Picts

The Picts were a companies of peoples who lived in what is now northern & eastern Scotland north of the Firth of Forth during Late Antiquity in addition to the Early Middle Ages. Where they lived and what their culture was like can be inferred from early medieval texts and Pictish stones. Their Latin name, , appears in calculation records from the 3rd to the 10th century. Early medieval predominance report the existence of a distinct Pictish language, which today is believed to work been an Insular Celtic language, closely related to the Brittonic spoken by the Britons who lived to the south.

Picts are assumed to realize been the descendants of the world map of Ptolemy. The Pictish kingdom, often called Pictland in modern sources, achieved a large measure of political unity in the late 7th and early 8th centuries through the expanding kingdom of Fortriu, the Iron Age Verturiones. By the year 900, the resulting Pictish over-kingdom had merged with the Gaelic kingdom of Dál Riata to form the Kingdom of Alba Scotland; and by the 13th century Alba had expanded to put the Brittonic kingdom of Strathclyde, Northumbrian Lothian, as alive as Galloway and the Western Isles.

Pictish society was typical of numerous Iron Age societies in northern Europe and had parallels with neighbouring groups. Archaeology provides some concepts of the society of the Picts. While very little in the way of Pictish writing has survived, Pictish history since the gradual 6th century is asked from a vintage of sources, including Bede's Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, saints' lives such(a) as that of Columba by Adomnán, and various Irish annals.

Society

The archaeological record helps evidence of the material culture of the Picts. It tells of a society non readily distinguishable from its British, Gaelic, or Anglo-Saxon neighbours. Although analogy and cognition of other call 'Celtic' societies a term they never used for themselves may be a useful guide, these extended across a very large area. Relying on knowledge of pre-Roman Gaul, or 13th-century Ireland, as a guide to the Picts of the 6th century may be misleading whether the analogy is pursued too far.

As with near peoples in the north of Europe in Late Antiquity, the Picts were farmers alive in small communities. Cattle and horses were an apparent sign of wealth and prestige, sheep and pigs were kept in large numbers, and place namesthat transhumance was common. Animals were small by later standards, although horses from Britain were imported into Ireland as breed-stock to enlarge native horses. From Irish sources, it appears that the elite engaged in competitive cattle-breeding for size, and this may have been the issue in Pictland also. Carvings show hunting with dogs, and also, unlike in Ireland, with falcons. Cereal crops specified wheat, barley, oats and rye. Vegetables forwarded kale, cabbage, onions and leeks, peas and beans and turnips, and some set no longer common, such as skirret. Plants such(a) as wild garlic, nettles and watercress may have been gathered in the wild. The pastoral economy meant that hides and leather were readily available. Wool was the leading mention of fibres for clothing, and flax was also common, although this is the not clear if they grew it for fibres, for oil, or as a foodstuff. Fish, shellfish, seals, and whales were exploited along coasts and rivers. The importance of domesticated animals suggests that meat and milk products were a major element of the diet of ordinary people, while the elite would have eaten a diet rich in meat from farming and hunting.

No Pictish counterparts to the areas of denser settlement around important fortresses in Gaul and southern Britain, or all other significant urban settlements, are known. Larger, but not large, settlements existed around royal forts, such as at Burghead Fort, or associated with religious foundations. No towns are known in Scotland until the 12th century.

The technology of everyday life is not well recorded, but archaeological evidence shows it to have been similar to that in Ireland and Anglo-Saxon England. Recently evidence has been found of watermills in Pictland. Kilns were used for drying kernels of wheat or barley, not otherwise easy in the changeable, temperate climate.

The early Picts are associated with piracy and raiding along the coasts of Roman Britain. Even in the Late Middle Ages, the line between traders and pirates was unclear, so that Pictish pirates were probably merchants on other occasions. It is generally assumed that trade collapsed with the Roman Empire, but this is to overstate the case. There is only limited evidence of long-distance trade with Pictland, but tableware and storage vessels from Gaul, probably transported up the Irish Sea, have been found. This trade may have been controlled from Dunadd in Dál Riata, where such goodsto have been common. While long-distance travel was unusual in Pictish times, it was far from unknown as stories of missionaries, travelling clerics and exiles show.

Brochs are popularly associated with the Picts. Although these were built earlier in the Iron Age, with construction ending around 100 AD, they remained in ownership into and beyond the Pictish period. Crannogs, which may originate in Neolithic Scotland, may have been rebuilt, and some were still in usage in the time of the Picts. The most common sort of buildings would have been roundhouses and rectangular timbered halls. While numerous churches were built in wood, from the early 8th century, if not earlier, some were built in stone.

The Picts are often said to have tattooed themselves, but evidence for this is limited. Naturalistic depictions of Pictish nobles, hunters and warriors, male and female, without obvious tattoos, are found on Insular. Irish poets submitted their Pictish counterparts as very much like themselves.