Material evidence? Re-approaching elite women’s seals and charters in late medieval Scotland

Medieval Scottish women’s seals remain largely unexplored compared to the scholarship on seals and sealing practice elsewhere in medieval Britain. This article has two chief aims. First, it seeks to demonstrate the insufficiencies of the 19th- and 20th-century Scottish seal catalogues as a mediated record of material evidence and the use of them as comprehensive and go-to reference texts within current research on late medieval Scotland. This includes a discussion of the ways in which medieval seals survive as original impressions, casts and illustrations and how these different types of evidence can be used in the construction and reconstruction of the seal’s and charter’s context. Second, this paper will explore the materiality and interconnectedness of seals and the charters to which they are attached. A reading of these two objects together emphasises the legal function of the seal and shows its distinctive purpose as a representational object. While the seal was used in con-texts beyond the basic writ charter, it remained a legally functional and (auto)biographical object, and, as such, the relationship between seal and charter informs meaning in representational identities expressed in both. The article will apply this approach to several examples of seals belonging to 14th- and 15th-century Scottish countesses. Evidence reviewed this way provides new insight into Scottish women’s sealing practice and female use of heraldic device. The deficiencies of assuming women’s design to be formulaic or that their seals can be usefully interpreted in isolation from the charters to which they were attached will be highlighted. The interconnectedness of word and image conveyed personal links and elite ambitions, and promoted noble lineage within the legal context of charter production.

Possible Neolithic ard marks and field boundaries at Wellhill and Cranberry, Perth and Kinross, and an evaluation of current physical evidence for Neolithic farming in Scotland

Although the Neolithic period is defined by farming, physical evidence for processes associated with farming are rare, with agricultural practices usually indicated by environmental and biomolecular proxies for domesticates such as pollen evidence, ceramic residues and lipids, animal bones, plant remains and stable isotope studies. This paper will, we hope, invigorate discussion on the recognition, interpretation and significance of physical traces of farming in Scotland. The starting point will be the summary of two excavations, Wellhill and Cranberry, both Perth and Kinross, in 2014 and 2016 respectively, part of the Strathearn Environs and Royal Forteviot (SERF) project. These cropmark sites revealed evidence for possible Neolithic farming in the form of possible ard marks and field ditches. There follows a synthesis of physical evidence for Neolithic farming in Scotland, drawing together evidence for ard marks, field boundaries, cultivation ridges, cultivated middens, and soils. Recommendations are made for recognising and interpreting such features on excavations, and the potential benefits of giving a higher profile to the act of farming in our narratives about Neolithic lifeways in Scotland and beyond are briefly explored.

Prelims

Front matter for Volume 150 Table of Contents List of abbreviations commonly used in the Proceedings Editorial board for the Proceedings Vol 150 Society's Council from 30 November 2019 Patron and Honorary Fellows of the Society Laws of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland

The Newton Stones and writing in Pictland, part 1

In the grounds of Newton House near Insch in Aberdeenshire are two Pictish monuments. One is an inscribed stone that also has an incised Pictish mirror symbol, and the other is a Pictish symbol stone with a notched double-disc above a serpent and z-rod symbol. The inscribed stone, commonly referred to as the Newton Stone, has an ogham inscription on one edge that continues onto an added stemline, and on the top front is a unique horizontal, six-line alphabetic inscription. This article examines the documentary record for these two monuments, which were moved from their original location in the 18th and 19th centuries respectively. Through analysis of the documentary evidence, and in comparison with the local geology, the area of the original findspot of the Newton Stone and associated symbol stone is identified. The original landscape of these stones is compared with the topographical features of other Pictish monuments, particularly those in Donside. This comparison reveals that the topographical and liminal features in the original vicinity of the Newton Stone and symbol stone correspond with the wider pattern of the siting of Pictish symbol stones and Pictish cemeteries, and the association between a potentially Pictish-age settlement and these monuments may be suggested through examination of local place-names.

