PICTISH ARTS SOCIETY CONFERENCE
3 -4 OCTOBER 2026
What makes Pictish art Pictish? Day 1 of our annual conference brings experts to
examine exactly this question, with Day 2 focusing on exciting research updates from the
field.
Tickets
Tickets are £12 members/£15 non-members, plus a small booking fee. Click the button below to buy them from Ticketsource (our ticketing app).
Agenda
Saturday 3 October
Day 1: The Pictishness of Pictish Art
13.30-13.40: Log on
13.40-13.50: Welcome
Professor Jane Geddes, President, Pictish Arts Society
13.50-14.40: Insular Art and its Pictish Components
Jane Geddes, Professor Emerita, University of Aberdeen
14.40-15.30: The changing artistry of the Pictish symbols over time
Dr Martin Goldberg, National Museums Scotland
15.30-15.50 BREAK
15.50-16.40: Stone and the gods: religious cognition and stone carving in first millennium AD
Northern Britain
Professor Gordon Noble, University of Aberdeen
16.40-17.30: The Pictishness of Pictish metalwork?
Andy Heald, Managing Director, AOC Archaeology
Sunday 4 October
Day 2: New Research on Pictish Art and its Context
13.40-13.50: Log on
13.50-14.40 Recent discoveries at Burghead by Aberdeen’s Northern Picts Project
Dr Ellie Graham, University of Aberdeen
14.50-15.30 On the mooooove: cattle, connectivity, and catchments of clientship at Burghead Professor Kate Britton, University of Aberdeen
15:30 - 15:50 BREAK
15:50 - 16:40 Different strokes: changing identities and connectivity between Iron Age
Ireland and Northern Britain
Dr Rena Maguire, MIC University of Limerick
16:40 - 17:30: Playing with the Picts: art and accuracy in Carved in Stone
Dr Heather Christie, Carved in Stone
17:30 Closing Remarks
Abstracts and speaker details
Jane Geddes: Insular Art and its Pictish Components
During the late Roman period, the art of the Picts, Britons, Irish, Romans and Anglo-Saxons had distinct characteristics of style and function. Over time, partly drawn together by the church, these separate elements melded together to create a vibrant new style, Insular Art, the art of the north-western isles. This paper identifies key features from each style and demonstrates the process of bringing them together. Pictish designs remained a recognisable component within Insular art, while at the same time absorbing fresh ideas from the neighbouring regions.
Jane Geddes is Professor Emerita from Aberdeen University and President of the Pictish
Arts Society. She is a medieval and architectural art historian. Recent publications include the R.B.K. Stevenson award-winning ‘Reconsidering the Forres cross-slab (Sueno’s Stone)’ Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland 153 (2024); ‘The earliest portrait of St Columba’ PSAS 147 (2017); Hunting Picts: Early Medieval Sculpture at St Vigeans and ‘The St Andrews Sarcophagus: shrine for an anointed king?’ in Royalty and Ritual: The Landscape of Power in Early Medieval Scotland and Europe, eds. Alexandra Sanmark, Mark A. Hall, Jane Geddes and Oisín Plumb (Sidestone Press, 2026).
Martin Goldberg: The changing artistry of the Pictish symbols over time
The Pictish symbols were used as a system of communication, performing a function similar to other contemporary scripts such as ogam and roman letters. The 'art' of the symbols is therefore secondary to this primary communicative purpose, but that does not mean that decoration and form are without interest. The artistry of the Pictish symbols can be an indication of distinction (Pictishness) as well as wider influences and connections, with conventions and innovation both providing indications of chronological change.
Martin Goldberg is curator of Early Medieval and Viking-age collections at National
Museums Scotland. He has developed theories about various aspects of Pictish material
culture as co-author of academic papers and books, often in tandem with popular
publications and co-curation of exhibitions. His major books and exhibitions include: Early
Medieval Scotland - individuals, communities and ideas (2012); Celts: Art and Identity (2015); Scotland's Early Silver (2017); and most recently Silver beyond Empire: The Transition Between Late Roman and Early Medieval Europe (2025).
Gordon Noble: Stone and the gods: religious cognition and stone carving in first millennium AD Northern Britain
During the first millennium AD we see the emergence of naturalistic stone carving. Traditionally seen as an ‘early medieval’ phenomenon, recent dating suggests this tradition began in the Roman Iron Age. However, the deeper cognitive and material changes driving this transformation remain underexplored. Why did stone carvers, after millennia of generally abstract mark-making, begin carving naturalistic forms? This talk argues that this shift was underpinned by a fundamental change in religious cognition, enacted after a period of contact with the Roman world. In this important horizon of change the materiality of stone was harnessed to enhance the efficacy of a new canon of images produced during a period where new social hierarchies were consolidated at the northern frontier.
Gordon Noble is Professor of Archaeology at the University of Aberdeen, and he teaches and researches within the School of Geosciences. He is known for his landscape archaeology research spanning from the Mesolithic to Medieval periods, and for leading major projects such as Northern Picts and Comparative Kingship, which investigate post-Roman societies in northern Britain and early royal landscapes in Scotland and Ireland.
Andy Heald: The Pictishness of Pictish metalwork?
In 2004 George Henderson and Isobel Henderson majestically reassessed Pictish metalwork in The Art of the Picts, concentrating largely on insular metalwork (e.g. silver chains, symbol-bearing plaques, personal possessions, penannular brooches and other objects) and moulds. They clearly highlighted the complex shared traditions that took place across Pictland and their neighbours during the Early Medieval period, a position espoused by numerous scholars previously and since.
