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NOTES ON EARLY MEDIEVAL SCOTLAND

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NEW BOOK ON THE ISLE OF MAN

Jul18

Back in April, my latest book was published by Birlinn of Edinburgh under their
‘John Donald’ imprint. It looks at the history of the Isle of Man in the early
medieval period and beyond, covering a span of more than 800 years from the
fifth century to the thirteenth. A substantial part of the book deals with the
Viking Age and with the strong Norse influence that can still be felt in the
present-day Manx landscape.

As with most of my previous books, the main focus is on political history –
kings and kingdoms, wars and alliances – rather than on archaeology. Likewise,
the sequence of the narrative is chronological rather than thematic. Early
chapters consider the roles played by ambitious rulers from Britain and Ireland
in Manx history during the pre-Viking period, from c.400 to c.800. The spotlight
then falls on the Norwegian (Norse) Vikings who, by c.900, had begun to make
permanent settlements on Man. Three later chapters tell the story of the Crovan
Dynasty, one of several ‘Norse-Gaelic’ royal kindreds whose ancestors had
emerged from powerful Viking elites in the Irish Sea region. The book ends with
a final chapter discussing the legacy of the early medieval and ‘Late Norse’
periods on Man, in terms of what has survived in the island’s culture, language,
folklore and historic environment.

Manx history has many connections with Scottish history and the overlap is
reflected in this book. Two areas of Scotland, in particular, frequently appear
in the narrative, namely Galloway and the Hebrides. Galloway’s close proximity
to Man is enough to explain the connection (on a clear day, Galloway is visible
from Man’s highest point on Snaefell). The Hebridean islands lie further north,
but a number of them came under the authority of the Crovan Dynasty by virtue of
its being the royal house of ‘The Kingdom of Man and the Isles’.

Each chapter is accompanied by one or more maps showing places on Man or in the
wider Irish Sea region. Numbered notes within each chapter point the reader to
various primary and secondary sources, all of which are assembled alphabetically
in the bibliography. A plate section in the middle of the book contains
black-and-white photographs of significant sites and monuments.

The book’s title comes from an old Manx poem, specifically from a verse about
the eleventh-century warlord Godred Crovan (known in later folklore as ‘King
Orry’), founder of the royal dynasty that would rule Man for the next 200 years.

Here is a list of chapters:

1 Introduction
2 Manannán’s Isle
3 Gaels and Britons
4 Northumbrian Connections
5 Bishops, Monks and Kings: Man and Gwynedd
6 The Early Viking Period
7 Rí Innse Gall
8 The Founding of the Crovan Dynasty
9 ‘Fealty and Oath’
10 ‘West Across the Sea’
11 Epilogue and Legacy

* * * * *

A Mighty Fleet and the King’s Power: the Isle of Man, AD 400 to 1265
(Edinburgh: John Donald, 2023)
200 pages
ISBN: 9781910900802
Paperback (£14.99)

* * * * * * *

10 Comments Posted in Vikings Tagged Vikings

THE GREAT PICTISH QUIZ

Jun7

Test your knowledge of the Picts with this new brain-teaser devised by Dr Neil
McGuigan.

The Great Pictish Quiz

* * *

Also try this quiz from last year:

Scotland in the Early Middle Ages

* * * * *

Neil McGuigan is a historian and author, specialising in early medieval Northern
Britain. Find him on Twitter at @neilmcguigan
His biography of King Máel Coluim III (‘Malcolm Canmore’) was published last
week by Birlinn Books of Edinburgh:
Máel Coluim III, ‘Canmore’: The World of an Eleventh-Century King

* * * * * * *

4 Comments Posted in Picts

BOOK REVIEW: THE KING IN THE NORTH

Feb5

Gordon Noble and Nicholas Evans, The King in the North: the Pictish Realms of
Fortriu and Ce. Birlinn: Edinburgh, 2019, xiv +209 pp. £14.99 pbk. ISBN 978 1
78027 551 2

Much progress has been made in the past 30 years to bring the Picts into the
mainstream of early medieval European history, yet they are still often regarded
as enigmatic and puzzling. This is perhaps understandable, given that – for many
people – the most vivid evidence of the Pictish contribution to Scotland’s past
is a unique set of mysterious symbols carved on standing stones. Any book that
attempts to de-mystify the Picts is therefore timely and welcome. In this case,
the reader is presented with a volume of what are essentially separate academic
essays, the majority previously published in scholarly journals or monographs
but here updated and newly edited. All are linked by a shared focus on northern
Pictland, an area generally understood as lying north of the Grampian Mountains
and encompassing Aberdeenshire, Moray, Inverness-shire and Easter Ross. The
essays are linked by authorship, having been produced by scholars involved in
the Northern Picts project at the University of Aberdeen. Like the project
itself, the volume is interdisciplinary, covering a range of archaeological and
historical topics.

One of the book’s stated objectives is to highlight the importance of northern
Pictland and, in so doing, to redress the balance between this area and its
southern counterpart. It is certainly true that historians and archaeologists
have traditionally placed a focus on southern Pictland, roughly the area between
the Grampians and the Forth-Clyde isthmus. In addition to being the core of the
later kingdom of Alba, southern Pictland was until recently assumed to include
Fortriu, a powerful kingdom whose rulers wielded overkingship over a large
swathe of Pictish territory. Northern Pictland, by contrast, was long regarded
by scholars as something of a backwater, in spite of its containing some of the
most impressive examples of Pictish sculpture. These old perceptions of
political geography shifted dramatically in 2006 with the publication of Alex
Woolf’s proposal that Fortriu should be seen as a northern realm centred on
lands around the Moray Firth. Widespread acceptance of Woolf’s argument
encouraged historians and archaeologists to direct more attention to the area
north of the Grampians and, in 2012, the Northern Picts project was established.
An exciting programme of archaeological surveys and excavations at key sites
north of the Grampians has continued in the ensuing years, with analysis and
interpretation of the data being presented in this collected volume.

The main contents comprise eight chapters, of which seven are edited versions of
previously published studies while the eighth was written specially for this
book. A shorter final chapter, giving a summary and overview, is followed by a
list of places to visit and an extensive, up-to-date bibliography. Looking at
the chapters in sequence, the first sees the archaeologist Gordon Noble
introducing a number of key themes: the geographical extent of northern
Pictland; the impact of Woolf’s 2006 paper; the subsequent recognition of
Fortriu and another kingdom – called Ce – as the main northern Pictish polities;
and the work of the Northern Picts project. In Chapter Two, historian Nicholas
Evans discusses the surviving primary source material relating to northern
Pictland, noting the difficulties presented by the texts and the care that
should be exercised when trying to interpret them. Far too much trust has indeed
been placed in their testimony, which until quite recently was often accepted at
face value. As Evans observes, it is essential that the contexts in which these
sources were written are acknowledged, especially those texts produced long
after the end of the Pictish period by authors for whom the past was something
to be adapted and repackaged. Evans also examines the rise to prominence of the
kings of Fortriu, their association with Pictish overkingship and the eventual
disappearance not only of the name of their kingdom but of Pictish identity as a
whole.

Chapter Three diverts our attention from textual to archaeological evidence with
Gordon Noble’s study of fortified settlements in northern Pictland. Noble
discusses sites such as the massive coastal promontory fort at Burghead – the
largest Pictish fortress so far known – and the multiple enclosure hillfort of
Mither Tap, Bennachie, together with less imposing enclosed settlements like the
one recently identified at Rhynie. A broader context is the emergence of
fortified settlements across early medieval northern Britain as places where
elites exercised and displayed their authority, hence the association of
hillforts – including a couple of Pictish ones – with contemporary references to
kingship and royal warfare. In Chapter Four we are offered a more detailed look
at the ‘enclosure complex’ at Rhynie, a fascinating location where excavations
by the Northern Picts project have enabled archaeologists to identify a
landscape of power and ritual. Evidence of metalworking and jewelsmithing,
together with shards of imported Mediterranean pottery, confirm this site’s high
status. This new data also provides a context for two unusual and well-known
sculptured monoliths – the Craw Stane with its Pictish symbols and ‘Rhynie Man’
with its fierce-looking, axe-wielding human figure.

The archaeological theme continues in Chapter Five, where cemeteries and single
graves provide evidence for the burial practices of northern Pictland. Across
the region, evidence from aerial survey and excavation suggests a burial
tradition involving square or circular barrows, with an apparent absence of the
stone-lined ‘long cist’ graves observed south of the Grampians. Interestingly,
some barrows were made bigger or more elaborate as time went by, implying that
successive generations of the living community deliberately altered the
appearance of graves for reasons of their own, perhaps to support claims of
authority or ancestry or to retrospectively enhance the status of the dead. Also
in this chapter we see how new interpretations of archaeological data are
changing older perceptions of Pictish society, namely the important observation
that Pictish symbol stones do not – after all – appear to have a strong
association with Pictish graves.

Chapter Six describes the hoard discovered in 1838 at Gaulcross – a collection
of Late Roman hacksilver buried near two ruined stone circles in an
Aberdeenshire field. The hoard is likely to have been deposited in the fifth,
sixth or seventh century. Almost all of the original collection of finds
subsequently disappeared. However, a new programme of surveying and metal
detecting in 2013 unearthed more than 100 additional items, enabling the
Gaulcross hoard to be studied alongside two more – one from Traprain Law in East
Lothian and another from Norrie’s Law in Fife – these three being the only known
hoards of pre-Viking hacksilver from Scotland. Possible contexts for their
acquisition and deposition are here usefully considered by analogy with similar
hoards from elsewhere in Europe, notably from Denmark. A plausible theory is
that the Gaulcross hoard may have been ritually interred by members of a local
Pictish elite eager to link themselves to an ancestral or sacred aura
represented by the ancient stone circles.

Moving on to the book’s seventh chapter we encounter the Pictish symbol system,
undoubtedly the most familiar and most controversial topic addressed in this
volume. A vigorous debate over the question of what message the symbols were
intended to convey has been running for more than 100 years and shows no sign of
abating. Among a plethora of theories some are more plausible than others, with
the idea that the symbols might represent a form of writing being one of the
front-runners. This particular theory is here described as the current academic
consensus. It certainly draws support from comparisons with the ogham of Ireland
and western Britain and the runes of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The runic
script and ogham are now thought to have emerged in the second and fourth
centuries AD respectively, each being a form of ‘barbarian’ experimentation with
writing on the fringes of the Roman Empire. Inspired by the Roman alphabet,
although not devised in imitation of it, both ogham and runes may have enabled
ambitious elites to publicly communicate their power and status, in the same way
that Latin inscriptions conveyed Roman prestige. Here the argument goes on to
propose that, if Pictish symbols did indeed originate as early as ogham or
Scandinavian runes, they were probably used by high-status families to reinforce
social positions. This explanation offers a plausible context for the stone
plaques inscribed with simple symbol designs at the sea-stack of Dunnicaer on
the Aberdeenshire coast. Fieldwork on this near-inaccessible site was
undertaken by the Northern Picts project from 2015 to 2017 and confirmed an
older theory that the site had been a Pictish fort. A stone rampart in which the
plaques had been set and displayed has yielded a construction date between the
late third and mid-fourth centuries AD. If the symbols were inscribed at the
same time, the origin of the system is pushed back by several hundred years from
its traditional start-date in the sixth or seventh century. As the authors of
Chapter Seven point out, it might be no coincidence that such an early date for
the origin of the symbols corresponds with the first appearance of the term
Picti in contemporary Roman texts. The possibility that the symbols, with their
remarkable consistency of form, were devised simultaneously with the forging of
a new ‘Pictish’ identity in the far northern regions of Britain is certainly a
thought-provoking notion to add to the age-old debate.

Fish symbol and triangle on a stone from Dunnicaer.

Chapter Eight, the last of the main essays, has been newly written for the book.
It looks at the transition from paganism to Christianity in northern Pictland, a
process barely visible in the surviving sources. A lack of authentic information
on what Pictish paganism actually looked like has allowed fanciful modern ideas
about ‘Celtic’ religious beliefs to fill the gaps. The few genuine contemporary
references of direct relevance to the topic were, to compound the difficulties,
written not by pagan Picts but by non-Pictish Christians keen to highlight the
superiority of their own religion. For a more objective view of Pictish paganism
we turn once again to archaeological evidence and to the inferences that can be
drawn from it. Thus, at the Sculptor’s Cave at Covesea in Moray, recent work
suggests that the place was a ritual venue where human sacrifice was performed
in the third to fourth centuries AD. Similarly, one interpretation of the Rhynie
Man carved figure is that his axe-hammer was not a weapon of war but a tool for
the ritual slaughter of cattle. Dating the pagan-to-Christian transition in
northern Pictland is no easy task but the texts imply that the process began in
the sixth century and was virtually complete before the end of the seventh. By
697, a bishop called Curetán appears to have been based at Rosemarkie in Easter
Ross, perhaps serving the northern Pictish territories while a more southerly
counterpart held a separate bishopric on the other side of the Grampians. Also
in Easter Ross lies the monastic site of Portmahomack, the focus of extensive
modern excavations that have confirmed its importance during the fifth to eighth
centuries AD. A number of smaller ecclesiastical sites identified by the
Northern Picts project as potentially significant await investigation in the
future. The chapter reminds us that there remain many unanswered questions, such
as to what extent northern Pictland was evangelised by missionaries from St
Columba’s monastery on Iona – as claimed by Bede – rather than by a more diverse
range of personnel.

