The Picts, an indigenous people who lived in what is now Scotland, first appear in the written histories in 297 CE when the Roman orator Eumenius reports that the Picts had attacked Hadrian’s wall. According to the Roman accounts, fierce bearded warriors with heavily tattooed bodies emerged from the cover of trees, dragged the guards from their posts, then surged over the wall to attack and plunder the Roman town to the south. These warriors, often described as fighting naked or, at least semi-naked, left behind death and destruction.
In her book Pictish Stones in Dunrobin Castle Museum, Joanna Close-Brooks writes:
“The name Picti first occurs in a document of AD 297, but the Pictish kingdom is only well-attested historically from the mid 6th century onwards, from the reign of Bridei son of Maelcon.”
In their book Caithness Archaeology: Aspects of Prehistory, Andrew Heald and John Barber write:
“The evidence that identifies these people as ‘Picts’ lies in a classical reference from AD 297 and a second, but uncertain, reference from AD 310. From this slender base a whole people have been manufactured. ‘Picti’ was probably a soldier’s term for everyone north of the Forth and it subsumed a range of different peoples under a single name.”
Gordon Noble and Meggen Gondek, in an article in Current Archaeology, write:
“Of all the peoples of Early Medieval Europe, the Picts are among the most mysterious. Made up of a number of tribes that inhabited northern and eastern Scotland, they were described by the Romans as fearsome fighters, while their elaborately decorated symbol stones suggest a sophisticated artistic culture.”
With the Roman occupation of Britain which began in 43 CE, and their attempts to invade Scotland in the first and second centuries CE, the Picts felt a need for unity against a common enemy. According to a display at the Orkney Museum:
“In the 6th century, long after the Romans had left, the combined tribes became the kingdom of the Picts—and Orkney was to become part of this kingdom. By AD 700, Pictland stretched from the Firth of Forth to Shetland, bordered on the west by the kingdom of the Scots in Argyll.”
Today, the Picts are commonly described as a group of tribes and/or independent kingdoms who lived in the eastern and northeastern regions of Scotland during the ancient and early medieval period (from 600 BCE through 900 CE). In an article in Archaeology, Kate Ravilious writes:
“The Picts emerged some 1,700 years ago in what is now northeastern Scotland—known in some sources as Pictavia or Pictland—and left virtually no written records of their own and very few traces on the landscape they once inhabited.”
Kate Ravilious also reports:
“By the tenth century A.D., the Picts had seemingly vanished, leaving behind only myths and standing stones inscribed with distinctive symbols.”
Much of the information about the history of the Picts comes from the writings of their enemy: the Romans. It should be noted that the description of any people by their enemies is often more propaganda than accurate depiction. Kate Ravilious writes:
“The only surviving text written by the Picts themselves is a ninth-century list of kings, and while Roman, Gaelic, Brittonic, and Anglo-Saxon sources all mention the Picts, their tales tend to be based on hearsay and written long after the events they describe. This lack of firsthand information has reinforced the impression that the Picts were a backward people with few connections to the outside world.”
We don’t know what the Picts called themselves: their name seems to have been derived from the Latin picti, which means “painted.” Their name may reflect a practice of painting and/or tattooing their bodies. Some Roman writers suggested that the Pict warriors came into battle naked, with their bodies blue from paint or tattoos. Modern writer Alistair Moffat, in his book Before Scotland, puts it this way:
“Celtic warriors almost certainly stripped off their tunics and leggings so that their gods, their enemies and their comrades could see their tattooed bodies—because the tattoos were powerful magical weapons in themselves, what a modern tattooist has described as ‘psychic armour’.”
When dressed, Pict men generally wore a cloak over a belted tunic. There is some indication that a woven woolen hood may have also been worn. Women wore long skirts and cloaks.
Like other peoples in Britain and Europe at this time, the Picts were farmers who raised grain crops and kept cows, sheep, pigs, and horses.
Language
The Pictish language died centuries ago and our knowledge of it is fragmentary at best. Place names and personal names found on monuments provide some clues that Pictish was a Celtic language. With regard to place names, the prefixes “Aber”, Lhan”, and “Pit” (sometimes “Peth”) provide evidence of the areas inhabited by the Picts. Thus Aberdeen, Lhanbryde, and Pitmedden are probably Pict names.
Linguists have suggested that Pictish is a part of the Brittonic (Brythonic) branch of Celtic and is thus related to Cumbric, Welsh, Cornish, and Breton. While there have been some linguists who have speculated that Pictish was actually a non-Indo-European language, nearly all modern linguists disagree with this hypothesis.
Archaeology
Since the Picts did not leave very many written records, our knowledge of them comes from two primary types of sources: (1) written records by outsiders who often had an unfavorable view of the Picts, and (2) the archaeological record.
Graves and the bodies buried in them are often used by archaeologists in understanding the ancient past. Unfortunately, relatively few Pict burials have been uncovered. It appears that only a few selected individuals, both men and women, were given “formal” burials. Most frequently the body was placed in a pit and then covered with a small mound of earth or stones.
With regard to the archaeological record, Kate Ravilious reports:
“The handful of Pictish dwellings that have been discovered suggest that they were a thinly spread population of farmers living in simple turf-walled houses, not the ferocious barbarians the Romans portrayed.”
Recent archaeological findings, however, are changing our understanding of Pictish society. Forty miles inland from Aberdeen is a hill known as Tap o’North. Here archaeologists found a 40-acre walled enclosure which was occupied from the third to the sixth centuries CE. Kate Ravilious writes:
“A lidar survey pinpointed the remnants of more than 800 house platforms dug into the hillside and clustered closely together. If each of the huts the team identified had four or five people living in it, then it’s possible that up to 4,000 people once lived on the hill.”
Among the artifacts recovered from Tap o’North were small sherds of Late Roman amphoras which were dated to long after the Roman withdrawal from Britain. This suggests that the Picts were trading with Europe at this time.
Near the village of Rynie (from the early Celtic word meaning “king’’), is the Craw Stone which depicts a bearded figure with pointed teeth carrying a distinctive ax. It stands at the entrance to a series of Pictish fortified enclosures. Kate Ravilious writes:
“Ditches, and presumably banks, once surrounded the site. Inside the fortifications, the team uncovered the footprints of buildings, along with traces of a timber wall made of oak posts and planks.”
This was an area of pastures, barley fields, and hills covered with birch trees. Artifacts within the site suggest that this was a metalworking complex. The lead archaeologist, Gordon Noble, feels that the site would have been a royal center.
Gordon Noble and his team have also excavated a site on a towering, isolated column of rock known as Dunnicaer about 20 miles south of Aberdeen. Here they uncovered a fortified site with timber ramparts and a number of buildings. The site was occupied during the third and fourth centuries C.E.
Pictish society in Orkney appears to have been fairly stable. The older pattern of fortified villages was replaced by a pattern of substantial individual farms. Pictish houses of the seventh and eighth centuries were substantial family farmsteads built of stone and turf. Settlements had paved, open-air courtyards.
Shown below are photos of some of the displays about the Picts at the Orkney Museum.
With regard to antler working, a display at the Orkney museum states:
“Antler was such a useful material, tough and hardwearing, that it is likely that the Picts farmed deer (as far as was possible, as the deer might swim from island to island) for meat, skins and antler.”
With regard to metalworking, specialist craftsmen travelled about Pictland and set up their workshops wherever there was a customer. According to a display at the Orkney Museum:
“The craftsman would carry most of his raw materials with him. Broken jewellery could be bought locally and melted down. The molten silver, bronze and lead were poured into open moulds to make ingots, the handiest way of storing the metal until it was needed.”
With regard to entertainment, a display at the Orkney Museum reports:
“The Picts enjoyed board games, usually battle games for two players. Most of the surviving boards are just stone slabs on which the playing pieces might be pebbles or shells. Carved playing counters were probably used on larger wooded boards which have not survived.”
Shown above: fragments of gaming boards.
More about Scotland
Ancient Scotland: A Neolithic Site
Ancient Scotland: 10,000 Years Ago
Ancient Orkney: Stones of Stenness
Ancient Orkney: Burials (Photo Diary)
Ancient Orkney: Early Inhabitants
Ancient Orkney: The Vikings (Photo Diary)
Ancient Orkney: The Iron Age (Photo Diary)
Medieval Scotland: Lochranza Castle (Photo Diary)