DARK AGE/EARLY MEDIEVAL SCOTLAND

followed by feature essay on:

Tarbat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 476

In the later first millennium a.d., Scotland was a complex and dynamic mosaic of political and cultural traditions, where natives and incomers (immigrants) competed for power and influence—a land of "four nations and five languages," in the words of the contemporary Anglian historian the Venerable Bede. The evidence for the various groups contributing to the development of the kingdom of Scotland is uneven, however, both in terms of historical sources and archaeological research. It is therefore necessary to consider the broadest possible range of information to reconstruct the period: archaeology, history, linguistics and place-name studies, and art history provide the most significant evidence.

The early medieval period in Scotland can be divided into three major phases. Limited evidence remains for the post-Roman phase (c. fifth century a.d.), which appears to have been a time of transition, when significant cultural changes took place. The early historic or early Christian phase (c. sixth to eighth centuries a.d.) was a period of interaction and competition, at least among the elites, of four major political or ethnic groups and also saw the establishment of Christianity as the dominant religion. Then came the Viking phase (ninth century through mid–eleventh century a.d.), when a new set of pagans, mainly from western Norway, disrupted earlier patterns, initially through raiding and later by settling in the north and west. Their attacks were surely an important catalyst for the unification of the Dalriadic and Pictish kingdoms into Alba, the kingdom of Scotland.

post-roman period

Unlike southern Britain, Scotland never was incorporated fully into the Roman Empire, although the southern lowlands were part of the militarized zone between the Antonine Wall, which ran between the River Forth and the River Clyde, and Hadrian's Wall, now south of Scotland's border. Unlike the situation with the Germanic territories beyond the Rhine frontier, little evidence suggests significant levels of trade across these walls, and so the withdrawal of Rome in the early fifth century was less obviously disruptive in Scotland than elsewhere. It is widely accepted, however, that the people between the walls were influenced significantly by the Roman military presence. In fact, with the recognition that the Picts and the Britons both spoke P-Celtic, or Brittonic languages, some scholars have suggested that cultural differences between the southern Britons and the northern Picts may have been emphasized, if not created, by the adoption of certain elements of late Roman culture, including Christianity, by the Britons.

Several small kingdoms are known among the post-Roman Britons. The people the Romans called the Votadini, for instance, appear in the sixth century in the southeast as the Gododdin. In the late Roman period they were based at the Iron Age hillfort of Traprain Law, which has produced a spectacular hoard of Roman silver dated to sometime after

a.d. 395; this cache is interpreted either as loot or, more likely, a diplomatic bribe or payment for military services. But Traprain Law was abandoned by the mid–fifth century, and it appears that their new seat of power was at Din Eidyn, modern Edinburgh; excavations in Edinburgh Castle have found evidence for occupation during this period.

Whithorn, in the southwest, was the site of the earliest recorded Christian church in Scotland, the episcopal seat of Saint Ninian, reportedly sent to minister to an already existing Christian community. Dating the activity of any post-Roman figure is extremely difficult, owing to a lack of contemporary documents, but scholarly opinion now places Ninian at Whithorn in the later fifth century. This dating is supported by the site's mid-fifth-century Latinus stone, an inscribed cross slab with a Latin inscription, including the name "Latinus," and a six-armed Constantinian Chi-Rho Christian cross.

Little evidence exists for the Picts at this period: historically they were the enemies of the Romans, allied with the Scotti (or Irish). Archaeologically there is strong continuity with Late Iron Age culture, particularly in the Northern Isles and Western Isles, although there appear to have been significant changes in settlement types during the later Roman period. Understanding of the Picts, however, is patchy: F. T. Wainwright's pioneering book titled The Problem of the Picts was written in 1955, and it is only since the 1970s that excavations have made them less of an enigma.

early historic or early christian period

The Scotti, or at least the Scots of Dál Riata, were one of two groups that first appeared in Scotland during the sixth century, complicating the political picture and contributing new elements to northern British culture. They controlled Argyll, the southern part of the West Highland coast, and retained close ties with their Irish homeland. The other group was the Northumbrian Angles, based at Bamburgh on the northeastern coast of England by the mid–sixth century. The Angles expanded their control over the kingdom of Gododdin by the seventh century and over Rheged, in the southwest of Scotland, by the eighth century, leaving Strathclyde as the only remaining autonomous British kingdom.