Since the Hendersons' publication there has been an upsurge in excavations of sites within the traditional Pictish heartland, for example Portmahomack, King’s Seat, Forteviot, Rhynie, Burghead, Tap o' Noth and East Lomond. These excavations have not only produced new metalwork objects but also evidence for the production of metalwork in the form of moulds and crucibles. These new excavations took place against a backdrop of new analysis (and discoveries) on iconic hoards such as Gaulcross and Norrie’s Law and new synthesis of Early Medieval Scotland (including Pictland and metalwork) by numerous scholars in the Archaeology Departments of National Museums Scotland and Aberdeen University, amongst others.
This lecture reviews old and new evidence to assess the brief: what makes Pictish metalwork distinctive, and can we recognise ‘Pictishness’ within Pictish metalwork? Fundamentally: what makes the metalwork (and the metalworking evidence) particularly Pictish – or not?
Andy Heald graduated from Edinburgh University with a 1st class degree and completed his PhD from Edinburgh University on Non-Ferrous Metalworking in Iron Age Scotland 700BC to AD700) in 2004. He later became Iron Age and Early Medieval curator in National Museums Scotland Archaeology Department. For the last 16 years he has been Managing Director of AOC Archaeology. Over the last twenty years Andy has published numerous national and international journal articles on Iron Age Scottish non-ferrous metalwork and metalworking. He co-authored the 2025 publication of King's Seat, Dunkeld: Excavations of a Royal Centre of the Southern Picts.
Ellie Graham: Recent discoveries at Burghead by Aberdeen’s Northern Picts Project
At the end of the current phase of the University of Aberdeen’s CITADEL Project excavations at the iconic promontory fort of Burghead, this talk will update on recent discoveries from the site, and begin to put them into context of the wider landscape of early medieval northeast Scotland.
Ellie Graham is a Research Fellow with the University of Aberdeen’s Northern Picts Project. With a
background in researching the archaeology of Scotland’s coast, and working in partnership with local communities to respond to the threat of erosion, she recently completed her PhD at Aberdeen using drone-based survey to assess erosion impacts at coastal archaeological sites.
Kate Britton*: On the Mooooove: Cattle, connectivity, and catchments of clientship at Burghead
Famous for its bull carvings, Burghead was an important defended settlement in Pictish
north-east Scotland. Recent research, particularly on foodways, has highlighted the
multi-method approaches necessary for gaining full insight into Pictish animal economies
and animal-human relationships. Here, we present the results of an integrated study,
combining zooarchaeological approaches with isotopic analysis, in order to explore the
use of cattle at Burghead, their role human diet, and their potential origins.
* Speaking on behalf of abstract authors Kate Britton, Orsolya Czére, Jovita Fawcett, LucyKoster, Edouard Masson-MacLean, Elinor Graham and Gordon Noble
Kate Britton is a Professor of Archaeology at the University of Aberdeen. After completing her PhD at Durham University and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, Kate moved to Scotland to work at the University in 2010, and – as a specialist in the application of biomolecular techniques to archaeological human and animal bones and teeth – started working on a range of new projects, including the archaeology and palaeoecology of late Ice Age Scotland, and early and high Medieval diet and animal-human relationships.
Rena Maguire: Different Strokes: changing identities and connectivity between Iron Age Ireland and Northern Britain
The rich decoration of Irish and British Iron Age metalwork once conveyed complex
symbolic meanings, though its language has long since been lost. While most Irish Iron
Age artefacts adhere to the insular La Tène-derived style, a small yet significant group of
objects diverges markedly in decorative character. These items, distributed across several
centuries, suggest the persistence of an alternative, yet possibly connected, tradition. This
paper proposes that this distinct style may reflect the material culture of a group who
perceived themselves as culturally separate. Their divergent aesthetic choices may signal
a long-lived identity expressed through decoration and may have influenced the later
development of Pictish art in northern Britain.
Dr Rena Maguire is an archaeologist and lecturer in the School of History, MIC University
of Limerick. Since gaining her PhD from Queen's University Belfast she has worked in both commercial archaeology and academia, specialising in Iron Age western Europe, weaponry and equitation. She is a keen horsewoman, and works to keep her menagerie of cats, dogs and horses in the style they are now accustomed to.
Heather Christie: Playing with the Picts: art and accuracy in Carved in Stone
There has always been tension between accuracy and the creative process in
archaeological or archaeology-inspired artwork. Does all archaeology-inspired art need to
be accurate? What does accuracy mean, anyway? And how do you accurately depict
something that doesn’t survive? This paper will explore the interplay of archaeological/historical accuracy, speculation, and creative license in modern Pictish art,
using Carved in Stone and the excavations at Lair, Glen Shee as a case study.
Heather Christie is the Lead Researcher for Carved in Stone: A Storyteller’s Guide to the
Picts. They are also an archaeologist, gamer and YouTuber, teaching their audience about
archaeology through games like Minecraft. Across their 20 years as a museum/heritage
educator, they became keenly aware of the difficulties the field can have when talking to
the public about what’s been found. That led them to combine their gaming hobby with
archaeology as a less-traditional medium for archaeological education, one that brings in
new audiences, especially those who are unable to access the information otherwise.