In the closing chapter, Gordon Noble observes that ‘we have gone from a lack of
identified and dated Pictish sites in northern Pictland to one of the best dated
sequences from early medieval Scotland’. It is a credit to the work of all those
involved in the Northern Picts project that such an observation can now be made.
This collection of essays, available in paperback, brings the project’s detailed
findings to a wider audience than before, giving the general reader easy access
to an important corpus of specialised research. For scholars of Pictish history
and archaeology, it provides a useful compendium of data and analysis on a
number of current topics. It is an excellent book and I have no hesitation in
recommending it.

* * * * * * *

6 Comments Posted in Pictish stones, Picts Tagged Pictish sculpture, Pictish
symbols

THE MEN OF THE NORTH: 10TH ANNIVERSARY

Sep28

Ten years have passed since the publication of my book The Men Of The North: The
Britons Of Southern Scotland. It has since been reprinted a number of times,
becoming unavailable for only brief intervals between reprints. For an author,
this is an encouraging situation to be in, and I am grateful to my publishers
(Birlinn of Edinburgh) for keeping the book ticking over throughout the decade.
I am also grateful for the many positive comments from readers and reviewers,
all of which have encouraged me to believe that the effort of researching and
writing this book has not been in vain. Of course, no book is going to please
everyone, and The Men Of The North is no exception. On the whole, though, it
seems to have been generally well-received.

“Until the publication of The Men of the North there had never been a textbook
for the North British kingdoms — its appearance should be welcomed by
undergraduates, teachers, and the general public alike.” Dr Philip Dunshea
(International Review of Scottish Studies, 2012)

The above quote, from a Scottish historian whose opinions I value highly,
captures in a nutshell my main reason for writing The Men Of The North: I saw a
gap on my bookshelf and decided to have a go at filling it myself. Ever since my
first forays into early medieval history in the 1980s, I had become increasingly
aware that the Northern Britons are Scotland’s forgotten people. They are far
more obscure and mysterious than any of their neighbours (including the
supposedly enigmatic Picts) and their significant role in Scottish history has
frequently been overlooked. References to them in medieval chronicles are thin
on the ground, leaving huge gaps in their story and forcing modern historians to
scrabble around for snippets of information in less reliable sources (such as
poems and legends). Nevertheless, I had often wondered if the various fragments
could be assembled into a more-or-less coherent narrative, a stable framework
around which a chronological history might take shape. It was 2009 before I took
the plunge by putting pen to paper and fingertip to keyboard. The task was as
challenging as I had expected it to be, but the result was a book that I felt
passed the test.

The Men Of The North includes my own interpretations of certain parts of the
textual evidence. This is especially true in the first half of the book, which
draws data from medieval Welsh poems in which the deeds of various sixth-century
North British kings and warriors are praised. Ten years later, and I can report
that these interpretations remain largely unchanged. I still firmly believe that
the locations of Rheged (a kingdom, or part of one) and Catraeth (apparently the
site of a battle) remain unknown. I still reject the conventional notion that
four North British kings joined together in a military coalition to launch a
combined assault on an English royal dynasty whom they besieged or blockaded on
the island of Lindisfarne. In this particular instance, I see each British king
waging his own campaign independently of his alleged allies. If my views on
these topics have changed at all in the past ten years, they have probably
hardened rather than softened.

Some of my views have, however, shifted somewhat. On page 178 of The Men Of The
North, while discussing the question of where the great battle of Brunanburh (AD
937) was fought, I mentioned three places as popular candidates for the
battlefield. These were Bromborough in Wirral (Cheshire), Burnswark in
Dumfriesshire and Brinsworth in South Yorkshire. I now favour a location in
Lancashire, either near the estuary of the River Ribble or further east around
Burnley. This revision of my thinking is presented in detail in my second book
on the Northern Britons, published in 2014 under the title Strathclyde and the
Anglo-Saxons in the Viking Age.

Several people have asked if a new edition of The Men Of The North is in the
pipeline. My response is that there are, as yet, no definite plans. If a second
edition does appear at some point in the future, it will undoubtedly make much
use of another book, an edited volume called Beyond The Gododdin, published in
2013 by the Committee for Dark Age Studies at the University of St Andrews.
Indeed, I would go as far as to say that no new research on the North British
kingdoms of the sixth century should be regarded as complete unless the papers
in Beyond The Gododdin have been consulted and cited.

Any new edition of The Men Of The North will also cite the publications of Dr
Fiona Edmonds, author of several ground-breaking papers on the Viking-Age
kingdom of Strathclyde/Cumbria, last of the North British realms. As with the
contents of Beyond the Gododdin, I regard the work of Dr Edmonds as essential
reading. I recommend, in particular, two journal articles and one book chapter.
Bibliographic details for these three are given in the list of references at the
end of this blogpost.

The past decade has seen other new publications relating to the Northern
Britons, too many to list here. I must, however, mention a major archaeological
report produced as part of the Galloway Picts Project. Published in 2017, this
substantial monograph gives the results of a programme of excavation at Trusty’s
Hill, site of a hilltop fortress famous for mysterious carvings that look like
Pictish symbols. Interestingly, the report’s main title is The Lost Dark Age
Kingdom Of Rheged, reflecting the authors’ belief that Trusty’s Hill is a good
candidate for Rheged’s main centre of royal power. Although I remain open-minded
on this claim of a Rheged connection, there can be no doubt that the report
represents a big contribution to our archaeological understanding of the
Northern Britons, giving us an insight into what must have been one of their
principal high-status settlements.

On a personal level, the biggest change in my involvement with the Northern
Britons since 2010 has been my participation in a number of local heritage
projects at Govan on the south side of Glasgow. Most of these projects had a
connection with the Govan Stones, a collection of sculptured monuments displayed
in the old parish church. The stones were carved in the ninth to eleventh
centuries when Govan was a centre of ritual and authority in the kingdom of
Strathclyde. The heritage projects helped to raise awareness of the stones not
only among the local community but more widely across Scotland as well as
internationally. When I first came aboard in 2012, there were some thirty
monuments to be seen. Three others, thought to have been lost, were unearthed
last year (as I reported at this blog — see link below). Like the archaeological
data from Trusty’s Hill, the rediscovered stones at Govan will be studied and
analysed, and the information will increase our knowledge of early medieval
Scotland.

The Govan Sarcophagus

Banner outside Govan Old Parish Church where the stones are displayed

I expect the next ten years will yield further new information on the Northern
Britons, whether in the form of archaeological discoveries or re-interpretations
of historical texts. It will be interesting to see if The Men Of The North gets
left behind, like something outdated and obsolete, and whether a revision or
update then becomes desirable for author and reader alike. If this is what
happens, and if I haven’t made a start on a second edition by September 2030
(the book’s twentieth anniversary), I may need someone to give me a
not-too-gentle nudge.

* * * * *

Links :

My blogpost from September 2010, announcing the publication of The Men Of The
North.

The first review of The Men Of The North, at Michelle Ziegler’s Heavenfield
blog.

