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The Peoples of Europe
The Picts
The Picts is a survey of the historical and cultural developments in northern Britain between AD 300 and AD 900. Discarding the popular view of the Picts as savages, they are revealed to have been politically successful and culturally adaptive members of the medieval European world.
Re-interprets our definition of ‘Pict’ and provides a vivid depiction of their political and military organization;
Offers an up-to-date overview of Pictish life within the environment of northern Britain;
Explains how art such as the ‘symbol stones’ are historical records as well as evidence of creative inspiration;
Draws on a range of transnational and comparative scholarship to place the Picts in their European context.
Re-interprets our definition of ‘Pict’ and provides a vivid depiction of their political and military organization;
Offers an up-to-date overview of Pictish life within the environment of northern Britain;
Explains how art such as the ‘symbol stones’ are historical records as well as evidence of creative inspiration;
Draws on a range of transnational and comparative scholarship to place the Picts in their European context.
279 pages, Kindle Edition
First published April 1, 2014
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
June 13, 2016
Picts or it didn't happen.
This history reminded me of a painter using negative space techniques, because of the dearth of material available on the Picts. Even defining who they were is difficult: the term was first used by Romans to refer to barbarians north of Hadrian's Wall, and then by Christians to refer to people in Scotland who hadn't converted, and eventually as denoting a tribe separate from the others (but even then the author warns of relying on a 'one Pict fits all' mentality).
Still, a well-researched look at a captivating period of history.
This history reminded me of a painter using negative space techniques, because of the dearth of material available on the Picts. Even defining who they were is difficult: the term was first used by Romans to refer to barbarians north of Hadrian's Wall, and then by Christians to refer to people in Scotland who hadn't converted, and eventually as denoting a tribe separate from the others (but even then the author warns of relying on a 'one Pict fits all' mentality).
Still, a well-researched look at a captivating period of history.
October 16, 2017
Sadly despite making use of a vast amount of sources the book is largely confused, misleading and often inaccurate. Much of the content is off-topic, dealing with medieval reinterpretations of a largely unknown people. The work has the feel of something completed in the middle of the 1990’s, before the critical revolution in the study of ‘Scottish’ history, and then put in a drawer. It seem to have been recently dusted off with the footnoting of many superb modern studies but with little evidence that the author has taken the ideas on board. Much is essentialist, seeing the Picts as a continuous concept from the Roman period to the ninth century. The treatment of Pictish art and the language is quite insufficient. The work abounds in spelling and factual errors. There are some useful insights here and there but they are obscured by simplistic and dated interpretations. One could go on (and on). Fortunately there are good modern works by Clarkson, Woolf, Fraser, Evans etc
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews