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Not just naked blue barbarians - Ep 4
360 Plays2 years ago
This month Matilda focuses on the prehistory of Scotland, and specifically that enigmatic carved stone symbol known as the Pictish Beastie. Is it a dolphin? Is it an elephant? Is it a unicorn? To help uncover the mystery of this symbol and provide some background context about Pictish society is guest Hamish Findley Lamley, owner of Pictavia Leather. Join the journey to hear all about the different cultures in Scottish prehistory, the significance of standing stones, and why you would make a zebra-skin sporran.
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network. You're listening to Tea Break Time Travel, where every month we look at a different archaeological object and take you on a journey into their past.
Episode 4 Begins
00:00:20
Speaker
Hi, and welcome to episode four of Tea Break Time Travel. I'm your host, Matilda Ziebrecht, and today's tea is apricot and strawberry, a brand new one purchased this weekend.
Guest Introduction: Hamish Finley-Lamley
00:00:34
Speaker
Joining me on my tea break today is Hamish Finley-Lamley. Hopefully I've said that correctly. Who's the owner of Pictavia leather. And are you also on tea today or are you on a stronger brew? I'm on tea, I'm on medicine and yellow tea.
00:00:48
Speaker
Yarrow tea. Oh, that sounds interesting. Is that more herbal, I guess then? Yeah, it's medicine, a friend cooked up for me, so... Oh, okay. Oh, no, it sounds... See, tea always, it helps with everything, I say.
Hamish's Interest in Pictish Culture
00:01:02
Speaker
So, Hamish, you are the owner of Pictavia Leather, which specialises in Pictish-inspired, shall we say, goods and accessories. Why did you become interested in the Picts or past cultures in general? That would be from growing up in the northeast of Scotland.
00:01:16
Speaker
when I was growing up, I used to play on pickedish stones around Imbruele, where I'm from. And you can't grow up without being surrounded by the past, by the culture with stones and history. And a lot of the history that's taught in the northeast of Scotland is based around our age in early medieval Scotland. So that just naturally filtered through. And I guess I just got a passion for the history and I've just found that passion through craft, really.
00:01:42
Speaker
So did you also study history or did it was just general absorption of the history around you? I didn't know I was kicked out of school when I was young. It was just a pure personal passion. I've always been in love with history. Everything around me, you can't move in Scotland without encountering something fascinating. So that's just felt a truth in my life.
00:02:04
Speaker
Okay. Oh, that's amazing. And I mean, I can imagine what the answer to this question might be. But if you could travel back in time, where do you think you would go? I think I would definitely want to be early medieval Scotland, possibly stay in the northeast in a power centre. But it would be fascinating to be on the borders of our land as well and see the trade between different kingdoms. So between pec land and Daurida would be quite interesting or to cross the sea to Ireland. And yeah,
Cultural Identity of Picts and Scots
00:02:32
Speaker
around then to see the trade and maybe around the 5th century would be quite interesting once the Romans leave and you see all this art and culture suddenly emerge.
00:02:42
Speaker
And I'm just curious, I mean, I feel I should know this because I studied archaeology in Scotland, but I can't remember because it's been so long and I haven't looked at those cultures since. But the borders between what we would have modern day Scotland and England and for example, I don't know what it would have been called, Pickland, or how would they have called it? How much has that changed since that time? That's changed a lot. That was so fluid that it would change every generation until
00:03:07
Speaker
kingdoms really strengthen themselves. And then you have the influx of Vikings and all sorts of things like that. So yeah, the border has always been quite fluid. And even today, although it's not fluid today, you can see how fluid it is by looking at things like Hadrian's Wall and seeing where the modern border is and where that's changed. And where the ancient areas of Northumbria would have shifted up into the north and Octavia south. So you can plot quite easily how wide the changes are.
00:03:33
Speaker
Yeah, okay. And I can imagine that would then have an effect. I mean, we'll talk about this a bit later as well, but on on the sort of sense of identity of the Picts, almost, because if you have all of those, the cultures that are living there, because if you have all these changing borders, and I guess then there's people who are living in certain places that one day they're in Picton, the other day, they're in a different kingdom. I mean, how, yeah, that must have a big effect, I imagine, on how you see yourself and where you're from or where you're based.
The Mystery of the Pictish Beast
00:03:57
Speaker
There is somewhat, yeah, there is some cultural identities, but we can't really
00:04:04
Speaker
geographically say were descended from Picts because they amalgamated so much with the Scots. Any Scots today is descended from Picts but there is certainly a cultural identity in the Scottish borders which has always been that part of land which has shifted allegiances between places. There is definitely a specific identity there that's different from
00:04:25
Speaker
Oh no, interesting. Anyway, we'll go into this in more detail soon. I'm getting carried away with the conversation. But yes, thank you for joining me on my tea break today. Before we look at today's object, let's first journey back to Scotland indeed, but this time to 7th century Scotland. Across the purple heather flies a golden plover, working their way towards the coast after having spent their summers up on the moor.
00:04:45
Speaker
weaving between the occasional lonesome tree, swooping over piles of rock, landing for a moment on top of a tall flat standing stone. Carved into the stone down one side is a strange creature, with legs back swirling along the belly, a bowed neck with a long downwards facing snout, and what seems to be a flowing mane running along its back.
00:05:04
Speaker
This curious symbol is known as the Pictish Beast, and it's the inspiration for today's episode. We'll get into the details of that soon. But first, let's have a little look at what I like to call the most asked questions on the internet, courtesy of Google Search, where I just type in Pictish Beast and see what comes up as the most searched questions related to that. So the first one is, what is the Pictish Beast? Do you have any theories, Hamish? I mean, that question is worth a lot of gold. Starting you off easy, you know.
