FLOWER POWER in the North—Folk Memory & HiTech Open Doors to Rich Caledonian Past

FLOWERPOWER IN THE NORTH—FOLK MEMORY HiTech & TRADITION OPEN DOORS TO RICH LANDHOLDINGS in CALEDONIAN Provinces

Mar, Buchan & Moray—Pride of Pictish Kings for 1000 years

“Tweed, Forth, Tay, Dee, Don, Spey”

Children’s NE.Scotland learning River Rhyme in geographical sequence S to N

Borders Lothians, Central Belt to ancient capital Forteviot; Mearns, Aberdeenshire Banffshire & Northcoast Moray to Great Glen’s ‘Highland Line’ fault

Burghead Pictish Bull, l. totem guardian 1 of 32 Pictish Class-I carved stones found (&reburied) in Burghead harbour

Work by University of Aberdeen Archaeology Unit‘s revelationary & revealing 2021 season just ended at two of the North’s seminal Pictish sites: Burghead on Moray’s North Coast and Tap o’Noth, 1,800ft over Rhynie—inland Britain’s largest hillfort in Aberdeenshire— gold country: farming, silver/metalsmithing, stone carving centre in the North. Excitement has been high recently in academic circles—Aberdeen, Glasgow and Stirling—with new season on-site work enhanced not only by drone footage, but by the miracle of computer-enhanced search and dating tools.

High Status Northern Royal Fortress Protected by Moray Firth Waters on Three Sides, Triple-ringed Ditches on Landward

Descended from Iron Age Celtic tribes, East coast Picts were culturally and linguistically distinct from neighbouring Gaels, who inhabited western Scotland, and the Britons, in present southern Scotland & northern Lake District. Formation of their identity as a distinct group accelerated by Roman presence, forced separate tribal groups to organize and cooperate with each other, developing large Pictish settlements—sub- kingdoms—in the face of a common threat. By the 10th century, the Picts had apparently vanished from Alba, leaving only myths and carved symbol stones inscribed with ‘regional’ designs.

Burghead—Roman Tarvedunum Bull Fort—30 Lost Carved Stones

“It’s like having a magnifying glass that sees thru the layers below me”, said one mystified transformed pupil of Burghead Primary School during their day spent in the Pictish lower trench of the triple-walled Royal fort on the North Coast. Precipitated by rising Moray Firth waterline, lucky local kids got to witness ‘full-throttle hi-tech deep dig’ combo, prompting input from three Scots universities, charitable Leverhulme Trust funding and cooperation of NationalTrust [NTSScotland], with Collections at National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh.

New discoveries in a remarkably short month were astounding—from Mediterranean wine dregs in Roman amphorae staining high-status blue glass goblets, to cremated animal boneyard relics with their carved mummy headstones, to precious personal mirror and comb fragments of well-known ‘Pictish’ design—even Anglo-Saxon coins from the reign of (very South of the Border) Alfred the Great—871-886, top left. No carved bull fragments yet.

Group interest from Celtic and pre-Celtic academics from Gaul to Cornwall to North Wales, found evidence of mead implying resident bees and honey expertise, with alcoholic perks for high holidays. Invergowrie’s Bullion Stone, top, is known for its drunken rider, implying success in the (battle)field.

Rhynie Man, below rt, ploughed up next to Craw Stane, mid above, with sacred Salmon & Dolphin symbols, holds a titular axe similar in design to silver axehead pin, below, found during the local dig at Tap o’Noth. ‘Rescued’ as treasure trove 1978 (Barflat farmer paid), the then-Aberdeenshire Council authority placed him in entrance to Woodhill House, Aberdeen. Where he still stands—available to view only during business hours. <(

Down in the Burghead Trench…

It was a huge disappointment that all 36 bull stones (except six*) were ‘lost’ aka reburied? when the Broch’s 19thCentury newtown, below l. was built over one third of the prehistoric promontory within its oldest prehistoric walls. The possibility of finding such buried treasure will have to wait till next season. *British Museum has one.

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  Burghead overbuilt 19thC newtown

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  Oak beams destroyed by fire

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  Rhymie Man

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  Pictish bone comb fragment

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  The Doorie

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  silver pin ritual axe ornament

Radiocarbon dates show the fort was occupied from at least the sixth through the tenth centuries. But its prehistoric past beckons. It is the Broch to locals—hinting at its headland massif: the dun of Latin Tarvedunum, the name given to it by the Romans. Later residents lived on top of earlier, adding at least three stages. Burned (oak) timber beams suggest the fort was eventually destroyed by fire. West coast Nordophiles are keen to blame 10thC burning of the ancient fort’s triple layered [imported English] oak beams, above mid. on contemporary Vikings who were raiding Orkney, Sutherland and vulnerable Argyll’s Hebridean fjörd-like coastline, 839-45. it is, however, a tragic historical fact that the Dunadd Scots contingent under Cinaed MacAlpin took the Pictish kingdom (and Forteviot capital) by force in 843, claiming ancestry through matrilineal succession. He and three generations of descendants retained the title ‘Kings of Alba’—former name of Pictish royal house. One descendant, Giric, gave his name to St.Cyrus in the Mearns; another Culen Dubh to Cullen, in former Banffshire. Rocky Kintyre soil (inhospitable to farming) was abandoned for rich agricultural hinterland of lowland Aberdeenshire, Perthshire, Moray, Black Isle and the Great Glen.

