into their understandings when they ah publish on the archaeological ah studies that they are engaged in? They do. They absolutely do. And one thing myself and others throughout the UK have been working very hard with, ah specifically the last decade and the last two decades, is for the Academic Society of Archaeology to recognise the importance of craft within that body. So before we have a lot of academics struggling to understand the artefacts they're dealing with, so part of my job is to approach academics and give lectures on how that we can accurately replicate these findings and by doing that we add to the research and give more context to finds. So that has helped a lot
00:32:01
Speaker
And there's more ongoing study of of the stone carvings. I have a colleague who's currently studying pigment in the stone carvings. So that's brand new research ongoing right now to look at and if the stones were painted and it looks like they quite likely were painted in their time. Fabulous. Well, let's break it there. Thanks, Amish. Sure. See you in the flip flop, gang.
00:32:27
Speaker
Welcome back, gang. This is segment three of your Rockart Podcast, episode 135 with Hamish Landley over in Scotland talking about Pictish Rockart. Can you imagine? This is really an amazing subject. It's got my interest, let me tell you.
00:32:49
Speaker
Hamish, so tell me a bit about you know one aspect of what you're up to that really has she got got your interest and and you will feel is engaging and needs to be shared. I think for me, it's trying to extrapolate life of the Picts from the remains we have. So with the stone carvings, we what we really want to know is what did the Picts look like?
00:33:16
Speaker
What was their style? What was their hair like? What was their clothing like? I really love trying to um research into everyday people, just the mundane things that were part of their life that really make us exactly the same as them.
00:33:32
Speaker
and stone carvings and and any kind of manuscripts are a beautiful way to bring this together. We have a fantastic stone in Orkney at a place called the Brow of Bursay and on this stone we have three Pictish warriors all standing in a line. They are all have a neat appearance and long shoulder length hair they have small small square shields, they have a big spear, they have a sword on their hip, and they have long clothing that's down to their ankles and they have shoes. So we don't know if their clothing is is a tunic or if it's a coat, but it's long, it's ankle length as well. So we can see a kind of hairstyle, we can see a kind of clothing style, and we can see what weaponry they're holding. So that is one beautiful depiction. But then in an Irish tale,
00:34:26
Speaker
fra called the the House of Dastarga. There is a mention of three Pictish men in this Irish story and it mentions three big brown men with round heads of hair on them. It says they have three short black cloaks around them but with long hoods. They have three black swords and they carry black shields with broad dark green spears above them.
00:34:52
Speaker
So it's it's almost describing these three men from this carving in Orkney. So we just have a really good correlation between something that was written in Ireland and a stone carving in Orkney. And that is just fascinating for me to to really bring that to life. And the next step from that is to bring that to other people in any medium.
Connecting to Pictish Heritage Today
00:35:16
Speaker
So what I love doing is taking these stories or these symbols or carvings from the stones and giving them fresh life.
00:35:23
Speaker
So I might carve that into leather, which someone might buy, or with my other pursuit is tattooing. People love connecting through their culture and their art through tattoos. And it's believed the Picts were tattooed themselves. So I'm often taking these stone carvings, ah redrawing them and trying to stay as true to the original artwork as I can. And, you know, like connect connect with them through this body art.
00:35:49
Speaker
at this way of adoring themselves. So I think it's just a beautiful way to connect with the people of that time. The picks were no different to us and it's really nice to honour that and really nice to connect with it in different mediums. I think that's something I'm very passionate about. Amazing.
00:36:07
Speaker
Do we have anything about their language? Do we know about the ah descendants and the language that was spoken? And are there descendant languages that are related to this Pictish culture that still exist of its very day? We do. So the Picts initially, they spoke Peakeltic, not Kewkeltic. So Kewkeltic is ah Gallic or Galligan in Ireland. That was spoken by the Scots in the West. The Picts spoke Staunic Peakeltic.
00:36:37
Speaker
which is more akin to Welsh and Cornish and Brittle. The closest equivalent to the Pictish language would be Welsh and it survives in Scotland only in the place names and we have this fantastic a list of Pictish king names and they are unlike anything we really have today, quite a lot of them.
00:37:00
Speaker
We have names like Tower Can, Thrust, Gartnett, Neckner, names that really stand out in our kind of market. Fabulous. The language is a really interesting study in itself. You could spend a whole lifetime just on that. I know in my own work, sometimes the language and the translations of that language are sometimes valuable in trying to understand the rock art. I know that's distant, but sometimes there's a relationship and ah place names ah sometimes are important and can be key or or somehow provide you with an understanding or a significance
00:37:53
Speaker
in association with the rock art. Have you ever found anything like that to as to the names of certain, perhaps, kings but or the names or the names of places that can yeah could be even distantly associated with the rock art? So in the Pictish language, the word pit means a place of land. So anywhere in in the east of Scotland that starts with pit is a Pictish settlement.