00:05:34
Speaker
Starting me off with a hard question, as with most pickish carvings, we have no idea. When we look at the pictorial carvings of the pecs, specifically creatures, which the beast certainly is a creature, the pecs were able to carve animals beautifully. The physiology is all swept through the carvings. They could accurately carve any animal. And the pickish piece should be no different. So it should not be a symbol looking like something else.
00:06:04
Speaker
should be exactly what it looks like. I just don't know what that is, because we have nothing today that really looks like one. And do you think one of the other questions that came up was, are Pictish beasts real? So I mean, like you say, most of the Pictish symbols are representing actual animals. Is this the only one that represents something mythological? Or are there other ones? Potentially mythological, I should say. Two ways to go on that is, was it a real creature that's now extinct?
00:06:30
Speaker
or is it a mythological creature? There's definitely other references to that, which we'll go into later, I'm sure.
00:06:38
Speaker
Yeah, no, I always find it really fascinating. I'm a sucker for archaeological mysteries, and this is one of my favourites, because indeed, no one seems to have any clue. And I love all of the different interpretations of it. People have said, like, dolphin or elephant or, you know, unicorn. I once had a duckbill plot up at somebody's dolphin. I mean, you know, you never know. The continents have shifted, right?
00:07:04
Speaker
won't get away this way to Scotland one day. I'd say looks the closest to it. Yeah, you think and
00:07:13
Speaker
I mean, if you wanted to carve a dolphin, you could probably carve one more accurately than the technician piece. But I suppose, how well would people have seen dolphins? Because you wouldn't, I mean, nowadays, you can have underwater photography and everything. So we know exactly what a dolphin looks like. But if you're just seeing them as sort of jumping over waves or going through the water, that's a good point, actually, maybe it could look similar to that.
Pictish Standing Stones and Symbols
00:07:39
Speaker
A lot of cultures spent a lot of this time on the water.
00:07:43
Speaker
would have been plenty of sighting, I guess, unless you're describing a dolphin to a stone carver who's never left land. That's when things start to get a bit messy. When you have images of the Victorian explorers going out and drawing animals that people would come back and tell them about and they look nothing like. Yes.
00:08:03
Speaker
Oh, those are fantastic pictures for a long, long day to help you rewind. So, we know about the Pictish, well, we don't know about the Pictish beasts, that's kind of the point, but what exactly are the Pictish standing stones? I mean, you presumably, as you said, are very, very familiar with them, but for those who have no idea what we're talking about, how would you describe the Pictish standing stones?
00:08:26
Speaker
hundreds, absolutely hundreds of standing stones died around Scotland. They're mostly in the east in what was the region of Pictavia. There's some around the Clyde which would have been Daurida and there's a few out on the west coast but mostly kind of the east and northeast area and they are beautifully carved with, let's say, hectic or you could say Celtic iconography artwork and they start, well, they start quite early
00:08:55
Speaker
We originally believed they were kind of 7th century and onwards, but later work through the Northern Pecks project with Gordon Noble has proved that the stones come out much earlier than that, some as far back as the 3rd century, which is fascinating. So we have these stones dotted around and we have earlier stones which are just kind of pecked and inscribed, so just kind of line work with these stunning unique symbols that
00:09:18
Speaker
emerge only in Scotland, certain symbols that are not seen anywhere else on Earth. And then as we get later into the early medieval period, as we get into the 7th and 8th century, we start to see a lot of relief carved in, and then we see all the Christian influence come into the stones as well, and these huge big elaborate carved crosses as massive static symbols dotted across the land that really draw you in. And you can't move around Scotland without encountering a big fish stone.
00:09:46
Speaker
And like you say, I find it really interesting that they're only found in Scotland, which you would think just because of the, especially in that time period, I mean, there's so much traveling going on around Europe in general that we see from other sources. So it's sort of amazing that that iconography, I mean, the Celtic influence obviously spread quite a lot, but the specific Pictish symbols are indeed just just tied to Scotland. Yeah, we have similar stone carving themes in Northumbria.
00:10:16
Speaker
through the Christian Church and we believe that spread into Christian Pecklands later on. We see Olaman scribe stones in Ireland as the early ones and then the beautiful Christian crosses as well. There's a rich array of stones on the Isle of Man which are more Nordic influenced but none of these have the specific Peckish symbols. They are completely unique to Scotland or Pecklands.
00:10:38
Speaker
Yeah, no, amazing. And I mean, the Picts, from what I remember, but you can tell us more about this, didn't have writing, right? They didn't have sort of written sources that they've left behind. So this is the only written source that we have. How do we know that they actually existed? When it comes to sources, we have two
00:10:57
Speaker
kind of original sources from the text and they are the lists of kings. They survived. There's two lists that were written at different times and they kind of correlate mostly. And then, yeah, really the greatest legacy is the stones and the symbols are definitely telling a story. It's just whether we can decipher it or not. And occasionally we get lucky with a little bit of home script writing, which is the Celtic alphabet system.
00:11:26
Speaker
that's the one with the sort of lots of lines, right? Yeah, it kind of looks like, yeah, a stem line with lots of lines scored through. Okay, and that was Celtic because I have made I'm sort of unfamiliar with that. I always assumed that was sort of Irish Celtic, but that also spread into Scotland. That's been to Scotland. Yeah, so there's hundreds of inscriptions in Ireland, very early ones on stones, and then later in the manuscripts. In Scotland, we have just under 40 inscriptions and they're
00:11:53
Speaker
mostly on stones, some are carved into knife handles and other things, but it's about 30 of them are carved in stones.
