Understanding the “Local Scale” in Pictish Landscape Research (Northern Scotland, 300–900 CE)

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The material record of Late Antique and Early Medieval northeastern Britain (ca. 300–900 CE) consists largely of monuments and obtrusive settlements attributed to the people known as the Picts. While features of the landscape from this period, such as the distinctive Pictish symbol stones, have been studied both in isolation and with respect to their general distribution, I argue that a holistic understanding of the Pictish landscape and its relation to social life requires increased attention to what I term the “local scale.” The local scale, as I use it, is a provisional heuristic scale meant to encompass immediate landscape surroundings potentially available for processes of place-making and social salience. This paper discusses the theoretical underpinnings and epistemological utility of the local scale for the study of Pictish landscapes. It then evaluates some possible historical and geophysical landscape units, such as historical parish boundaries and drainage basins, that might serve as useful proxies for the implementation of local-scale research. I use spatial statistics in GIS to evaluate the relationship of these proxies to known archaeological material and supplement these analyses with available historical records and qualitative archaeological observation.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 37402.0