The intrusiveness of these groups has long been emphasized by historical tradition, but archaeology warns against exaggerating the differences among the Brittonic Britons and Picts, the Gaelic Scots, and the Germanic Angles. Despite their linguistic differences, the economies and material cultures of these groups were very similar. All of them relied on mixed farming, where cattle were the most important livestock, followed by sheep and pigs; barley and oats were the principal crops; and along Scotland's convoluted coast, fish and sea mammals also were important resources. Most people would have lived on isolated farmsteads or in small, self-sufficient hamlets—there was nothing resembling an urban center in Scotland until the twelfth century. Pottery was uncommon in most of Scotland during this period, and most metal would have been recycled. But excavations at waterlogged sites have produced a wide range of wooden vessels and other organic artifacts.

The scarcity of well-preserved artifacts has left Scottish archaeologists precious little to work with and accounts for the lack of a well-defined chronology for much of later prehistory and the early medieval period until the advent of radiocarbon dating in the mid–twentieth century. The artifacts that are useful for dating, usually because of their wider cultural milieu, were high-status objects: fine metalwork, imported pottery, and sculpture—items associated with the elite rather than with ordinary members of society. Consequently much early medieval archaeology has concentrated on high-status sites, such as fortified settlements and religious centers, although rescue excavations in advance of development or coastal erosion are providing more evidence for the lower classes of early medieval society.

It is important to recognize this bias toward the upper classes not only because it is mirrored in the historical sources (written by and for elites) but also because these were precisely the people most likely to be defining ethnicity in ways advantageous to their own position in the competition for power. Historical, art historical, and archaeological evidence illustrates the ease with which northern British elites mixed and mingled, in political marriage alliances and exile as much as on the battlefield, regardless of linguistic or religious differences. A well-documented example is when Æthelfrith, king of the Angles (r. c. a.d. 592–616), was killed. His sons took refuge in other kingdoms. Oswald (r. a.d. 634–641) went to Dál Riata, and Oswiu (r. a.d. 641–670) married into Irish and British royal houses as well as that of their Northumbrian rival. Eanfrith (r. a.d. 633) had a son who reigned as a king of the Picts. All three were converted to Christianity while in exile, although Eanfrith is reported to have reverted to paganism during his brief reign, and Oswald imported Columban Christianity into his kingdom from Dalriadic Iona with the foundation of Lindisfarne. It was within these dynamic cross-cultural contexts that the Insular art style developed, and it should serve as a warning against the use of simplistic ethnic labels for things as well as people during the early medieval period.

settlements

While the elites were participating in an increasingly shared and internationally connected culture, there are regional differences in the archaeological record, particularly in settlements. In the south, among the British and Angles, slightly different forms of rectangular post-in-ground timber halls have been excavated on such sites as Doon Hill in the east and Whithorn in the west, some defended by palisades; similar forms appear to have been used by the southern Picts. (This thinking is based largely on the evidence of crop marks and soil marks visible in aerial photographs, however, and excavation is needed to confirm the dates of these structures. One such hall, believed to be early medieval, turned out to be three thousand years too old.) In the west, among the Britons and the Scots, are crannogs—natural or modified islands, usually with round timber and wattle houses. These are considered defended settlements because of the water barrier, and examples such as Buiston and Loch Glashan were high-status sites. Along the West Highland coast and in the Northern Isles, duns and brochs, large round drystone structures built in the Late Iron Age, were reoccupied, often with modifications, or cannibalized for the construction of more modest cellular or figure-of-eight houses. Figure-of-eight houses have been found from the Orkneys to County Antrim, Ireland, illustrating the wide spread of some elements of material culture. It is well to remember that the Picts and Scots were allies against the Romans, and both could assemble substantial fleets of ships, which would have been used to sail between the islands during peace as well as war.