Picts vs. Celts: Cultural Distinctions
00:12:01
Speaker
Okay, interesting. So the final Google Autofill question that I came up with when I typed in picks were, are picks and Celts the same? So I mean, from what we've spoken about so far, I'm going to guess the answer is no. But why aren't they the same? What's what is the difference between them? Well, I guess it's how you define the two terms straight away that
00:12:21
Speaker
The pecs relates to a very specific culture in the northeast of Scotland that were called the piktai, the pecs. Celtic is a more general term, as you'll know, often relating to a group of languages. So the pecs did speak a Celtic language. They spoke P-Celtic. That's more similar to Welsh than it is to Celtic. Interesting. And the artwork you could define as Celtic artwork as opposed to Norse artwork. So the pecs
00:12:50
Speaker
are a Celtic culture, but I wouldn't call them Celts. I'd specifically call them texts, because that term defines their culture. Okay, and then you also have the Scots, correct? Yeah, so the Scots were, so this, the early term Scots has nothing to do with the modern term Scots. The early Scots are from the Kingdom of Dalreda, which is in the west of Scotland,
00:13:14
Speaker
and that either theorised that it was Irish that came over and founded but there's actually more evidence that it was its original culture but because it was more of a Gallic culture it just blended a lot better with Ireland and the trade was easier across the sea.
00:13:29
Speaker
I just find it so interesting that such a relatively small, you know, it's such a relatively small landmass, and already there's so many different cultures emerging and developing and exchanging ideas and everything. I mean, like you say, it would be fascinating to travel back in time to that period and see. We forget about the Kingdom of Gododom, which was East Wollian around Edinburgh. And we only know that was a kingdom because it survives in a Welsh poem. For centuries, people thought that the poem Gododom was about a kingdom in Wales, and then it
00:13:58
Speaker
came about that it was the Kingdom in Scotland that was destroyed by the Northumbrians as they were pushing on up to pick one. So it's a beautiful tale that only survives in Welsh. Which, you know, who can read Welsh? Can you read Welsh? I can't read Welsh, not at all, no.
00:14:16
Speaker
I feel my mum's Welsh, but I don't think she can speak it anymore. She used to be able to, but it's one of those things I've always wanted to learn just so that, yeah, indeed, all of these past histories, I mean, you're at such a disadvantage, right? If you can't read, I don't know, the Gallic or the Welsh or all of these different languages that have developed from older languages than the kind of Anglo-Saxon English. Yeah, it's there's always a deeper level to learn and languages is such an
00:14:40
Speaker
a rich way of learning about the history as well, to just get into that mindset and to unpick some of the threads there. So yes, thank you for answering those Google search questions. So we know maybe a little bit more indeed about the sort of Pictish Beastie and the associated symbols, or well, we don't know a little bit more. Again, that's the sort of whole point. Of course, your
00:15:02
Speaker
specialisation, shall we say, your region of interest is indeed the Picts in general. So perhaps you could sort of elaborate a little bit more about it. So you said that we have those two original sources from the Picts, we obviously have the Standing Stones. But apart from that, where do you hear about the Picts? Do I remember correctly that it was the Romans talking about them? Or was it someone else? Yeah, so the dimension of the Picts comes originally from the Romans, but
00:15:27
Speaker
This is where I look more at the culture. When the Romans came into Scotland, the culture that was around, I tend to think of as proto-pics. It was an array of different tribes, and these were kind of known as the Caledonians and the Ma'ai Tai, and these were all kind of Celtic tribes. And then through Roman oppression, they had to amalgamate together to oppose the Roman might. And through that, they started to form a stronger and stronger culture together.
00:15:54
Speaker
and as they were kind of developing this culture the Roman term piktai comes about and this is when Roman sources in the third and fourth centuries start to mention pix and piktland and it starts to become a stronger and stronger culture and then as we get into the year 410 when the Romans leave that's when we really have this explosion of piktland when
00:16:17
Speaker
the Roman oppressors are gone, suddenly the land is there for the taken, and we have all these early medieval kingdoms all pushing their boundaries. And that's when the Picts just explode and start to really develop their culture, develop their kingdom. And we see a lot more sources from then on, especially from the Irish and the Northumbrians.
Cultural Amalgamation in Scotland
00:16:35
Speaker
Okay. And then what happened to them? Like, where did they go? How did they end almost? So they spent five centuries fighting amongst Scotland and Ireland and the Northumbrians and
00:16:46
Speaker
cultures changing ever so slightly. And the Scots and Dalreda grew in power quite a lot. And because of their ways of the lineage that often rather than a kind of patrilinere lineage in the kingship, the pix often had a matrilineal system. Excellent. And this would give you a wider kind of range of people in line for the kingship, wider range of brothers and cousins and things. And because of this, families intermixed a lot more
00:17:14
Speaker
And so it just so happened that the kind of royal line of the Picts and the royal line of the Scots became a little bit more merged in the families. And eventually they kind of amalgamated under one ruler, Kenneth McAlpin, and slowly brought the two cultures together. And the Pictish culture was just slowly Gallicized and the ruling elite, the language became Gallic and in the churches, a lot of the ruling elites were elevated from the Scots culture.
00:17:44
Speaker
And it just slowly, the Pictish language kind of died out and more of the Pictish culture, not died out, but yeah, just amalgamated really. And the Christian sources stopped referring to Peckeland and stopped referring to Alba.
00:17:59
Speaker
You mentioned the language, and you mentioned before, it was almost more like Welsh. Do we know what it might have sounded like? Where are the sources for that? The closest we have is the place names around Scotland. So anyway, it starts with the word pit, like pit-lockery. Pit is a portion of land, and that's a peak of the term. We also have a haber, like Aberdeen. And you see similarities in Wales, like haberisk and things. Of course. That's how we know it really survives. But in terms of how it sounded,
00:18:28
Speaker
all we can go on is Welsh, really. That's the closest we've ever known. And I mean, because I guess you could say then that the majority of what we know from the Picts is indeed from secondary sources. You mentioned the Irish, the Romans, et cetera. And so actually, what do we know for sure about that? Or how much can we trust from the Picts? Where's the sort of archaeological evidence and the historic evidence overlap? Like, what would you say is the one thing that you can say, yes, this is definitely Pictish apart from the sanding stones, perhaps.