The enamelled baldric of Thomas Randolph, 1st Earl of Moray (c 1280–1332)

The baldric of Thomas Randolph, 1st Earl of Moray (died 1332), a companion in arms of King Robert I, was made in the first half of the 14th century and taken to England before 1604, since which time it has been attached to the Savernake horn, now in the British Museum. It is elaborately decorated with champlevé and translucent enamel, and bears the arms of argent three cushions gules within a royal tressure, which were adopted by Thomas Randolph after he was created Earl of Moray in 1312. The baldric shows Scottish heraldry and ownership, and so appears to be an example of Scottish enamelling. This article examines both the enamel decoration and the life of Thomas Randolph and suggests that there is a greater probability that it was made in France, possibly Paris or Avignon, rather than Scotland.

Unusual Roman Iron Age burials on the Links of Pierowall, Westray, Orkney

Antiquarian accounts and surviving finds allow two Iron Age cist-burials found in the late 18th century on the Links of Pierowall on Westray, Orkney, to be reconstructed, although no details of the bodies survive (but both were most probably inhumations); the unusual finds have not previously received full attention. One burial contained a polished stone disc, used as a palette for grinding some valued substance, probably cosmetic, medical or narcotic. A review of the type emphasises its particular prevalence in northern Scotland, and places it within the wider context of an increase in artefacts linked to personal appearance and behaviour in the Roman Iron Age. The other burial contained a well-known Roman glass cup and a hitherto ignored ‘metal spoon’ which can reasonably be identified as a Roman import as well, plausibly of silver. Such spoons are rare import goods, known from rich burials beyond the frontier on continental Europe in the late 2nd and 3rd century AD. This suggests that the Roman world adopted similar approaches to its varied neighbours in terms of the goods offered in (most likely) political or diplomatic connections.

Reconstructing the childhood diet of individuals buried with the Pictish monastic community at Portmahomack

This research aims to reconstruct the childhood diets (aged 9–10 years) of the individuals buried during the active years of the Pictish monastic community (hereafter referred to as PMC) from early medieval (7th–11th century) Portmahomack in north-east Scotland, using 13C and 15N isotopes. Dietary reconstructions were achieved by isotope analysis of δ13C and δ15N on the tooth root apex from permanent first molars (M1) of 26 adult male individuals. The results indicate that the indi-viduals in PMC predominantly consumed terrestrial C3 resources during childhood, with a rich terrestrial protein diet and some marine resource consumption. Statistically significant differences were observed between childhood and adulthood diets (the latter derived from previous research), suggesting that when these individuals were children, they consumed more marine protein than in later years as adults. This is true for all individuals, whether or not they spent significant time in Portmahomack during their childhoods. This is the most extensive study of the childhood diet of in-dividuals from the PMC and so makes a significant contribution to augmenting information on diet and lifestyles in Pictish Scotland.

Professor John Morton Coles

Professor John Coles, who died on 14 October 2020 aged 90, had a long and distinguished career as a prehistorian, experimental archaeologist and wetland archaeologist, and he made substantial contributions to Scottish archaeology, as well as to European and world archaeology more generally.

Shifting perspectives on 1st-millennia Scotland

Underlying much research on Iron Age Scotland is a pervasive regionalism. This has led to the underplaying of cultural traits that are evident across the country. The examination of south-west Scotland, a region that does not have a distinctive later prehistoric character and which is often viewed as somewhat peripheral to understanding Iron Age Scotland, however, reveals underlying patterns of settlement and culture that are embedded across Scotland but markedly different to Iron Age societies to the south. Moreover, cultural traits apparent across Scotland but absent south of the border continued into the early medieval period, suggesting significant cultural divergences between 400 BC and AD 650.

Miss Christian MacLagan, pioneer Victorian antiquary and archaeologist

Christian MacLagan (1811-1901), from Stirling, occupies the intersection of amateur antiquarian-ism and modern archaeology. Although not Scotland’s earliest female archaeologist, she pioneered the compilation and publication of prehistoric sites, using her own plans and fieldwork. This paper examines her previously undocumented social background and the roots of her maternal family, the Colvilles, and their fortune in the colonial indigo trade in Bengal. Colville links with Annfield estate, Stirling and Laws, Monifieth, are noted. A large Calcutta-derived legacy in 1859 enabled MacLagan to circumvent many conventional restrictions on women.