3. SCOTLAND

Please read the basics of this FAQ before using it, and please read the details before writing me asking me to update it. But please do notify me of anything you're sure I should update.

EXTENT

Great Britain, the island, north of Hadrian's Wall, and the nearby islands. Note that the areas north of Hadrian's Wall and south of the present day southern border of Scotland often are excluded from the references below, but are sometimes included in references on England. In contrast, the more distant islands presently governed from Scotland (notably the Shetlands) are consistenly included in the references below.

For the Isle of Man, midway between this region, England, and Ireland, but not legally part of any of those, see Sub-Regions under Ireland.

References on the British Isles usually do actually claim to include this region. Most such references are really mainly about England; the linked page includes only exceptions to that rule.

SOURCES

Tolerably frequent notices in Latin literature begin c AD 100, with rarer ones in Greek. Local Latin records begin in the 6th century AD, local Old English ones soon after. There are also lots of Irish and even some Pictish and Welsh records of similar age.

• Early Sources of Scottish History. A.D. 500 to 1286. Volume One. Alan Orr Anderson. Stamford, Lincolnshire: Paul Watkins, 1990. This is a facsimile reprint of the edition Edinburgh / London: Oliver and Boyd, 1922; there are additional pages in front (Roman numbered, as are the opening pages of the 1922 edition). In the 1922 edition, pp. v-xii are Anderson's preface (including p. ix "Apart from statements that are obviously biassed or absurd ... we must not reject the account of a good authority, except when it is contradicted by an equally good authority, or when it is inconsistent in itself"!). Pages xxii-ci are the "Bibliographical Notes" listing his sources alphabetically and their editions, and pages 1-207 offer translations of these sources as they concern the period AD 500 to 700, with copious footnoted discussion. In the 1990 edition, new pp. vii-viii are Marjorie Anderson's preface (noting inter alia that Alan Anderson came to prefer the Annals of Ulster over those of Tigernach), new pp. ix-xi are the "Bibliographical Supplement", not professing completeness, and new pp. xii-xviii offer the Corrigenda for the original to p. 207. Note also that the original's index was in Volume Two, pp. 701-805; the index's corrigenda are in new pp. xv-xix of that volume's reprint.
  Note that Anderson consciously excludes material by Angles or Englishmen, for which see his earlier:
• Scottish Annals from English Chroniclers A.D. 500 to 1286. Alan O. Anderson. London: David Nutt, 1908. The bibliographical "Table of Reference" is pp. ix-xiii; then pages 4-47 cover the period to AD 700 with selections mostly from Bede, with nine quotes from other works ranging from around AD 700 to around AD 1300.

There appears to be neither a comprehensive collection nor a comprehensive guide to inscriptions.

The historiography of early Scotland is nearly all in English, but nevertheless can be hard to use. Scottish (as opposed to English) history was not until recently a required school subject, but Scotland is rich in spectacular ancient monuments. As a result, histories that work as tour guides are much more common than histories that work as introductions or references. Despite this focus on tourists, maps tend to be few, and those offered to be inadequate. (Two pointers: If you can't find a county on the map, it's probably because the map shows one set of counties and the text refers to another; Scotland has had three sets recently, and authors and map-makers rarely agree on which one is most useful! And the "Mounth" appears to be either identical to, or anyway near, the Grampian Mountains.) Meanwhile, non-tourist works have often focused on specialist controversies, especially disputes over the Picts, to the complete exclusion of narrative or explanation.

An additional problem is a very curious form of regional imbalance. The three periods relevant here are the Iron Age, the Roman period, and the early historic one. Briefly put, in most accounts, Scotland consisted of the northern islands during the Iron Age, the southern regions during the Roman period, and the northern mainland during the early historic period. In addition, "Roman Scotland" refers not to the inhabitants of Scotland during the centuries of (peripheral) Roman influence, but only to the Roman soldiers who occupied southern Scotland for a few decades during those centuries; non-Romans present at that time are instead "Iron Age".

