Beyond Reuse: Reengagement and Interdiscursivity in the Pictish Built Environment

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Reinvent, Reclaim, Redefine: Considerations of "Reuse" in Archaeological Contexts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Recent archaeological work on the people known as the Picts of northern Britain (ca. 300–900 CE) has revealed that many of the Picts’ characteristic monuments and structures made use of materials previously made significant in prehistory. A portion of the Pictish “symbol stones”— a class of stone monuments bearing a distinctive iconographic repertoire—were crafted from prehistoric megaliths, while Pictish period hillforts are often modifications of Iron Age enclosures. Scholars have speculated on the relevance of these practices to identity formation and legitimation in this period, with Pictish elites possibly positioning themselves in relation to the prehistoric past. Yet, to focus solely on reuse risks ignoring other practices which may partake in similar kinds of signification. Symbol stones are often placed near or within prehistoric sites, while “new” Pictish hillforts bear formal resemblances to Iron Age constructions. Drawing on insights from semiotic anthropology, this paper places Pictish period reuse within a broader category of interdiscursive phenomena including citation, imitation, and reappropriation. It examines spatial statistical results from a study of symbol stones and hillforts, traces these features’ possible modes of interdiscursivity, and sketches hypotheses for the relevance of these modes to processes of identity-making in the Pictish period and beyond.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Reinvent, Reclaim, Redefine: Considerations of "Reuse" in Archaeological Contexts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 39268.0