The promontory fort at Burghead, in the northeast, is the largest fortified site of this period in Scotland, and it overlooks an excellent harbor. At least thirty stones carved with Pictish bull symbols were found there, and the wooden framework for its timber-laced ramparts was fastened with nails. The only other known example of nailed timber-laced ramparts is at Dundurn, another Pictish stronghold. Dundurn is a nuclear fort: it has a small citadel at the summit of a hill, with annexes built wherever the hill is relatively level. Britons and Scots as well as Picts used nuclear forts; the type site is Dunadd, the capital of Dál Riata. Fortified sites such as these forts and crannogs would have been the residences of royalty, and these sites have produced evidence for specialized craft working, particularly the production of fine metalwork, suggesting that smiths worked under the patronage or control of kings and other nobles.

artifacts

Fine metalwork constitutes one of the more distinctive classes of artifacts from early medieval Scotland, like the highly ornamented Hunterston brooch, a pseudo-penannular brooch, one that looks as if it has a gap in the ring, which would be a penannular brooch, but does not. While the Angles have more bow brooches (essentially highly elaborate safety pins), the Celtic groups favored hand pins (large straight pins) and penannular brooches (circular forms with a gap for the pin to pass through). These pins were made of silver or bronze, and some were decorated with gold, enamel, and semiprecious stones or glass. The brooches and pins themselves are rare survivals, and many were chance finds made before the twentieth century. This limits their value as archaeological evidence, but there is lively debate among art historians regarding the origins of different styles, the sources of various decorative elements, and the social functions of such rich objects. Increasingly these finds are supplemented by the recovery of the molds used to make such objects from sites like the Mote of Mark in the southwest (late sixth century to early seventh century) or Dunadd (seventh century). They can establish conclusively that a particular type was made at a specific place during a given time period.

A larger number of high-status sites have produced small quantities of imported pottery and glass vessel fragments. This material falls into two categories: imports from the Mediterranean dated from the later fifth century to the mid-sixth century and imports from western France dated from the sixth through the seventh centuries. The Mediterranean pottery includes African red slip tableware from Tunisia (A ware), which has been found at Whithorn and Iona, and several types of amphorae (B ware), the earlier forms from the eastern Mediterranean and the later ones from Tunisia. The amphorae would have been shipping containers for commodities like wine or olive oil, and the only other site in Scotland where they have been found is Dumbarton Rock, the capital of Strathclyde. While most of these Mediterranean imports have been found in Southwest Britain and the Scottish examples are best seen as outliers, that is not the case for the later French imports, known as D ware and E ware. D ware is a derivative form of late Roman tableware, dating to the earlier sixth century, and has been found at Dunadd, the Mote of Mark, and Whithorn. E ware is a hard, gritty ware that, like the earlier amphorae, probably was a container. It dates from the late sixth century and possibly into the early eighth century, but most examples in Scotland have been found in contexts dating to the first half of the seventh century. More of this ware has been found in Scotland than anywhere else in the British Isles; Dunadd has the largest collection and Whithorn the second largest, and it has been discovered on at least thirteen other sites, including a couple in the Pictish east.

sculpture

The Picts are associated more commonly with a very distinctive art tradition found mainly on stone—the famous Pictish symbol stones. More than fifty different symbols are known: highly naturalistic figures of animals; recognizable objects, such as combs and mirrors; and abstract figures, the most common symbols being the double disk and crescent, often overlain by linear symbols known as Z-rods and V-rods. The meanings of the symbols and the functions of the stones are a matter of perennial debate; a writing system, totems, marks of rank or occupation, territorial or alliance markers, or memorials for important events or the dead have all been suggested.