00:38:22
Speaker
Pit Loughry, Pit Medin, all these places. Haber is the same as a Pictish place, but we also have places like Rhiney. Rhiney is king. Rhiney is you know that the the place of the king, the seat of the king, and Rhiney, when they did archaeological excavations, found out it was a royal power centre. It was the place of the king.
00:38:43
Speaker
um So a lot of the time just studying the place names leads archaeologists to it being an ancient settlement and they can often tell which kind of settlement through the name. Have you found a connection between a specific rock panel, rock art panel, and a king or an archaeological site that has been able to be investigated or is is that too much to ask for?
00:39:10
Speaker
That is very ah difficult at times. yeah to To have very, very specifics is difficult. With the some exceptions, scholars will still debate for decades what they've what's correct. But, for example, we have one stone, the the main Aberleno stone has a fantastic battle scene on it.
00:39:30
Speaker
ah There is no doubt about it. It is the Picts defeating the Northumbrians in battle. There are records of this happening and from the style of the armor and the clothing you can tell the Pictish king is triumphant with his sword and he has a big symbol above him and the Picts are kind of fighting in mass combat and you can see the Northumbrians are fleeing and they have helmets and There's no archaeological evidence the Picts had helmets, but the Northumbrians did. And we can see a raven pecking on the dead Northumbrians. So it's it's really interesting that that stone carving can then be attributed as a monument to this battle, the battle being the Battle of Dunnekin. So we can attribute that stone to that battle, but finding the actual battlefield of Dunnekin is what still baffles scholars. There's a lot of different theories around which particular piece of land the battlefield could be at.
00:40:27
Speaker
And we don't know exactly what kind of edifice these kings might have lived in, do we? No. there's Well, they certainly had hill forts and ah oil. we We call them palaces, but royal power centers, they had very, very impressive hill forts. My favorite being Dundurn hill fort, purely because I recreate a shoe that was found there. But this was what we call a nuclear hill fort. So the entire hill was encased in walls, meter stick walls.
00:40:58
Speaker
Wow. Really impressive. And we actually have some evidence in Scotland of some of these hill forts being vitrified. So they have burned so fiercely that the stone has turned to glass and we still don't know how that's even possible.
00:41:13
Speaker
huh Fabulous. Absolutely fabulous. that and When it comes to stone carvings, there's a fantastic hill fort in the north in Murray called Birkhead and it's a big, promontory hill fort. The entire town, as it is now, is built over the hill fort. It was huge, but a raid around the walls of the hill fort were apparently 30 carved bulls.
00:41:40
Speaker
ah with you know cows being a sign of kind of currency and power in the north of Scotland. So you'd imagine this huge big promontory facing out into the ocean with these high stone walls with ah timber ramparts above that, with all these carvings of huge carvings of bulls all around it. It would be absolutely terrifying and a real magnificent display of power. Very impressive. very very impressive Well, as a signing off,
00:42:11
Speaker
What's the takeaway from our discussion today? What's the theme? What would you want our our listeners to to know and understand from your work? I think it would be that the picks are very-cultured, unique, interesting um culture that didn't die out. They may have amalgamated with the Scots and become Scottish and formed this country we have now, but when we study there are, it is absolutely beautiful. Their artistry and their craftsmanship was phenomenal.
00:42:45
Speaker
and only with continued study will we understand more and but we can appreciate everything that we have and we can appreciate in all forms of art any stone, leather, skin, tattooing, words, poetry and it's all there to be enjoyed and I would i would say to anybody that's interested to just to just reach out and get out and do some research and find out what's out there because there's lots of beautiful parts of Pictish culture floating around the world today that's worth looking at Well, this has been absolutely astounding. Hamish, I am honored and blessed to learn but learn about Pictish culture, Pictish rock art, and to talk with someone as scholarly and someone who's as immersed in this topic as you. And so God bless you for coming on the rock art podcast. I so appreciate it. Thank you. I'm honored. It's been a real joy. I can talk about the Picts till the cows come home. so
00:43:43
Speaker
da Well, God bless you out there in Rock Art podcast land.
00:43:57
Speaker
Thanks for listening to the Rock Art podcast with Dr. Alan Garfinkel and Chris Webster. Find show notes and contact information at w www.arcpodnet.com forward slash rock art. Thanks for listening and thanks for sharing this podcast with your family and friends.
00:44:29
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his ah RV traveling the United States, Tristan Boyle in Scotland, DigTech LLC, Cultural Media, and the Archaeology Podcast Network, and was edited by Rachel Rodin. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at w www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com.