Additional Information

History Of The Picts And the Pictish Cross

The Picts were a group of tribal peoples known to be living north of the Forth - Clyde line between the arrival of the Romans in northern Britain c.100 AD and the mid 9th century. Their own records have perished apart from a list of their kings, though Roman, Irish and Anglo-Saxon sources give us a few details of their history. We do not even know the Picts own name for themselves: the word Pict, for long said to have been derived from the Latin Picti, meaning "the painted people" might perhaps derive from a tribal name like Pexa. Traditional lore in Scotland often refers to them as Pechts.

Showing the major peoples who inhabited early Scotland, the Picts mainly occupied the low lying fertile ground along the eastern coast of Scotland, while the Scots and Britons occupied the south west areas of Scotland.

The mysterious Picts were farmers, craftspeople, hunters, fishers and warriors who were largely converted to Christianity between the 5th and 7th centuries. The Picts developed a superb and highly original art which chiefly survives in the form of sculptured stones: it is from these carvings that most of what we know about this ancient people is derived. A unique and mysterious series of animal, object and abstract symbols are incised on what are known as Class I Pictish symbol stones. These symbols are evident in each type of Pictish Cross that has been discovered.

With the arrival of Christianity the Picts developed the intricate and beautiful Class II cross-slabs, on which the native symbols are combined with the Christian cross, thereby making up the Pictish Cross.. These carved stones, along with the exquisite jewelry and illuminated manuscripts, such as the Book of Kells, represent some of the high points of Celtic art. The Picts dominated what is now eastern and northern Scotland until they merged with the Scots, an event still shrouded in mystery and conjecture. The lack of Pictish written records is greatly offset by the unique heritage of their carved stones. Many of these carved stones were in the shape of the Pictish Cross.

Due to a lack of historical resources write by the Picts themselves, they were for a long time seen as a mysterious and enigmatic people. This impression was enhanced by the fact that the unique art of the Picts was perceived as having come into existence with no obvious predecessor. References in Roman and other sources to the practice of matriliny, or descent through the mother line added a further gloss to this air of mystery about the Picts.

In fact we now know that the Picts were in all probability simply the descendants of the original inhabitants of the northern part of the British Isles, the people who raised the great megalithic structures of Calanais, Stenness, Brodgar and Maes Howe and the earlier chambered cairns at Clava near Culloden. Even the system of matriliny is now perceived of as being much more common among early European tribal peoples than previously supposed. However, even today when the Picts are becoming more clearly understood, there are still people who look for their origin outside Scotland and even the British Isles. This is a result of a process started in the 13th century when spurious histories were created to bolster English claims to Scottish territory and which led to further histories being invented in Scotland to rebut these claims. Nowadays most serious scholars see the Picts as being indigenous to Scotland, though they were undoubtedly influenced by other societies and peoples. There beautiful symbolism and architecture developed by the Picts will live on and be remembered in  the Pictish Cross.