Pictish Archaeology and Iconography
00:18:57
Speaker
While we can point to quite a few things, I mean, we're pretty low in terms of our facts. We have the Pictish symbol iconography, so anything we find that on, definitely Pictish. We do have a style of artwork in the jewellery that's definitely Pictish. Whilst the Northumbrians are negatively biased towards the Picts, as are the Romans, more little gems of sources come out. And the best sources do come from Ireland because the cultures were a lot more similar.
00:19:26
Speaker
but also there are sources where the Irish are writing about Picts and they're afraid of these Picts and they're not trying to dumb them down and they're trying to point out how dangerous they are and it gives a very accurate description of who Pictish men and what they're wearing and what their names are and where they're travelling. It could be a complete fable but it paints the picture a fearsome light rather than a negative light.
00:19:47
Speaker
That's indeed really interesting, though, to think that, yeah, how much actually can we trust from these sources? And there have been, I guess, that many, I mean, what archaeological evidence do we have for it? I mean, do we have burials and things? Do we have burials? We don't have any, we have burials, but there's never any grave goods that are next to no.
00:20:10
Speaker
grave goods in Scotland, sadly. We don't have any bog bodies either. So we don't have any nicely preserved bodies with artifacts and clothing and these things. We have a beautiful... Yet. Not yet. Not yet. We tend to just find artifacts in midden heaps and hill forts and crannocks and things.
00:20:28
Speaker
So a lot of it is based around the structures and then just happen to be whatever our effects we are lucky in finding. And we do have some, we have a beautiful garment that was found at Orkney, known as the Orkney Hood, and this beautiful fringed hood, which I have a lovely rep of.
00:20:46
Speaker
I was about to say, I think I've seen it somewhere than before. Indeed, because you do a lot of reproduction of the Pictish artefacts. For example, the Krannog bag as well, you mentioned Krannog just then, is that also a replica? It is a replica. Whether I'd call it Pictish or not, that's the struggle because the Krannog bag comes from Dalreda region. As much as I love pecs, there's no bags found in Pictland. I have to go slightly over the border for the Krannog bag.
00:21:15
Speaker
The only leather artefacts we have really in hiked land would be the shoe which I make a replica of from Dundurn Hill fort which is on the kind of frontier land and there are shoes found at Iona which was a kind of Pictish monastic site where the Pictish kings were buried but it was also very Scottish at the same time so there's a lot of mix there you can never really pin down the specific culture for the artefacts.
00:21:38
Speaker
Okay.
Pictish Daily Life and Settlements
00:21:40
Speaker
And so you mentioned sort of hill forts and things. And I mean, that's what I remember from my very distant looking at the pics as part of my education is we had to memorize, you know, the forts and the kingdoms and that sort of thing. But I mean, in terms of everyday living, do we also have evidence? I mean, my memory indeed of archaeology in Scotland is that you mainly have post holes when you when you do have a site. Do we have evidence of, for example, settlements or how they would have just lived day to day?
00:22:08
Speaker
Yeah, we actually have a lot of evidence and settlements for the picks are very interesting because most of the settlements that we know that are very visible, the rocks in Scotland for instance, these huge big stone towers that everybody loves, are not picked, they come much earlier.
00:22:24
Speaker
They were all built in the Iron Age, and we also have crannocks, these roundhouses that are built out in the middle of the lot. We have over 500 crannocks around Scotland. Again, most of them are much earlier than the Pictish age. However, rocks and crannocks were both in use all the way through the Pictish era. Crannocks were still in use in the Jacobite era in the 18th century. Really? I didn't know that. Yeah, often they were burned down for harbouring Jacobite rebels.
00:22:50
Speaker
So they have been the pets were very good at reusing pre-existing structures. And then we do have evidence specifically from their time period of large farmsteads. So at Glen G, at Lyric, there's a beautiful site that has the evidence of mostly post holes and things of these long holes, you think of it really these very long structures 40 feet long.
00:23:13
Speaker
with rounded ends and they were often divided half had a rough stone floor where you put the cattle and the stones would keep the cattle up off the kind of mud and keep their hoods dry and then the other half was the domicile for humans and often specifically on this one there's a roundhouse kind of built onto it as well which was a butchery site there was three large pits full of them
00:23:36
Speaker
you know chopped up kind of butchery sharpening wheels for knives and things like that so we can tell from the structures there and that it was a large farmstead a lot of people living there farming butchering and kind of everyday living that we see.
00:23:50
Speaker
Interesting. And I mean, I'm just thinking back to all your replicas. So the clothing as well, you have the hood, like you say, unfortunately, we have no bog bodies, but were there also in secondary sources or this one that you mentioned where they described all the clothing that they wore? So how did the sort of fashion of the picks differ from other cultures at that time or were similar? Yeah, the I mean, the Roman sources mentioned the Verus Britannicus, which at the time was the greatest export from the British Isles by the Roman Empire.
00:24:19
Speaker
which is just this essentially a poncho when you think about it. And that would have been imagined due to the sheep here and there would have been a lot of craft weaving and producing these. That's really all we have during the Roman era. They don't mention clothes that much. As we get more into early medieval, we read more references into clothes and the cultures are so similar.
00:24:43
Speaker
clothing would have been very identical as the jewelry that really sets it apart.
Pictish Fashion and Body Art
00:24:48
Speaker
Okay, yeah. And I mean, you just mentioned the fact that clothes were not necessarily mentioned as much. Of course, I feel we have to talk about the word picked is allegedly referring to the fact that they were painted and tattooed. What is your opinion on this? Yes and no, at the same time.
00:25:07
Speaker
good. I think they were painted and I think they were tattooed. Okay. I think both and both are possible with the technology of the time.
00:25:19
Speaker
and there is various references specifically to tattooing and some references I would say are specifically more to painting. The ones that refer more to tattooing are references of bodies marked with red iron so that could definitely be either pricking with iron needles and using pigments or painting. There's a Roman reference where it says the Romans were reading the
00:25:44
Speaker
symbols on the dying picked spaces. So they definitely had these symbols on their faces. We don't really know.
00:25:53
Speaker
There is various references. The age old one about woad is a really strange discussion because it seems to be a mistranslation. The word used was vitras in this translation from Julius Caesar and vitras is glass and they don't know whether he meant blue glass, green glass or red glass and somebody translated it as woad thinking blue glass that'll be woad and it's become this thing that the paints were
00:26:22
Speaker
tattooed with wood, but you can't tattoo with wood. It's... No, but I have no idea. About them being there, you know, painted tattooed blue, we don't really know. Maybe some body paints tattoo ink when it's kind of black, it does fade kind of bluey black as well. But red is probably more likely to have red and black ink.
00:26:44
Speaker
That's so interesting because it gives such a different perspective on it, no? That's similar to me, at least like that idea of, you know, all the Greek and Roman marbles and actually they would have been painted. And you think, wow, that just looks so different. You know, that gives you such a different perspective. Also looking at, yeah, the pics. And I also, I guess I imagine them, maybe that's because I read too much Terry Pratchett. So I imagine the Wee Free Men and the blue painted faces. But I imagine the pics indeed is having blue tattoos. And when I try to think of them as having black and red, it's so different.
00:27:14
Speaker
The image. We still live by this Victorian image of the pits. This is a naked, blue painted, barbarian image. Whereas when you look at the stone carvings, you see very neat hairstyles, very neat beards, very nice clothing. Sometimes you can see the seams in the chinnicks, which we use to do our replications. Then we have some artefacts like the Orkney Hood and the shoes, which point to very high style pieces and we have stunning jewellery. So
00:27:42
Speaker
We're not looking at this barbarian image, we're looking at a really high culture of society where markings are just part of that. There is more evidence of tattooing in Ireland, specifically face tattoos for warriors. So in a similar culture, the pecs being so similar to the Irish in this warlike culture, it's definitely feasible that tattoos could be status symbols just as much as jewellery was.
00:28:09
Speaker
Yeah. And do you personally, I know that you have some Pictish symbols as tattoos. I've seen them on your Instagram. Do you think that those symbols, the same symbols that would have been used in the carving, in the carved stones would also have been, for example, tattooed images? Absolutely. One of the Roman mentions says that they were adorned with beasts up their arms and because that's what the stone carvings are, animals makes a lot of sense. We can see what was important to them. Yeah. On the symbols, I mean, that's how you define the symbols. There's one theory which
00:28:39
Speaker
I think is quite strong. The symbols are often found in pairs and a symbol pair can sometimes be repeated and they do change slightly. And it's theorised that a symbol pair is a kind of symbol of a name, you know, it'd be kind of like, this symbol would be my name and the symbol above would be for my father's name. And then we have one stone in at Lochray, the Dunfallandy stone that shows sort of
00:29:03
Speaker
two figures on each side of the stone and they have a symbol pair above them both and then there's a figure below and he has a symbol pair and it has one symbol from each of the families at the top. Oh proper family tree. Yeah it looks exactly like a family tree in the symbol pair so I don't know if you'd have a symbol pair tattooed on you because you're basically stamping yourself with someone's name it could be your lord's name or it could just be your kind of allegiance possibly.
00:29:27
Speaker
Although indeed, surely, because I'm trying to think now of the symbols, because you have the, what's it called, the mirror and V thing and the the present. No, the crescent and V is quite a common one, right? Yeah. Yes, that one. But surely, yeah, I don't know. I like that idea. But then surely you'd have them more symbols if there was multiple names. Yeah, I mean, they do show up a lot as well. But if we look at if we're looking at sort of later,
00:29:55
Speaker
say later early medieval. When we have the Vikings come in, if you look at Viking war bands, they always choose animal symbols often as their shield or the battles, you see the raven banners or wolf banners, these powerful symbols. What were the powerful symbols to the pecs? Were they the animals we see on the stones? Or were they the specific symbols, meaning a specific lord instead?
00:30:17
Speaker
Ah, yeah, no, I like that idea. I just, yeah, I find the symbols so beautiful. I mean, yeah, so going back to the carved stones, indeed, and the symbols, I mean, just the styles of them are so gorgeous. And then you inch, and indeed, you do have people on them. I think I saw somewhere, or I saw a picture somewhere of a guy with a really big curly mustache or something at some point. And I mean, so indeed, we can have hairstyles, and we can have clothing styles. Are there a range of people? Do you see
00:30:44
Speaker
women on there and children? Or is it sort of mainly men that you see on these? There's a range of men. There's one or two others that could possibly be women. The one that is absolutely a woman is quite amazing because it's on the, I believe it's the Hilton of Capelstone, this huge stone that's several meters high.
00:31:07
Speaker
absolutely dominating stone, beautiful artwork on it. And it has this large hunting scene on the main panel with trumpeteers and everything. And you can see the most prominent figure on the stone riding horseback is a woman. It's very, very fascinating that you can see she's the most prominent thing there. Definitely a ruler. I just love to see that. Okay, we maybe only have one female represented, but at least she's a powerful female.
00:31:35
Speaker
Yes, she's the one, yes. The only one that matters. Yeah, no, interesting. Do you see a lot of animals as well that are no longer in Scotland? I'm trying to picture them in my mind. Yeah, so we have quite a few bears and wolves, which are interesting. So that's interesting in itself. We also have a lot of boar, which are also not around in Scotland anymore, apart from the introduction.
00:32:02
Speaker
We see a lot of hunting scenes, which is nice. Well, I don't know how you view it, but it's interesting to see the culture of hunting and lords, the high-stars hunting, and there is low-stars hunting as well that we see.
00:32:16
Speaker
What's interesting is not all animals are represented and some that you wouldn't expect are represented. So one of my favourites is the goose. Which is so random. You know, you stand in a field, you look at the geese. I mean, they are terrifying. You're more a banner being the goose.
00:32:39
Speaker
I mean, I can remember, to be honest, I still, when I go to, you know, these petting zoos and everything, I steer clear of the geese, even though I'm a grown woman, because I remember as a child them being absolutely terrifying to me. Maybe it was some king who was traumatised when he was younger or something. Yeah. Another one I love is fish. There's a lot of salmon carved on stones as well. Things like eagles are carved a lot.
00:33:03
Speaker
What we don't see are things like, there are no, to my eyes, badgers or otters, which I find interesting.
Hamish's Leatherworking Journey
00:33:11
Speaker
And there's no bears either. Or like foxes or anything? No foxes I've seen, no. And you mentioned there's an eagle, but no other birds. There's one or two where there's like wee silly dinky birds.
00:33:26
Speaker
It could be a sort of, maybe a cappuccale. There's one in St. Bridget's Museum that I believe is a cappuccale. It looks like a very grumpy cappuccale. I was about to say they're also quite dangerous, no? The cappuccale? I mean, if you get in on the wrong side of a cappuccale, then yeah. Yeah, but they're all big parts that we seem to be seeing that are carved.
00:33:48
Speaker
Yeah, the impressive ones, I suppose. So thank you for elucidating a little bit more about the pics. We already sort of introduced you very briefly in the first section, but maybe we should go into a little more detail. So pics are obviously quite a big factor that have influenced your career choice, shall we say. We know how you got into the pics, sort of love of history and the surroundings of Scotland, but how did you get into leatherworking? How did that relationship start?
00:34:16
Speaker
That came about from being a kind of outdoors person and I was kind of bent bound with back surgeries on and off for two years. So whilst I was kind of stuck in bed, I started leatherworking as a form of therapy for myself to stay focused. And my first thought was to make myself a couple of items for when I'm fit and healthy and get back out to the woods. So
00:34:38
Speaker
anything I do in my craft I can do from bed if I need to. And yeah, I just became absolutely addicted with creating every day. And as soon as I started attaching that to my passion for history, they just, they go together and there's always something deeper to research and historic craft. It's an absolute rabbit hole, kind of just a rabbit hole war and you can go down.
00:35:02
Speaker
Yeah. So how much research goes into every kind of piece that you first create, the sort of first idea, shall we say? Quite a lot, specifically on the historical pieces, because I'm not an academic. My degree is in something totally different. So I don't have an archaeology degree. But as a craftsman, I can research into people's PhD thesis, I can find excavation reports,
00:35:27
Speaker
and I find it important to gain a bit of understanding of the context around an area, a site, the time period, so to learn a bit more about the artefact to start off with, and then it's to go, if possible, to go into the museum and analyse the artefact to draw it up, take measurements, and then to start working through the process, but a lot of that can take years because
00:35:48
Speaker
If you really want to get as close as you can to original artifact, you have to get as close as you can to the techniques and the materials. Specifically with leatherworking, tanning is a kind of almost non-existent industry in the British Isles now.
00:36:03
Speaker
So, years ago, I couldn't find any historically tanned leather to work with. So, I was always kind of bumping my head against the wall. Until a friend of mine opened a traditional tannery in Fife near to me, he produces leather historically. And I found that it completely changed my mindset on how to produce replicas and how to work with leather and how to understand leather. And now when I read
00:36:26
Speaker
exploration reports a lot of it makes more sense of what I'm reading because I know my material better and I know my techniques better. I'm curious because indeed so far in previous episodes we've had people who have small businesses with crafts that are inspired by archaeology but most of them have an archaeological background indeed. How easy do you find it? Just my own curiosity here from a
00:36:48
Speaker
from sort of outside, shall we say, the academic archaeological community or whatever, how easy do you find it to actually find those resources and to gain access to them?
00:36:58
Speaker
It's not too bad as gaining a reputation for more of a historic craftsman puts me in touch with a lot more archaeologists. I go to archaeology conferences, either as a guest or speaking at them, various panels. There is a lot of resources online. There's a lot of books we can buy that are out there, which are fantastic. We can approach museums and we can get access. So all it really takes is passion and then doors
00:37:23
Speaker
well open. There's still a bit of the typical stuffy academic society within archaeology that the Victorian mindset layover which still battles the fact that craft is not seen as an important part of archaeology. Whereas I always approach, speaking of panels and discussing it, that we need the academic approach for the context and the academia around it. We need the craft approach to really produce things as they were in the past. And where we meet in the middle is where we kind of strike gold, I find
00:37:52
Speaker
Yeah, no, definitely. I mean, I'm a, I do a lot of experimental archaeology and a member of XR, the Experimental Archaeology Society, and it's amazing how much insight you can get just from indeed talking to someone. I mean, you can't, you can't truly understand a technology in the past, in my opinion, unless you actually try it yourself or unless you, and even trying it yourself as a, you know, academic who's never done it before. What insight are you really going to get? What you really need to do is actually talk to someone who is experienced in that craft. Yeah, absolutely.
Intersection of Craftsmanship and Archaeology
00:38:21
Speaker
it's been nice to speak at archaeology panels for Edinburgh University and such with up and coming archaeologists to push them and go, go out there, do the digs, write the reports, make sure I get a copy. And then comes to me and pay me money to consult with you. Those things that you find I will help you make them and I'll help you with your PhD, any that you want, please give me a copy of those excavation reports.