My blogpost from 2019 on the carved stones rediscovered at Govan.

My sceptical views on a supposed ‘coalition’ of sixth-century North British
kings at Lindisfarne.

My book review of Beyond The Gododdin for the journal Northern History,
available online at my Academia page.

* * *

References :

Tim Clarkson, The Men Of The North: the Britons of Southern Scotland (Edinburgh,
2010)

Tim Clarkson, Strathclyde and the Anglo-Saxons in the Viking Age (Edinburgh,
2014)

Fiona Edmonds, ‘The Emergence and Transformation of Medieval Cumbria’ Scottish
Historical Review vol.93 (2014), 195-216.

Fiona Edmonds, ‘The Expansion of the Kingdom of Strathclyde’ Early Medieval
Europe vol.23 (2015), 43-66.

Fiona Edmonds, ‘Carham: the Western Perspective’, pp.79-94 in Neil McGuigan and
Alex Woolf (eds) The Battle of Carham: a Thousand Years On (Edinburgh, 2018).

Alex Woolf (ed.) Beyond the Gododdin: Dark Age Scotland in Medieval Wales (St
Andrews, 2013).

Ronan Toolis and Christopher Bowles, The Lost Dark Age Kingdom of Rheged: the
Discovery of a Royal Stronghold at Trusty’s Hill, Galloway (Oxford, 2017).

* * * * * * *

8 Comments Posted in Britons, Resources Tagged Gododdin, Govan, Rheged,
Strathclyde

BRITISH BATTLES 493-937

May28

This new book by renowned philologist Andrew Breeze is a collection of thirteen
studies on battles fought in various parts of early medieval Britain. Employing
his deep knowledge of place-names and primary sources, Professor Breeze proposes
for each battle a geographical context that either supports or challenges
previous scholarship. Most of the thirteen chapters are updated or reworked
versions of articles previously published in academic journals. Although the
author’s conclusions will be familiar to anyone who has followed his research in
recent years, it is useful to have them collected in one place, not least
because some of the original articles are not easy to find without access to a
university library’s journal archives.

A number of famous ‘lost’ battles are discussed in the book, among them
Degsastan (AD 603), Maserfelth (642) and Brunanburh (937). These three have yet
to be placed on a map with any measure of confidence or consensus, despite much
debate and many competing theories. The locations suggested by Breeze are,
respectively, Dawyck (Scottish Borders), Forden (Powys) and Lanchester (County
Durham). In making a case for Brunanburh (‘Fort of Bruna’?) being the Roman fort
of Lanchester (Longovicium) near the River Browney, Breeze offers a challenge to
the popular belief that the battle was fought at present-day Bromborough on the
Wirral Peninsula in Cheshire. In so doing, he shows that the debate is far from
settled and that Bromborough is not the only place for which a strong case can
be made. Less widely-known than Brunanburh is the battle of Arfderydd (573), an
event associated with the earliest strands of the Merlin legend. Breeze supports
a long-established consensus that it was fought in the vicinity of Arthuret, an
ancient parish eight miles north of Carlisle.

The book’s first two chapters deal with battles traditionally associated with a
sixth-century warlord called Arthur, a shadowy figure who appears in early
medieval Welsh texts such as the ninth-century Historia Brittonum (‘History of
the Britons’). The warlord lies at the root of later legends about a fabled king
whose chivalrous knights sat at the Round Table in Camelot. Many people believe
– or want to believe – that the legends are rooted in fact, and that the warlord
of early Welsh tradition was a real historical figure. This is the position
adopted by Breeze, who suggests that the original Arthur was a Briton of the
North who undertook a series of military campaigns in the early sixth century.
He argues that these campaigns, a dozen of which are listed in Historia
Brittonum, were fought in what are now southern Scotland and adjacent parts of
northern England. Breeze believes that previous attempts to locate the most
obscure battles in the list – such as ‘Bassas’ and ‘Mount Agned’ – have been
heading in the wrong direction, hence these places remain unidentified. He
believes that their names are corrupt and garbled, requiring correction to forms
that make more sense. This leads him to propose entirely new identifications.
Bassas, for example, he sees as an error for Tarras, which he associates with
Tarras Water in Dumfriesshire or Carstairs in South Lanarkshire (Casteltarras in
1172). He believes ‘Agned’ to be a corruption of Agheu (‘death’ in Old Welsh), a
name he associates with the lost place-name Penango (‘Hill of Death’?) in the
Scottish Borders. Other names in the Historia Brittonum list are more
straightforward and potentially easier to locate, an example being the river
‘Dubglas’ which a number of scholars – including Breeze – identify as the
Douglas Water in south-west Scotland. The final battle in the list is a great
victory over the Anglo-Saxons at ‘Mount Badon’. Breeze completely uncouples
Badon from Arthur’s catalogue of victories, attributing it instead to the
fifth-century warlord Ambrosius Aurelianus. He sees the name Badon as an error
for Braydon and locates the battlefield at Ringsbury hillfort near Braydon
Forest in Wiltshire. Camlan or Camlann, the battle where Arthur is said to have
received a mortal wound, is absent from the Historia Brittonum list but appears
in the tenth-century Welsh Annals where it is entered at the year 537. Breeze
puts Camlan in the vicinity of Hadrian’s Wall, supporting the long-established
candidacy of Camboglanna, a Roman fort at Castlesteads near the western end of
the frontier.

While Arthur’s campaigns may be familiar to many readers of this book, other
battles have received less widespread attention. Two ninth-century encounters
between English and Scandinavian forces at ‘Alluthèlia’ (844) and ‘Buttingtune’
(893) fall into this category, but Breeze’s discussion of their historical and
geographical contexts is nonetheless illuminating. He locates the former at
Bishop Auckland in County Durham, the latter at Buttington in Powys, and shows
why both battles should be regarded as significant events in the story of
Viking-Age Britain. From an earlier time comes another obscure battle, fought at
a place called ‘Gwen Ystrad’ by the mysterious King Urien of Rheged (c.590).
Breeze identifies Gwen Ystrad as the valley of the River Winster in Cumbria, a
location suggested by others but here strengthened by the author’s considerable
philological expertise. Slightly better known is the seventh-century
Northumbrian victory at ‘Uinued’ (or ‘Winwaed’) where King Penda of Mercia met
his doom. Breeze puts the battlefield beside the River Went in Yorkshire, adding
weight to a long-established case supported by many historians.

One aspect of Breeze’s papers that I have always found particularly useful is
his comprehensive summarising of previous scholarship on the subject in
question. This gives the reader a good measure of background information, while
placing Breeze’s own contribution in a broader context, as well as signposting
additional resources and alternative theories. The summaries usually begin with
antiquarian musings of the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
before following a trail of study through to the most recent academic
discussions. Breeze often acknowledges the work of independent researchers whose
contributions to scholarship might otherwise be overlooked.

On the back cover we are told that the book’s impact on scholarship ‘will mean
the rewriting of much early British and Anglo-Saxon history’. It is a bold
claim, reflecting the author’s confidence in his conclusions. Not everyone will
agree with all of his identifications and reinterpretations, especially if they
have strong views of their own on where a particular conflict was fought. But
this is a book that anyone with an interest in locating the lost battlefields of
early medieval Britain will find enlightening and thought-provoking.

* * * * *

Andrew Breeze, British Battles 493-937: Mount Badon to Brunanburh (Anthem Press,
2020) [link to publisher’s website]

List of chapters:
1. 493: British Triumph at Mount Badon or Braydon, Wiltshire.
2. 537: Arthur’s Death at Camlan or Castlesteads, Cumbria.
3. 573: Legends of Merlin and Arfderydd or Arthuret, Cumbria.
4. c.590: Picts at Gwen Ystrad or the River Winster, Cumbria.
5. 603: Carnage at Degsastan by Wester Dawyck, Borders.
6. 613: Chester and the Massacre of Welsh Monks.
7. 633: Hatfield Chase and British Victory at Doncaster.
8. 634: Hefenfeld and British Defeat in Northumberland.
9. 642: Maserfelth and King Oswald’s Death at Forden, Powys.
10. 655: Treasure Lost on the Uinued or River Went, Yorkshire.
11. 844: Vikings, ‘Alluthèlia’ and a Bridge at Bishop Auckland.
12. 893: Vikings Liquidated at Buttington, Powys.
13. 937: ‘Brunanburh’ and English Triumph at Lanchester, County Durham.

Professor Breeze’s ideas on some of these battles have been previously discussed
here at Senchus. The links below will take you to the relevant blogposts:
Arthur’s victories
Gwen Ystrad
Brunanburh

* * * * * * *

5 Comments Posted in Anglo-Saxons, Britons, Place Names, Warfare Tagged battles,
place-names

THE CONINIE STONE

Feb29

The period 400 to 600 AD was a time when Christianity, the religion of the last
Roman emperors, was gaining ground in many parts of Britain at the expense of
home-grown pagan beliefs. The spread of Christianity brought an ecclesiastical
infrastructure of churches, monasteries, priests and bishops. It also initiated
a stonecarving tradition in which crosses and Latin inscriptions were incised on
memorials to the dead. Some of the finest examples of this type of sculpture
come from Southern Scotland, bearing witness to the growth of Christianity among
the Northern Britons in the fifth and sixth centuries. In this blogpost I’ll be
highlighting one such monument, the Coninie Stone, which is of particular
interest because it commemorates a woman. Only rarely do we find women
identified by name on early medieval sculpture, their minimal appearance on
inscriptions matching their sparse treatment in contemporary literature.

The Coninie Stone formerly lay in the valley of the Manor Water, a tributary of
the River Tweed, but is now kept in the Tweeddale Museum at the Chambers
Institution in Peebles. It has been known since 1890 when it was associated with
a cairn of smaller stones situated on sloping ground beside the Newholm Hope
Burn. The cairn was demolished sometime between 1890 and 1934, when the Coninie
Stone was transferred to the museum. Measuring just under a metre in length, the
stone is an irregular slab of whinstone with a cross and a Latin inscription
incised on the flattest side. The two-line inscription begins with the word
Coninie, deriving from Coninia, a Celtic female name that may be of Irish
provenance. The second word –tirie is incomplete and is missing a letter or two
at the beginning. One theory proposes that the absent letters are M and A, thus
making martirie (a form of the Latin word for ‘martyr’). An alternative view is
that there’s only one missing letter, an E, for Ertirie, with the inscription
then commemorating a woman called Coninia Ertiria. The form of lettering and the
design of the cross suggest a date in the late sixth century.

Whoever she was, Coninia was clearly remembered with affection and respect by
the people who commissioned her memorial. She may have been buried inside or
beneath the cairn, or her stone may have marked a separate grave nearby. The
cross and the Latin inscription tell us that she was a Christian, but this is as
much as we can say about her. If her name is indeed of Irish origin, she might
not have been a native of the area. Missionaries from Ireland, both male and
female, appear to have been active in northern parts of Britain during the sixth
century and this could provide a context for her presence in Tweeddale.
Alternatively, she may have been a Briton with an Irish name, or someone with a
name that isn’t actually Irish at all.

St Gordian’s Kirk. Image via Wikimedia Commons © Chris Eilbeck / CC BY-SA
(https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)

The stone and cairn were found close to a mysterious site traditionally known as
St Gordian’s Kirk or St Gorgham’s Chapel. This is marked today by a small
enclosure containing a Celtic-style cross (erected in 1873) and an early
medieval cross-base. The latter was moved from a location some distance away and
is often referred to as St Gordian’s Cross. It has been hollowed out to resemble
a baptismal font but the basin was originally the socket for a (now lost)
cross-shaft possibly carved in the tenth century. St Gordian’s Kirk has
earthwork traces of buildings that, according to local tradition, are the
remains of an ancient church. In the absence of a detailed excavation, the date
and purpose of these features are unknown, but the prevailing view among
archaeologists is that the visible remains look secular rather than
ecclesiastical. On the other hand, nearby place-names like Kirkhope and
Kirkstead are suggestive of an old church having stood in the locality at some
point. The traditional connection with the obscure saint Gordian is also
interesting. He was a Christian martyr executed in Italy in 362 but is hardly
well-known in Britain. Even if there really was a church at this site in the
secluded Manor Valley, we would be left to wonder why it was associated with
him. A modern archaeological investigation could perhaps answer some of these
questions. At the very least, it might enable us to provide Coninia and her
memorial with a little more context.

* * * * *

Notes

I visited the Tweeddale Musuem on 19th February 2020. At that time, the Coninie
Stone was not on public display, having been moved to a storage area. I am
grateful to Wendy at the museum and to Trevor Cowie of the Peeblesshire
Archaeological Society for enabling me to see the stone and to take the
photograph below. The stone lay on the floor under a tall shelf-unit and was
partly obscured by other artefacts that were too heavy to move aside. I managed
to crouch down and take this ‘snap’ using the camera on my phone. I will try and
get a better-quality image on a future visit!

For an excellent study of the Early Christian stones of Southern Scotland I
recommend the following paper by Dr Katherine Forsyth, Reader in Celtic and
Gaelic at the University of Glasgow:
K. Forsyth, ‘Hic Memoria Perpetua: the Inscribed Stones of Sub-Roman Southern
Scotland’, pp. 113-34 in S.M. Foster and M. Cross (eds.) Able Minds and
Practised Hands: Scotland’s Early Medieval Sculpture in the Twenty-First
Century. (Leeds: Society for Medieval Archaeology, 2005)

* * * * * * *

Leave a comment Posted in Britons, Christianity, Historic Sites, Women Tagged
carved stones, saints, women

PORTMAHOMACK PICTISH MONASTERY: FREE E-BOOK

Nov14

Described by one reviewer as “a major landmark in Pictish studies” and by
another as “a stunning achievement”, this detailed report on the archaeological
excavations at Portmahomack is a must-read for anyone who wants to know more
about the Picts. It is particularly useful for what it reveals of Pictish
Christianity, giving insights into the daily lives of monks who inhabited this
site in Easter Ross more than a thousand years ago. Published in 2016 by the
Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, the report has been made available as a free
full-text download. It is one of two scholarly monographs on the Society’s Open
Access Digital Books platform, the other being The Scottish Antiquarian
Tradition , a collection of essays edited by A.S. Bell.