Class I stones, where the symbols usually are incised into undressed stone, are believed to date to the sixth and seventh centuries and perhaps earlier and are concentrated in Northeast Scotland. The stones with bulls from Burghead are Class I, and there is evidence that others were associated with burials. The only Pictish carving in Dalriadic territory is a Class I boar carved into the bedrock at Dunadd, which has fueled debate about who was overlord over whom and when. Class II stones, where the symbols typically are carved in relief and accompanied by Christian motifs and scenes of elite activities, such as hunting and war, date to the late seventh century and early eighth century and have been found primarily in southern Pictland. The Aberlemno Kirkyard (Churchyard) stone is a Class II stone: it has an interlace-decorated cross on the front, while the reverse shows an extraordinary battle scene with Pictish symbols in relief above (fig. 1). It has been suggested that this stone commemorates the battle of Nechtansmere (Dunnichen), which was fought nearby in a.d. 685, where the Picts defeated the Angles and killed their king, Oswiu's son Ecgfrith (r. a.d. 670–685), ending Anglian expansion to the north. Secular scenes from these stones have given the clearest images of the people of early medieval Scotland: men armed for war, riding after stags, and drinking from horns; a woman with a large penannular brooch riding sidesaddle with a man on horseback barely visible behind her; and hooded clerics with crosiers.

In Dál Riata to the west there was a different sculptural tradition and a distinctive form of inscription used primarily on stone. The Scots were responsible for bringing the ogham script, where short slashes are incised across a baseline, from Ireland, and ogham subsequently was adopted by the Picts. Inscriptions in this style date from the sixth to tenth centuries, but they are difficult to transcribe and translate; few can be read, even by experts. More than 450 early medieval carved stones have been recorded in Argyll, about a hundred from Iona, but many are very simple crosses and difficult to date with certainty. Most attention is given to the elaborately carved crosses that date to the second half of the eighth century, such as Saint Oran's, Saint John's, and Saint Martin's crosses at Iona and the Kildalton cross on Islay. This sculpture almost always is associated with religious sites, and there is little evidence comparable to the hunting scenes on the Pictish stones to suggest that it was an important way for secular elites to display their status. As with the Pictish stones, however, many of the decorative elements on these monuments are shared with the Insular art tradition as it appears on fine metalwork and in Gospel books, such as the Book of Durrow or the Book of Kells. It is now thought that the latter two were created at Iona, which illuminates the interaction between the secular and religious spheres as well as between the different ethnic groups during this time.

religion

The expansion of Christianity across Scotland during this period also has been a topic of continuing scholarly interest. It was Christianity that promoted the literacy that produced the earliest indigenous inscriptions and documents, and even in the post-Roman period some Britons were Christian. The Scots were Christians by the time they were historically active in Argyll, and it was to Dál Riata that Saint Columba came in a.d. 563, founding the monastery of Iona shortly afterward. While Columba's Life shows him visiting the pagan king of the northern Picts, there is little evidence for explicitly missionary efforts. Nevertheless both the Angles and the Picts had adopted Columban Christianity before those groups switched to the Roman date for Easter, the Angles in the late seventh century and the Picts in the early eighth century.

Little structural evidence for churches in Scotland has survived, except for Whithorn. In many cases these sites remain in use, and later construction has obliterated the remains of the earliest foundations, although ongoing excavations at Portmahomack, which appears to have been a monastery during the eighth and ninth centuries, will provide better evidence for the Pictish northeast. At Iona part of the vallum—the bank and ditch that separated the religious community from the secular world—survives, but texts reveal that the buildings within were built of timber and wattle, which has left no clear trace. Building churches of wood apparently was part of the Irish Columban tradition, although hermits' refuges usually had small, round drystone cells; it was the Roman tradition that encouraged stone construction. In the absence of surviving structural remains, the presence of early churches typically is indicated by place-name evidence—eccles- names in British territory and kil- names in Dál Riata.

Burials have little to contribute to an understanding of the early historic phase. First of all, the acid soils of Scotland have destroyed most of the skeletal remains. Second, burial practices were quite similar among the different groups, both before and after the adoption of Christianity. Even in the Late Iron Age the most usual rite was extended inhumation in either a simple grave or a long cist, where stone slabs form a rough coffin, without grave goods. The only identifiable characteristic for Christian graves therefore is their east–west orientation. Some Picts did place such graves under low mounds with square stone kerbs (curbs) in the early medieval period. But most such monuments are known only from aerial photographs, and more excavation is needed to confirm the dates.

viking period

At this point a fifth group and sixth language entered Scotland: the Vikings. Unlike the evidence for the Angles and Scots, historical sources provide a definite date for their arrival, for one of the earliest references to these "gentiles" is of their raid on Iona in a.d. 795. By the mid-ninth century the Norse were moving in, rather than making hit-and-run raids, almost entirely in the Northern and Western Isles, which were conveniently placed on the island-hopping sea route from western Norway to Ireland. The intensity of Norse settlement is shown by place names, and in the Northern Isles and northern mainland the local language was replaced by Norn, a dialect of Norwegian. The Scandinavian place-names of Southwest Scotland, however, are not related to this land taking but instead are evidence for settlement during the twelfth century from northern England.