00:38:47
Speaker
Have you had any moments of kind of, oh no, that wouldn't have been like this, that would have been like this, or something that you got from an insight from your background in leatherworking?
00:38:56
Speaker
Absolutely. The chronic bag is a prime example. Even in the book and in the museum, they have it mocked up upside down, basically. It takes a bag maker two seconds to look at it and say the gussets go the other way up or otherwise you'll hang the bag up and it will just flip upside down. There's always a lot of things that you see that's just very natural or as you're working on an artifact, often your reverse engineering
00:39:20
Speaker
something and then you're trying to make it in the same process the original craftsman did and as you do that you come across mistakes or problems that the original craftsman would have as well so what's really fascinating is trying to solve a problem in the same way and you can see mistakes or ways that they've tried to fix something and hide it. Do I do the same or do I correct the mistake that they made?
00:39:43
Speaker
One of my favorite things was for my masters, I was looking at Bronze Age and the beads. You have to drill them from both sides because they were too thick to just drill from one side. You have these biconical perforations, basically, where the drilled meets in the middle. There was just a couple that I just kept not
00:40:00
Speaker
you wouldn't meet, you know, in the middle. And I was getting so frustrated. I was going, I forgot that, you know, like I, this is so typical, like a stupid modern, you know, white archaeologist not able to drill a bead. And then I looked at the archaeological collections also from the late Neolithic. So I mean, you know, 5000 years ago or so, 7000 years ago, I mean, and yeah, they have exactly the same thing. Like they're completely misaligned, or they have two holes on one side because they just completely missed it. And it made me feel so much better about myself. Yeah, exactly.
00:40:26
Speaker
Yeah, we've really not changed in thousands of years. You can imagine someone in the past going like, oh, for goodness sake. And you do, so, I mean, obviously the specialization of your shop is leather, Pictavia leather, clue is in the name, but you do do a lot of other crafting types. So you use antler on the bags and beeswax for making those bottles, which I'm really fascinated by and may have to buy one soon.
00:40:50
Speaker
and do all the different sort of carvings and the different sewing types. Were you already experienced in that before? Did you have to learn it yourself? How have you found that process of the kind of cross craft interactions? All my craft, everything I do is all completely self taught. Weather work is my overriding obsession, I would say, rather than passion. But I love working with other materials, antler and wood and metals.
00:41:16
Speaker
And when I'm not proficient in a craft, I will find a friend who is together with them to do something. So we do produce clothing and knives and jewelry and pottery as well, various other things. And the other thing that business is now scaling up to do is more TV work with historical consultancy and production work as well.
00:41:36
Speaker
Yeah, cool. And in terms of then sort of the interactions with other, I mean, this is something that I'm always fascinated by looking at prehistoric technology is there's a lot of discussion about would people have been specialized in a particular material or would they have been specialized in making a particular object. So, you know, obviously some objects incorporate multiple materials and multiple different technology types.
00:41:58
Speaker
Would you be then proficient in blacksmithing and leatherworking and antlerworking to create a lovely knife in a scabbard? Or would you collaborate with someone else? What would your opinion on that be from your perspective? My opinion is you wouldn't do everything yourself. One thing we've lost in modern craft is the community of craftsmen and the cycle between crafts.
00:42:20
Speaker
something that we're trying to bring back is to show the relationship between craftsmen. So I have a beekeeper who produces wax, which comes to me, which goes into making the wax. My friend is the tanner that produces the hides, which comes to me so I can make a bag and then I have the wax and then I can pass it on to someone else who can add antler to it or something else or jewelry. So we are all trying to bring back this community and this cycle of working together and collaboration.
00:42:46
Speaker
And as a community of craftsmen, you would absolutely have that. It's very hard to do it all in some things, unless you're specialising in one object, as you say, and you're kind of learning three things to put together into this object. But historically, more so than now, although it's still relevant, you know, a craftsman lives and dies by reputation. And the only way to survive is to produce the finest work you can. So you can be a jackable tradesman, or you can master one.
00:43:13
Speaker
Or in my case, just master number anyway. But I also, yeah, and I suppose when you, like you say, when you get to the time of the pixels, sort of more the historic period, then you do indeed have that specialization of craftsmen and it is definitely craftsmen who are creating things compared to, for example, earlier in prehistory where they assume that, you know, if a hunter was going out, for example, he would also be able to repair his bag or repair his spear or, you know, do all of these kinds of things.
00:43:41
Speaker
Do you think that by the time of the Pictish Kingdom, people were still able to do things themselves? Or do you think it would become more similar to how we are almost in the modern time where you have the craftsmen and then you would always take it to the craftsmen to get fixed or something like that?
00:44:00
Speaker
Well, we see both. We absolutely see both. We see the fine craft work which only craftsmen of status could produce. And then we see shoddy repairs on stuff all the time. Sometimes we see shoddy repairs on really fine craft work. There's a beautiful bag in Ireland and it's all carved.
00:44:17
Speaker
absolutely stunning. And the strap is made out of about seven or eight different rough cut pieces that it must have just kept breaking and someone's just throwing another bag and it looks awful. Person love that bag and they fix them itself and they made it work. And see that craft is attainable and approachable by anybody. Yeah, very high level that you go to a craftsman.
00:44:40
Speaker
Yeah. And do you find when you're creating the sort of replicas or picklish inspired objects, shall we say, that you are adapting it for the modern audience? Or do you find that the originals still function just as well? I do both sometimes. So if I'm making shoes, because they are not worn in the same historical context, I'll add laces to the shoes I make. It just makes them a bit more tighter on the foot.
00:45:04
Speaker
There's other things like there's a Viking purse I make from a 10th century grave in Sweden. I scaled it up just a couple of millimeters so that you can fit your bank cards in it and use it as a model wallet, which I do and it won't.
00:45:17
Speaker
And actually, going on that, so you mentioned the Vikings, and I mean, we talked earlier as well about how much of a mix of different cultures there were in Scotland at this time, but then you focus specifically on the Picts indeed, and you sort of briefly mentioned this before, but what exactly is it about the Picts that caused them to become your main source of inspiration? I think because they are so unique. I mean, they are my kind of the culture that I come from, my land I come from, so I'm always going to have that vested interest.
00:45:45
Speaker
But I find Saxon culture and Norse culture and Irish culture equally fascinating, but there is just some things unique to the text like the symbols and the mutual linear system and just the kind of mystery to them as well. There's just a lot that hasn't really been looked into or researched enough.
Future Plans and Projects
00:46:02
Speaker
it's just I find my niche and find my passion for it. And as you can hear, I can ramble all day about it. That's fine. It's perfect for me. I just think there's a lot that's still unexplored with vector culture. And I think that's, that's fascinating. Yeah, speaking of so do you have any any plans for future either replicas research, etc, that you want to explore?
00:46:23
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, we just finished working on quite a large TV show exploring, I can't say much about it, but it's exploring a Pictish murder. So we consulted on that, we produced a lot of reconstructions of the murder with all replica Pictish coding and equipment and vessels that we built and everything for it. So that'll be very interesting. Very cool. I'm heading over a few weeks to the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin
00:46:48
Speaker
there's some Irish pieces that I really want to make there. There's some replicas I already make without having seen the original. So I want to take my replicas to the museum. And so that'll help me just get the replica. Just casually, you know, hold it next to the museum shop, go out. So I'm just itching to get a couple days in the museum there, score, all the other things, pick out what's there. And there's a
00:47:16
Speaker
17th century Sporin in the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh that I'm currently working on, but it took me a year at a time to hide specifically for it. So now they're tanned and I'm slowly getting them cut out. I can pour over my pictures more and see if I can get close to the original and I'd be very happy if I can get even half as close to it.
00:47:33
Speaker
And can people, I remember seeing, you just mentioned Sporin, and I remember seeing a while back, a Zebra Sporin on your social media page at some point. Can people therefore get in contact with you and say, I would like this kind of thing or how did that work? It's quite common. Yeah, that lady came to me and said, I have a Zebra face, will you make a Sporin out of it? Sporin from a Zebra face. Yeah, it was quite an interesting one.
00:48:03
Speaker
Often, if people have an interest and hide, and they don't know what to do with it, then I'll turn it into something for them. Yeah, I mean, I'm assuming that they didn't have zebras in Scotland at that time, but it just made me think as well. I mean, in terms of tanning processes and things, I suppose that was quite well documented. I meant to mention this earlier, but I forgot about it. I just thought about it then. Do you know what kind of tanning processes they were using? We know what they were using, but it's not well documented. Okay.
00:48:31
Speaker
Tanning was actually quite, not mystical, but yeah, it's very hard finding documentation on it, especially to British Isles.
00:48:38
Speaker
primarily being bark tanning, which is one of the oldest methods. And it's using bark from tree, and it's the tannins from the bark, which tan the hide, and you basically boil the bark up into a bark licker and soak the hides in that, and that will slowly tan them. And we can infer what barks they're using by what trees were native at the time. So we'd see a lot of things like oak and hazel. And in areas that didn't have trees in some of the islands, they would have been using the tormentile plant and things like this.
00:49:06
Speaker
Yeah, sorry, a very random question, but I just suddenly thought about it. Yeah, cool. I mean, you mentioned the the TV show, would you say that's the most kind of exciting thing that's happened for pictavia? Or is there something else that kind of is the most exciting thing that happened to your business? It goes together because I'm currently working with two apprentices at the moment, which is really nice. So I can pass my skills on to them. And we work as a team. And we
00:49:32
Speaker
produce a lot more together. So I was able to have them working on the TV show with me. So that's, it's quite exciting that Pictavia was not hired as a craft business, it was hired as a historical consultancy business. They also provided all the costume and jewelry and actors and things as well. My apprentices were able to be part of that and it's helping us grow as a team, which is really interesting.
00:49:54
Speaker
Yeah, and I love indeed that I mean, it just goes to show I have so many questions from people being like, oh, I'm not an archaeologist, can I still do this? And I want to say that yes, of course you can, you just have to make sure you do the research, which I guess is easier if you come from an archaeological background, because you'd sort of know automatically where to go. But you're the perfect example of you know, you don't have to and you as long as you do it properly, then you can definitely. Yeah, and producers are always going to be frustrating whether you have an archaeology degree or not.
Closing Remarks
00:50:20
Speaker
We don't really want those clothes in the shot, and I'm saying that the clothes that we're wearing are all replica-based clothes you want are from a costume shop. I would be for a reason. Please listen. Let me do my job. Well, I think that probably marks the end of our team break. We should probably get back to work. But thank you so, so much for joining me today, Hamish, and talking to me about pics. I definitely approve of the rambling. I've gone after my own for as long as I did.
00:50:50
Speaker
If anyone wants to find out more about Hamish's work or with Pitpavia or more information about Picts, please do check the show notes on the podcast homepage. I'll put some lovely links there. I hope that you, everyone listening, enjoyed our journey today and you did as well, Hamish. And yeah, see everyone next month for another episode of Tea Break Time Travel.
00:51:11
Speaker
I hope that you enjoyed our journey today. If you did, make sure to like, follow, subscribe, wherever you get your podcasts. And I'll see you next month for another episode of Tea Break Time Travel.
00:51:23
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his RV traveling the United States, Tristan Boyle in Scotland, DigTech LLC, Culturo Media, and the Archaeology Podcast Network, and was edited by Chris Webster. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com.