Antiquities

Friday 20th February at 7.30 p.m.: “The Southern Pictish Kingdoms including Fortingall” presented only on Zoom

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Gordon Noble was appointed as lecturer to the department at Aberdeen in July 2008. In 2012 he became Senior Lecturer, Head of Department in 2015, Reader in 2017 and Professor in 2019. He is also a Honorary Curatorial Fellow to the University Museums.

He has undertaken award-winning landscape research and field projects working on projects from the Mesolithic to Medieval periods.

He has two major current projects, Northern Picts, funded by the University of Aberdeen Development Trust and Historic Environment Scotland, is focused on the post-Roman societies of northern Britain. The second, Comparative Kingship, funded by the Leverhulme Trust, is examining the early royal landscapes of Ireland and Scotland. Research for the Northern Picts and Comparitive Kingship projects won Research Project of the Year 2021 in the Current Archaeology Awards, the leading UK archaeology awards programme. 

Public engagement is a big part of his research with Northern Picts having featured in numerous exhibitions and on five series of BBC 2 ‘Digging for Britain’, The History Channel, Smithsonian Channel, National Geographic, Radio 4 ‘In Our Time’ and many other media venues. 
 

BHS March talk live in-person

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The next BHS meeting takes place next week on Friday 15th March at 7.30pm in the Assembly Hall at the Breadalbane Community Campus, Aberfeldy.  Mike Benson will be presenting an illustrated talk on “The Scottish Crannog Centre, Past, Present and Future”.   

Rescheduling of the Glen Lyon Talk

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In mid-October, and taking into account the possible damage that might be caused by Storm Babet, Perth & Kinross Council closed a number of their public buildings including the Breadalbane Community Campus in Aberfeldy where we hold our ‘in-person’ talks. This resulted in us having to cancel our talk on ‘The Mysteries, Folklore and History of Glen Lyon’ on Friday, 20th October. We have now rescheduled this talk to take place in the Breadalbane Community Campus on Friday, 19th April, 2024 at 7.30 p.m.

Ancient Magnificence: Arbroath Abbey and Beyond

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Breadalbane Heritage Society talk to be presented on Zoom on Friday, 18th February 2022 by Dr. Nicki Scott, Senior Cultural Resources Advisor at Historic Environment Scotland

The survival of so many Pictish carvings highlights the long tradition of Christian worship across Angus. But the tradition of monumental display continued in the medieval period; the most famous example of this is Arbroath Abbey.  

Arbroath Abbey, courtesy of Historic Environment Scotland

But while this royal foundation rightly draws much attention, sites such as Restenneth Priory and Maison Dieu show it wasn’t just the elites whose lives were connected to the Church.  

Restenneth Priory

Maison Dieu Chapel

In this talk, Nicki will provide some insight into the lives of these foundations and the people associated with them. This talk follows on from last month’s talk by John Borland on ‘The Early Medieval Sculpture of Highland Perthshire’ but concentrates on the area of Angus.

Please note that, in order to obtain the Zoom joining instructions for this talk, you must contact Ian by email at bhsaberfeldy@gmail.com.

The Early Medieval Sculpture of Highland Perthshire

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Although Perthshire was part of Pictland, the corpus of Early Medieval sculpture in north-west or “Highland” Perthshire comprises very few Pictish stones.  The prominence of simple crosses – linear, sunken and outline – which have their origins in the Scots’ kingdom of Dál Riata, suggests not only the spread of Christianity from the west but perhaps even gradual Scottish settlement.

In this talk, John Borland will give an overview of the early medieval sculpture of Highland Perthshire, follow its distribution from west to east along the glens and straths, highlighting what is rare and unusual.  He will examine the distribution of the sculpture to see what that tells us about its cultural origins and thus assess just how “Pictish” this part of Perthshire was.

John Borland worked as an archaeological surveyor for the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland and Historic Scotland (RCAHMS) and then Historic Environment Scotland (HES) for 36 years, retiring as Measured Survey Manager in May 2020.  In that time, John had the opportunity to survey almost every type of archaeological and architectural monument, from Neolithic chambered cairns to WWII coastal batteries and everything in between, including castles, churches, croft houses and country houses.  However, the main focus of his work latterly was recording Scotland’s Pictish and other Early Medieval sculpture.  John has been a member of the Pictish Arts Society for more than 20 years and is the current PAS President.

To register for the talk and to receive the Zoom joining details, you must send an email to Ian at bhsaberfeldy@gmail.com.