Warcor OsPREY Pictish Warrior AD 297-841 Sa trtecte ll NAAN CoatCONTENTS INTRODUCTION CHRONOLOGY PICTISH HEROIC SOCIETY EDUCATION AND TRAINING APPEARANCE AND EQUIPMENT PICTISH SPIRITUALITY THE HUNT AND THE FEAST THE EXPERIENCE OF BATTLE THE FALL OF THE PICTS THE REMAINS OF THE PICTS SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY GLOSSARY COLOUR PLATE COMMENTARY INDEX 1 13 17 22 29 41 43 53 55 57 58 59 64ra PICTISH WARRIOR AD 297-841 INTRODUCTION he Picts have captured the public imagination T in a manner unlike any other ancient people Exotic anti mysterious, their name conjures up, sof sun-worshipping naked warrior, covered in be body paint, storming down from the ey north to tear the Roman legionaries down from Hadrian's Will. They emerged from a murky past to dominate northern Britain for over 500 years, and then sly, becoming mere legend vanished just as mystr and leaving their successors to puzzle and argue over their curious artefacts, While there are elements of truth in this picture the Piets hold an important place in the history of Britain for more prosaic reasons. They represent a high point of Celtic eilisation, remaining free and uurconquered beyond the borders of the Roman world, and rising to become the frst barbarians to form a recognisable ‘nation’ There is no denying that the aura of mystery that surrounds the Picts is well deserved. They are first ‘mentioned by name in a0 207, though its clear from the context that they had been a problem for the Remano-Britsh for some time. But for how long? Wi were they not mentioned before? Were the Picts indigenous to northern Britain, or Celtic incomers? Was "Piet their native name, or a Roman nickname Was their language Celtic? If so, was it related to British oF Gaelic? Did they really adopt matrilinear Did they paint their bodies? What were the meanings of Pictish symbols? Why were the ‘symbol stones’ set up? Were they pagan or Christian? Ard how and why did the Picts disappear? Who were the Plets? ‘The word ‘pict’ is usually sid to derive from the pictus, meaning ‘painted’, in reference to the Picts habit of tattooing their bodies. While there seems no ubt that the Picts followed this practice as an explanation of the word it is somewhat inadequate. There seems no need for the Romans to invent a new name for a tattooed people, for they uniliar with many such tribes, and none of the Latin descriptions ihally use the word prctom to describe Cel There are sever she Ath-century military historian Vegetius recorded that the British srord picas referred to a camouflaged scout boat, coloured seablue faz In Welsh, this boat was @ eithas, the sailors were peti, and were peithayr, while medieval Trish chronicles called it J Pctones with piccanlach ox the Picts 1 pcan, an interchange the name P The way the Ro Petr’, Old English "Pe in a real name ns used the word, however, was as a tribal bes of Seat and Pict. Pict in Old Norse is a and Old Scots rch’, all of which seem a slang term for either that Pict was a proper painted’ oF ‘pirate’. It thus seems lik tame, and the punning reference to bodily decoration was merely a happy coincidence But who were the Picts? The simplest answer is‘the inhabitants fof northern Britain from Ap 297-858", which might be factually accurate but is otherwise unenlightening. It does, however, draw fttention tothe first puzzling thing about the Picts; that they are fabscnt,at least by name, from the first two centuries of Roman interaction with northern Britain. In the First centuries aD the land north of the Forth w peopled by two broad cultural groups, In the centra Highlands was a tribal confederacy of Britons, most notably the Caleioni, whose ancestry dated back to the Sth century 8 when timberlaced hill forts, ironworking and the other marks onze fragment ‘tng rom roche were 2 typeof utr dy stone fort wth an Inner courtyard of about 10 mete (32M) ameter, Containing entra wel The 30 metrthck (12%, er wou bo th srry sed stronghoures ofthePls predator. The tpt wat rom thcentury Okey ‘one of he eareat known Pitan cardogse fof Celtic culture first arrived in Scotland. In the Orkneys, Shetland, the Hebrides and the far north-west of Scotland another group built a different sort of fort, a type of cireular drystone tower called a “broch’ ‘of which over 500 were built between the Ist century BC and the 2nd century 4D, Although the hill forts have a miich longer ancestry than the brochs, both remained in use atthe same time, and there were lear cultural and political divisions between the inhabitants, Roman dealings with the Orkneys, recorded by Pliny the Elder and Tacitus, indicate thatthe broch