Pictish Chronicles, Sacred Books & Long-lost Placename Clues

Pictish Chronicles—such as survived the deliberate defacement and downgrade of a subdued culture—were either rewritten or ‘lost’. Despite Nordic and Scotian suppression, we are fortunate to have original contemporary accounts by Venerable Bede (Northumbrian Anglian monk and historian, d.735 Jarrow) and Columba’s 7thC biographer, St. Adamnan of Iona. Margin illustration notes in 10thC Book of Deer show how gradually over 200 years, the so-called Kings of Alba gradually asserted their Irish and Scots roots, in a country they finally named Scot-land. Pictish heritage is jealously guarded in lowland central Aberdeenshire in a rich assortment of Pictish placenames, ancient forests, tollroads and routeways carved through an adoptive-Gaelic landmass. In this maelstrom of mixed lineage, Aberdeenshire Moray and Banff proudly speak the Doric—local Scots sub-language with strong Pictish overtones filled with hidden meaning.

Cathedrals may come and go but Pechts’ hooses remain…

Elgin cathedral— Light in the North—burned and ravaged before the Reformation. Pluscarden Sistercian Abbey and Brotherhood, burned but rebuilt; Abbeys of Arbroath, Brechin and Melrose ruinous, roofless. Yet the Fite Kirks (white aka stone building c.f. sod earth structures of pre-Christian cells) survive at Tyrie, Old Rayne, and Fordyce—a sacred stone’s throw distant from Deskford battlefield where a lone Celtic Carnyx battlehorn was found.

Trajan’s Column in Rome shows barbarian hoards sounding the Carnyx in battle. Designs in 1st-4thCC continental Celtic countries share the trumpet’s ‘Pictish beast’ shape, like the Craw Stane & pin above; imply a sacred meaning, as do regional shapes of traditional Class-I incised Pictish symbols on slabs from Ross & Cromarty to the Firth of Tay. Mirror & comb usually indicate lineage through female line of succession.

Old Aberdeen’s 10thC St.Machar’s Cathedral retains the best of ten centuries of change in a multi-faith population. Within a ploughshare of the ‘teaching stones’ of early-Christian monk Fergus’s sanctuary at Dyce [Aberdeen airport], top rt., sacred kirks and preaching steens (cross-carved stones with no other ornament) gradually filled in the jigsaw of Pictish ‘affiliation’ with Rome in King Nechtan’s time, 721. Then the Pictish nation politically and architecturally surpassed Northumbrian Jarrow, Lindisfarne and York in holding ‘Roman’ Easter alongside the Vatican, ahead of laggard barbarians of the Saxon south and ‘antiquated’ Iona. This division within the church in Scotland survived the Reformation.

Local kirk adherents [Church of Scotland] still prefer to speak to God directly, without the assistance of meenister, beadle, angels or peripatetic monks as intermediary.

HighTech to the Rescue: Creative Solution to Past Mysteries

Exciting new work opens the door for creativity in a field previously dominated by English [Oxbridge] chroniclers with understandably few tentacles in the Northeast Brythonic black-haired race’s murky past. With Univ. Aberdeen in the cauldron mix now, stirring chronicler cells in the Celtic cerebral cortex, folk memory, subconscious links to our past are no longer ‘forgotten’. They surface and bring aha moments.

Triggered by drone footage—superior to ’50s archaeological ‘aerial photography’ in cost and fuel efficiency—and I.T., Earth equivalent of depth-sounding in the Deep, avenues we never knew existed open—multi-layer occupation; imported oak versus local-grown timber for sacred buildings; extended habitation as royal residences within surrounding high population dense ‘burgh’.

Tap o’Noth, 1,800ft, similarly surprised the team in revealing a high density ‘town’ at hilltop level, supported by a rich artisan-agriculture-forestry-based ‘royal’ burgh below in Rhynie-Clatt culture centre within prehistoric RSCs of Wheedlemont and the Ladder Hills. Rhynie’s current residents call for return of their iconic Man, to reunite with remaining carved compatriots in Market Square.

Looking Ahead at Burghead

Past & Future Storm

Burghead winter frolics are just beginning. Clavie King Dan Ralph, son John & Clavie Crew brush up their tar-burning barrel-toting oil-spill defying skills 2prepare for Auld’Eel Burning the Clavie on the Doorie fire-altar overlooking the Moray Firth. Late solstice: early January here we come.

For all creative spirits under the solstital Storm’s watchful eye, may we writers gain wisdom from our own collective subconscious, learn new ways to preserve and protect our ancient paths.

Here’s to embracing both past and our human future. Sláinte selig skøl santé salute salud cheers. ©2021 Marian Youngblood