Portmahomack, situated on the Tarbat Peninsula overlooking the Dornoch Firth,
was the location of a major Pictish monastery that reached its high point during
the eighth century AD. The monastery was burned in the ninth century, possibly
by Viking raiders, and ceased to function around the same time, although the
site was re-developed as a trading settlement. This, too, eventually fell out of
use. In the early 1100s, long after the end of the Pictish period, the site’s
former religious character was revived with the founding of St Colman’s parish
church.

A programme of archaeological excavation began in the mid-1990s and continued
for more than ten years, unearthing clear evidence of the monastery’s importance
as a centre of writing, stone-carving and metalworking. Some of the finds,
including fragments of Pictish sculpture, are now displayed at the Tarbat
Discovery Centre housed in St Colman’s Church. The Centre is well worth visiting
and can also be followed on social media (see links below).

Fragments of a Pictish cross-slab from Portmahomack (from The Early Christian
Monuments of Scotland, 1903).

* * * * *

Links

Martin Carver, Justin Garner-Lahire & Cecily Spall (2016) Portmahomack on Tarbat
Ness: changing ideologies in North-East Scotland, sixth to sixteenth century AD
(Edinburgh: Society of Antiquaries of Scotland) [e-book free download]

Tarbat Discovery Centre is open from April to October. It can be followed on
Facebook and Twitter

Joining the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland is an excellent way to keep
up-to-date with all the exciting news from Scottish archaeology. Members of the
Society are known as Fellows and are entitled to use the post-nominal letters
FSA Scot. Fellowship is open to anyone who has a keen interest in Scotland’s
past. More information on how to apply can be found at the Society’s website.

* * * * * * *

Leave a comment Posted in Christianity, Historic Sites, Picts, Resources Tagged
Christianity, Pictish sculpture, Picts, Vikings

JULIA AND THE CALEDONIAN WOMEN

Aug14

Sculptured portrait of a Roman lady, believed to be Julia Domna.

Anyone who seeks to discover Scotland’s early history through textual sources
written more than a thousand years ago soon realises that ‘fake news’ isn’t a
modern phenomenon. It has always served a useful purpose for its creators, as
much in the first millennium AD as in our own era of digital communication and
social media. Recognising false information for what it is, rather than taking
it at face value, is likewise as much of a challenge when we’re reading an
ancient chronicle as when we encounter an attention-grabbing headline on the
internet. In some instances, even after having dismissed something written in
the remote past as fake information – such as a legend masquerading as real
history – we find it so fascinating that we want it to be true. This is what
happened to me many years ago when I came across what seemed, at first glance,
to be a curious fact – namely that the oldest known words attributed to a woman
from Scotland were spoken to a woman from Syria.

The conversation in question supposedly took place sometime in the early third
century AD, around the years 209/210. Our source is the Historia Romana (‘Roman
History’), a multi-volume work penned by the contemporary historian Cassius Dio.
At that time, the Roman emperor Septimius Severus was on active service in
northern Britain, leading a military campaign beyond the Antonine Wall – the
great turf barrier stretching between the firths of Forth and Clyde. His foes
were unconquered native peoples in what are now Stirlingshire and Perthshire,
specifically two large groupings or ‘tribal confederations’ – the Maeatae who
lived adjacent to the Wall and the Caledonians to the north of them. These two
had been causing a great deal of trouble, raiding southward into lands under
Roman rule and returning home laden with loot. A recent wave of attacks had been
serious enough to persuade the governor of Roman Britain to appeal directly to
Septimius Severus for aid. The emperor had duly taken personal charge of a major
effort to bring the marauders to heel. Arriving in Britain in 208, accompanied
by his wife and their two adult sons, he led his huge army northward. His troops
suffered considerable losses from guerilla warfare but eventually both the
Caledonians and Maeatae negotiated peace treaties with him. Dio identifies one
of the key figures on the Caledonian side as Argentocoxos, presumably a senior
chieftain, whose Celtic name means something like ‘Silver Leg’. However, the
ensuing truce turned out to be short-lived and a new round of hostilities soon
began.

Severus in Scotland, AD 208 to 210, showing three of the many forts involved in
his campaign.

According to Cassius Dio, it was during the brief period of peace that a
conversation took place between the wives of Argentocoxos and Septimius Severus.
The name of the Caledonian lady is unrecorded – perhaps Dio himself had no
record of it. He certainly had no doubt about the identity of the other woman.
She was Julia Domna, the Syrian wife of Severus and one of the most famous of
all Roman empresses. Julia’s image was so well-known around the Mediterranean
lands in her own lifetime that it can still be seen today on various coins,
paintings and sculptures. Born c. 160 in the city of Emesa (now Homs) in Syria,
she sprang from a high-status Arab family who seem to have had royal ancestry.
Her father was a senior priest at Emesa’s Temple of the Sun, the main
cult-centre of the Middle Eastern god Elagabalus. Charismatic and well-educated,
Julia was a suitable bride for Severus when, as a childless widower in his early
forties, he decided that he should be married again.

Septimius Severus, Roman emperor from AD 193 to 211.

Dio had a particular fascination with Julia and has left us a fair amount of
information about her. As a career politician who served as senator and consul
he was well-placed to obtain interesting snippets of information about members
of the imperial family. He had rather less interest in barbarians like
Argentocoxos, even when he could be bothered to name them. Like most Romans he
no doubt regarded the inhabitants of ancient Scotland as a mob of wild, uncouth
savages prowling beyond the Empire’s borders. As an author he nevertheless found
them useful as caricatures of the stereotypical barbarian – simple, uncorrupted
folk whose primitive ways of living could be amusingly contrasted with the
immorality and hypocrisy of sophisticated Roman society. Drawing on such
stereotypes, he informed his readers that the Caledonians and Maeatae ‘possess
their women in common, and in common rear all the offspring’. It hardly needs
saying that such a strange custom probably never existed among the contemporary
inhabitants of Perthshire and Stirlingshire, nor are they likely to have viewed
adultery and marital fidelity much differently from the citizens of Rome. The
idea that they practised a kind of ‘free love’ may have originated as a joke or
rumour among Roman soldiers stationed near the northern frontier – or perhaps
Dio simply made it up. It appears in his narrative shortly before the meeting
between Julia Domna and the wife of Argentocoxos and provides the essential
moral backdrop to their conversation.

