
PICTISH ARTS SOCIETY LECTURE SYLLABUS 2024–25
Lectures are held on Fridays at 7.30pm (UK time), on Zoom
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Friday 21 February 2025
The Pictish-Norse Transition in Orkney
Professor David Griffiths
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This online talk will review some recent re-interpretations of Northern Isles' archaeology signifying the move from the Iron Age/Pictish era into the Viking Age. Initially focusing on the site of Buckquoy, where some new radiocarbon dates have been obtained, we will look critically at the various archaeological traits which have been taken as indicative of a Pictish or Norse presence. The clear boundaries which we once thought existed between these cultures and periods have begun to grow more complex and nuanced, with interpretations of the transition becoming more situational rather than all-encompassing or broad-brush. The talk will widen out to look at other areas, sites and landscapes, and examine the possibility that the Viking 'conquest' itself might have been a more localised and drawn-out affair than previously considered.
About the speaker
David Griffiths FSA Scot is Professor of Archaeology at Oxford University. He has been active in archaeological research in Orkney since the mid-1980s, and directed a landscape research project at the Bay of Skaill, Marwick and Birsay Bay between 2003 and 2018, published in 2019 as "Beside the Ocean" (Oxbow), the data from which is continuing to generate spin-off scientific and interpretation projects. He is a visiting professor in Northern Studies at the University of the Highlands and Islands, and has completed several terms of external examining in Archaeology and Scottish Studies at the University of Aberdeen. In 2004-5 he was the Newlands Visiting Fellow at the University of Glasgow.
Friday 21 March 2025
Pictish Dress and Textiles in Insular Context
Dr Alexandra Makin
[abstract to follow]
Friday 18 April 2025
Early Insular Music and Depictions of Lip-Vibrated Instruments in Insular Art
Dr Emma Holmes Mackinnon
[abstract to follow]