The most alien thing about these Galls, or "foreigners," to the people of early medieval Scotland was their pagan religion—which is why they had no scruples about plundering churches and taking Christians as slaves. The archaeological record provides ample evidence of this in the form of furnished graves for both men and women: the men were buried with their weapons and sometimes with horses or merchants' scales and the women with characteristic oval "tortoiseshell" brooches and tools for making linen. In a few cases men and women have been found buried in small clinker-built boats. These graves provide the best evidence for a distinctly Norse material culture. This is important, because on many sites where rectangular Norse long-house forms replace earlier Pictish cellular structures are found a mix of Pictish and Norse artifact types and even bilingual runic inscriptions. These finds imply that local populations survived, whether as slaves, an underclass below Norse elites, or perhaps as allies and collaborators.

By the late ninth century the Northern Isles were the base of the powerful earls of Orkney, originally from western Norway; by the late tenth century, when they were officially converted to Christianity, their sphere of political control included Shetland, the northern mainland, and the Western Isles. Most of the Viking hoards found in Scotland, which include Arabic coins, ring money (small, irregular silver rings used as a form of currency by the Vikings), and hack silver (pieces of silver cut from larger objects used for the same purpose), date to this later period, from the mid–tenth century into the early eleventh century. Unlike hoards of religious and secular fine metalwork from the earlier period, such as the Saint Ninian's Isle treasure from Shetland, these pieces would have been associated more closely with trading than raiding.

It has been suggested that the hogback monuments found in southern Scotland and dating to the tenth and early eleventh centuries marked the graves of Scandinavian traders from northern England. Once they had become Christians and subscribed to broadly shared cultural values, Scandinavians were simply one more element in Scotland's multicultural mix. The Hunterston brooch mentioned above, a high-status object, has a runic inscription: "Melbrigda owns [this] brooch." The language is Norse, yet Melbrigda is a Celtic name.

creating "scot-land"

While past historians cast the early medieval period as a time of war between monolithic ethnic groups for control over what would become Scotland, with the Dalriadic Scots as the winners, archaeology has shown that the situation was much more complicated and has highlighted the ways in which the different groups contributed to the process of forging a common culture. If there is a large-scale notable trend throughout this period, it is increasing sociopolitical centralization. In the Roman period sources attest to a multiplicity of Pictish tribes; by the early historic phase there are probably three significant Pictish political groups. The hierarchical levels of kingship are evident in Dál Riata, with kings of kindreds, the most powerful of them the Dalriadic overking, and the overkings of the Scots, Angles, and Picts competing for the position of "high king" of northern Britain during the early historic phase. It was only in the Viking phase, as the Norse and their superior sea power annexed the island half of Argyll, that the bonding of these mainland groups into a permanent and internally complex state occurred.

Despite historical uncertainty about the relative power of the Scots and Picts at this time, the Scots moved eastward, and from about a.d. 843 Cinead mac Ailpín (Kenneth mac Alpin) and his descendants ruled both Scots and Picts from Forteviot in southern Pictland. Later historical revision makes it difficult to determine to what extent this was a violent overthrow of Pictish power as opposed to assimilation. Nonetheless by c. a.d. 900 Dál Riata and Pictavia vanish from the sources, replaced by Alba: a nation called by a Gaelic name and using the Gaelic language but with much of its administrative structure apparently derived from the Picts.

See alsoHillforts (vol. 2, part 6); Dál Riata (vol. 2, part7); Picts (vol. 2, part 7); Viking Settlements in Orkney and Shetland (vol. 2, part 7).

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Elizabeth A. Ragan