Dio tells us that the empress teased her companion by saying that Caledonian
women indulge in a sexual free-for-all, sharing their beds with different men
while making no attempt to conceal their adultery. To a respectable aristocratic
lady like Julia, such brazen promiscuity would indeed have seemed worthy of
comment. We then see the wife of Argentocoxos swiftly responding with what Dio
calls ‘a witty remark’ of her own:

“We fulfil the demands of nature in a much better way than do you Roman women;
for we consort openly with the best men, whereas you let yourselves be debauched
in secret by the vilest.”

As with all ancient and medieval authors, we should be wary of taking Dio at
face value. Although Julia Domna was very much a real person – and indeed one of
his contemporaries – this did not deter him from portraying her in a way that
suited his literary purposes. Modern scholars who analyse his writings believe
that the Julia he presented to his readers was, to some extent, moulded to fit
his narrative. There is no doubt that she plays a special role in the Historia
Romana, particularly in those sections where Dio seeks to pass judgement on the
moral and political issues of his time. In this instance, his target was not the
allegedly shameless promiscuity of Caledonian women but the clandestine adultery
of fine Roman ladies. The consensus view among present-day historians is that he
simply invented the speech quoted above. Like a modern peddler of fake news, he
took a piece of made-up information about a group of foreigners and ‘spun’ it to
make a specific point. His readers – the wealthy, educated elite of the Roman
world – would have got the message very clearly. Some of them probably raised a
wry smile; others may have felt stung by the barbed jibe attributed to an
anonymous northern barbarian.

I think it would be good if we could accept the story as true. Some parts of it
possibly _are_ true, even if the conversation reported by Dio never happened –
or at least not in the way he describes. It is not unrealistic, for example, to
imagine Julia Domna visiting the imperial frontierlands in what is now Scotland.
She was certainly no stranger to dangerous war-zones. One of her honorific
titles was Mater Castrorum, ‘Mother of the Army Camps’, bestowed in recognition
of her willingness to accompany her husband on military campaigns. Whether she
met the wives of any barbarian leaders on such occasions is debatable, although
not implausible. I’m inclined to think we can consider the possibility that she
not only visited Scotland 1,800 years ago but had a face-to-face encounter with
the wife of a local chieftain. Musing even further, we can perhaps imagine these
two high-status women – one a Syrian, the other a Caledonian – exchanging a few
words, not directly but through an interpreter. Whatever they said to one
another, it is more likely to have consisted of polite greetings rather than the
mockery and ‘witty remarks’ placed into their mouths by Cassius Dio.

* * * * *

Epilogue

Julia Domna outlived not only her husband but also their sons, Caracalla and
Geta. The brothers became joint emperors following the death of their father in
211 but their relationship was mutually hostile. Within months, Geta was
murdered by Caracalla’s soldiers, dying in his mother’s arms. Julia detested
Caracalla but relished the power and influence she acquired during his reign and
chose to maintain a public image of maternal loyalty. The complicated
relationship between mother and son even prompted rumours of incest, but Cassius
Dio makes no mention of this and modern historians dismiss it as malicious
gossip emanating from the imperial court. Caracalla turned out to be an
unpopular emperor and his assassination in 217 came as no surprise, but his
death deprived his mother of political status. Julia, by then in her fifties,
suddenly found herself at risk of being exiled from Rome and ending her days in
obscurity. This bleak prospect filled her with dread, especially as she had
begun to nurture ambitions of ruling the Empire herself. She died soon
afterwards, allegedly starving herself to death but – according to Dio – finally
succumbing to the breast cancer that had afflicted her for many years.

The emperor Caracalla with his mother Julia Domna.

* * * * *

Notes & references

Julia’s second name or ‘cognomen’ Domna derives from an ancient Arabic word
meaning Black. It distinguished her from her elder sister Julia Maesa, a woman
of ruthless ambition whose own story is no less remarkable.

– – – – –

The conversation between Julia Domna and the Caledonian lady is reported in Book
77, section 16, of Cassius Dio’s Historia Romana.

For this blogpost I used the Loeb Classical Library edition, available online at
Lacus Curtius.

Substantial portions of the original text of the Historia Romana have not
survived, the lost material being known from an abridged version written by the
Byzantine scholar John Xiphilinus in the eleventh century.

– – – – –

Some journal articles I have found useful:

Riccardo Bertolazzi, ‘The depictions of Livia and Julia Domna by Cassius Dio:
some observations’ Acta Antiqua Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae vol. 55 (2015),
413-32

Andrew Scott, ‘Cassius Dio’s Julia Domna: character development and narrative
function’ Transactions of the American Philological Association vol. 147 (2017),
413-33

Christopher T. Mallan, ‘Cassius Dio on Julia Domna’ Mnemosyne vol. 66 (2013),
734-60

Caillan Davenport, ‘Sexual habits of Caracalla: rumour, gossip and
historiography’ Histos vol. 11 (2017), 75-100

Julia Domna and Septimius Severus with their sons Geta and Caracalla (Geta’s
face has been deliberately erased).

* * * * * * *

10 Comments Posted in Picts, Romans, Women Tagged Antonine Wall, Caledonians,
Romans, women

COLUMBA – PILGRIM, PRIEST & PATRON SAINT

May19

My biography of St Columba, first published in 2012, now has a re-designed
cover. I received half a dozen free copies of the new version last week and am
very pleased with how it looks.

The publishers – Birlinn of Edinburgh – have moved the book from their academic
imprint ‘John Donald’ to their main stable. Two of my other books – The Picts: A
History and The Makers Of Scotland – made the same migration some years ago. It
means a slightly reduced size (the John Donald format tends to be larger) but
otherwise the book is unchanged.

Five of my six free copies, posing for a photo after their journey south from
Scotland.

The new cover incorporates an image of Columba that I think is one of the most
evocative. For me, it captures the saint in a moment of serious reflection,
perhaps when his mind was lingering on a matter of sorrow or regret. The image
was created in stained glass by Karl Parsons (1884-1934) for a window in St
Michael’s Church at Sulhamstead, Berkshire.

Credit for the re-designed cover goes to James Hutcheson of Birlinn whose
creative skills are responsible for the covers of all my books.

The back cover ‘blurb’ and design credits.

Here’s a link to the book’s page at the Birlinn website:
Columba: Pilgrim, Priest & Patron Saint

* * * * * * *

Leave a comment Posted in Christianity Tagged Christianity, Columba, Dál Riata,
Iona, Picts, saints

THE GOVAN STONES: NEW DISCOVERIES

Apr8

A major archaeological find at Govan has been causing quite a buzz in the past
week or so. No doubt many of you will already be aware of the news from social
media and other sources. The find is indeed exciting: three early medieval
carved stones, long assumed to have been lost forever, have been rediscovered in
the graveyard of the old parish church.

