"The Trvve Picture of One Picte": Exploring the Colonial Roots of Pictish Archaeology

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

At the end of Thomas Hariot’s late 16th century manuscript A briefe and true report of the new found land of Virginia are included three images of Picts, a people who inhabited northern Britain in late antiquity and the early middle ages, as well as two images of “neighbours unto the Pictes.” In his words, Hariot appended these images “to showe how that the Inhabitants of the great Bretannie haue bin in times past as sauuage as those of Virginia.”

While the role of Pictish archaeology in Scottish and British national projects, pan-Celticism, and other European political discourses is well documented, the initial emergence of a scholarly interest in the Picts within the context of Atlantic colonization is less often considered. This paper traces the ways in which colonial logics contributed to the definition of the Picts as an object of archaeological research and continue to shape the field today.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SHA 2023 General Sessions   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2023

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow