Picts

The mysterious and enigmatic Picts, who flourished in northern Scotland from c. 300 AD, have long been a subject of popular appeal. Their intricately carved symbol stones, whose meaning has remained an enigma for well over a thousand years, offer a tantalising glimpse into the culture of a highly sophisticated society which defied the might of the Roman empire only to disappear at the end of the first millennium AD.

Yet historical sources are limited and there are few books on the Picts, and none that reflect the significant advances in our knowledge that have been made in the last ten years. This book redresses that balance. As well as including an historical overview of the Picts from the late Roman sources to the tenth century, it also covers kingship and elite culture, everyday life, burial traditions, pagan and Christian belief, art and crafting, and the end of Pictland during the Viking Age.

About the Authors

Gordon Noble is Professor in Archaeology at the University of Aberdeen and has undertaken award-winning landscape research and field projects, working on projects from the Mesolithic to Medieval periods. He is author of Neolithic Scotland: Timber, Stone, Earth and Fire(Edinburgh University Press 2006), Woodland in the Neolithic of Northern Europe: The Forest As Ancestor (Cambridge University Press 2017) and co-author of King in the North: The Pictish Realms of Fortriu and Ce (Birlinn 2019). He works on two current major projects: Northern Picts and Comparative Kingship, the research for which won the Current Archaeology Research Project of the Year 2021, a highly prestigious accolade. His research has featured on BBC 2 Digging for Britain, BBC Radio 4 In Our Time and many other media outlets.

Nicholas Evans is a Research Fellow on the Leverhulme Trust funded Comparative Kingship: the Early Medieval Kingdoms of Northern Britain and Ireland project at the University of Aberdeen. He is a historian whose research and teaching have focussed on the medieval Celtic-speaking societies of Britain and Ireland. He is the author of The Present and the Past in Medieval Irish Chronicles (Boydell Press, 2010), A Historical Introduction to the Northern Picts (Aberdeen University/Tarbat Discovery Centre, 2014) and co-author of King in the North: The Pictish Realms of Fortriu and Ce (Birlinn 2019).