The discovery happened during a community archaeological project called Stones
and Bones which is run by Northlight Heritage, a charity closely involved with
the conservation of the church (known as ‘Govan Old’) and its collection of
early medieval sculpture. The significance of the new find becomes clear when we
look back at the long history of the Govan Stones.

The story begins a thousand years ago, in the Viking Age, when Govan was a
centre of royal power in the kingdom of Strathclyde. In those days, the site of
Govan Old was occupied by a church that served the spiritual needs of
Strathclyde’s rulers – a powerful dynasty of Britons whose realm extended
northward to Loch Lomond and southward across the Solway Firth. The kings with
their families and other members of the local elite worshipped at Govan, burying
their dead in the churchyard and marking the graves with elaborately carved
stones. After the Scottish conquest of Strathclyde in the eleventh century, the
line of local kings came to an end but the gravestones remained. In later times,
when the old kingdom of the Britons was barely a memory, many of the stones were
re-used by prosperous Govan families as memorials for their own deceased. Hence
we see the initials of people who died in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries inscribed on a number of stones, overlaying the Viking-Age carvings of
crosses and interlace patterns. In the early nineteenth century, the churchyard
still contained more than 40 ancient monuments. Most were recumbent cross-slabs,
designed to lie flat over graves, but there were other types too, the most
impressive being 5 hogbacks and (after its discovery in 1855) a magnificently
carved sarcophagus.

Hogbacks and cross-slabs in the churchyard of Govan Old, c. 1900 [T.C.F.
Brotchie]

In the late nineteenth century, Glasgow landowner and politician Sir John
Stirling-Maxwell arranged for cast replicas to be made of the early medieval
stones. These were then individually photographed, with the images being
published by Sir John in 1899 under the title Sculptured Stones in the Kirkyard
of Govan. Some years later, the sarcophagus was placed inside the church for
safekeeping, to be followed in 1926 by many of the other stones. The rest
remained outside. A plan of the churchyard, drawn in 1936 (see below), shows 19
stones lying in a line along the east wall. On the other side of the wall lay
one of Govan’s famous shipyards.

Aerial view of Govan in the 1930s, showing the churchyard (highlighted in green
on this copy of the original), the River Clyde at upper right and the Harland &
Wolff shipyard in the centre.

And so we come to one of the darkest chapters in the story of the Govan Stones.
In the early 1900s, the shipyard erected huge sheds right up against the
churchyard wall. These enormous buildings were demolished in 1973.
Unfortunately, the demolition work brought debris crashing down on the ancient
stones lying beside the wall. At the time, it was believed that nearly all of
these precious monuments had been reduced to shattered fragments amongst the
rubble. A few survived, though badly damaged, and are now inside the church.

Fast forward through four decades to 2019 and the Stones and Bones ‘community
dig’. One of the dig’s local volunteers was Mark McGettigan, age 14, a pupil of
Lourdes Secondary School in Cardonald. Mark was using a probe to search for
objects buried beneath the surface near the eastern edge of the churchyard when
he made a remarkable discovery:
“I was just prodding the ground to see if there was anything there and suddenly
it made a noise and I realised I had hit something. Myself and two of the
archaeologists worked out the area of the object and started to dig it out and
clean it. I wasn’t too sure at the start what it was. But then we checked with
the records and we realised it was one of the lost Govan Stones. I am extremely
happy, in fact I’m ecstatic at what I helped to uncover.”

The stone turned out to be a cross-slab from the Viking Age, carved in the 10th
or 11th century. Nor was it a lone discovery: another two slabs were also found.
All three have been matched to their corresponding photographs in the Stirling
Maxwell survey, published 120 years ago, and identified as ’30’, ’38’ and ’40’
according to Sir John’s classification of the Govan monuments. The composite
image at the top of this blogpost shows the three photographs grouped together
(by me) but in the original 1899 publication they appear on separate pages.

Conservation and analysis by specialists are the essential next steps for these
important relics of Scotland’s ancient past before they can be put on public
display. In the meantime, it is quite possible that other stones – hitherto
thought to have been reduced to rubble – survived the disaster of 1973 and still
await rediscovery. We shall see what happens in the coming months but these are
certainly interesting times for Govan’s ancient heritage.

Below are some photographs of the new finds, reproduced here by kind permission
of archaeologist Ingrid Shearer from Northlight Heritage.

Uncovering one of the three cross-slabs (Mark McGettigan kneeling at top right).

Frazer Capie (Riverside Museum) and Ingrid Shearer (Northlight Heritage) using
the 1899 survey to identify the three slabs.

An early medieval masterpiece revealed (the stone shown as ‘No. 40’ in the
picture at the top of this blogpost).

Photogrammetric recording by Dr Megan Kasten of the University of Glasgow.

Finally, a message for those of you who enjoy getting out and about to see
Pictish stones and similar ancient stuff. If you haven’t yet visited the
collection at Govan Old, you’re missing out on one of Britain’s premier ‘Dark
Age’ attractions. The Govan Stones are an absolute must-see for anyone who has
an interest in Viking-Age sculpture, Celtic art or Scotland’s early history.
Govan was the capital of the kingdom of Strathclyde, the last realm of the
Cumbri or Northern Britons. Hardly anyone seems to know about this kingdom, even
though it was a major player on the turbulent political stage of the ninth to
eleventh centuries. Its inhabitants are the most obscure, the most enigmatic of
Scotland’s early peoples. If you think the Picts and their symbol-stones have an
aura of mystery, see what you make of the Northern Britons and their hogbacks.
Stepping inside Govan Old feels like entering the heart of a strange, forgotten
realm that somehow got left out of the school history books. The exciting new
discoveries by Mark McGettigan and his fellow community diggers have brought a
little bit more of this long-lost kingdom into focus.

* * * * *

Notes & Acknowledgments

My thanks to Frazer Capie for telling me about the discovery and to Ingrid
Shearer for letting me use the press release images and other media information.

The Govan Stones and the churchyard have Scheduled Monument status and are
protected under the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act 1979. The
Stones and Bones community dig has scheduled monument consent from Historic
Environment Scotland.

The Govan Heritage Trust is currently running a crowdfunding campaign to secure
the future of the church and its rare collection of early medieval sculpture.
Anyone wishing to support the Trust can contribute via this link.

* * * * *

Links

The Govan Stones Project has a website and can be followed on Facebook and
Twitter.

Other useful Twitter accounts for news and updates about the latest discoveries:
Northlight Heritage
Love Archaeology
Dr Megan Kasten
Dr Kasten has produced a superb 3D image of one of the newly unearthed
cross-slabs.

And, lastly, a couple of media reports, one from Scotland and one from the USA:
Lost Glasgow
New York Post

* * * * * * *

11 Comments Posted in Britons, Christianity, Historic Sites Tagged carved
stones, Govan, Strathclyde

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