PERIODISATION AND TERMS

Late prehistory, as in England, was the "Iron Age" and (presumptively) Celtic. (Personally, I see more evidence for ethnic diversity here than elsewhere in the British Isles, but the label "Celtic" is less controversial here than elsewhere.) Iron Age settlement sites are numerous, and include hillforts (generally smaller than the sites so known in England) and duns in the south, brochs in the north and west, and crannogs and "substantial houses" pretty much everywhere. Note that some archæologists, reacting to the prominence of invasions in older accounts of late prehistory and protohistory, have taken to insisting that there was actually very little change between about 1000 BC and AD 1000 (no, I am not making this up) and so that the entire period should be known as the "Iron Age"; thus, if you see references to, for example, the "Middle Iron Age", this may refer to a totally different actual date than would the same label for England.

From AD 79 to sometime before AD 383 (perhaps ending as early as AD 230), the south was sometimes ruled and often influenced by Rome, though this influence appears to have had little lasting effect. When so ruled, the area belonged to the province Britannia, or if at all after the province was split, the part called Britannia Inferior or Britannia Secunda. In the 3rd century AD "Picti" started appearing in sources, and in the 4th, they started fairly often raiding England. By the 6th century AD, Picts (of Fortriu, Circenn, Fotla or Atholl) dominated the north, Britons (of Strathclyde, Gododdin, Rheged) the south, with a few Irish (of Dalriada) between; the area had been mostly converted by saints including Ninian and Columba. In the late 6th and early 7th centuries AD, Angles (of Bernicia, later Northumbria) conquered much of the south.

INTRODUCTORY

The following web site presents fairly mainstream views with relatively little hint that controversies rage around them.

• Scottish Highlands and Islands. Robert MacCorkill Gunn. A somewhat pugnaciously nationalist version. Note that this site's contents have been cloned in multiple places, and the rest all used badly constructed frames. In particular stay away from anything with "scotsweb" in the URL. This address gives you the same stuff without messing up your browser: http://members.aol.com/Skyelander/

For a much more substantial source of information see:

• I've found no reviews for this book.
  Ancient Scotland. Stewart Ross. Moffat, Scotland: Lochar Publishing, 1991. This is a relatively full introduction, covering all of prehistory and up to the 9th century AD. It's extremely readable, with lots of illustrations. Though there's a bibliography, there's no guidance to using it; Ross is sometimes careless (e.g. misspelling Roman emperors' names); but the book so admirably balances narrative, explanation, and information about the controversies, that its relatively unknown status baffles me.

In the past few years, the organisation Historic Scotland has been following its southern neighbour's lead and issuing numerous short, readable books on various topics, including a chain meant to cover chronological periods. Three of this latter group deal with periods within this page's remit; the first is remarkably good and surprisingly comprehensive, while the other two share in the blind spots usual for historiography of this region:

• Particularly Recommended
  Celtic Scotland. Ian Armit. [London]: B. T. Batsford Ltd/Historic Scotland, [1997]. Armit is now the most prominent scholar of the well-studied Iron Age of the region's Atlantic edges to the west and north, which would give him every excuse for narrowing his focus to these well-known areas; he instead writes "the first general book about this period" since, he says, 1883, in a flourish of justified pride. He begins with 1000 BC and ends with AD 500, but focuses most on perhaps 700 BC to AD 200. I only read this book after having read several other accounts of the Iron Age here, and found it the first to make the period at all comprehensible, by moving insistently beyond the copious settlement evidence to discuss the people who lived in the settlements, and by placing every item in its specific geographic and chronological context.
• Roman Scotland. David J. Breeze. [London]: B. T. Batsford Ltd/Historic Scotland, [1996]. This is a readable and thorough account, organised not chronologically but into chapters on the stages of Rome's several incursions (invasion, conquest, occupation, withdrawal). My only gripe is that it should really be called 'The Romans in Scotland'; see above under Sources.
• Picts, Gaels and Scots. Sally M. Foster. [London]: B. T. Batsford Ltd/Historic Scotland, [1996]. I found this extremely difficult to read, and lacking in detail. Foster attempts to treat the subject in a way I'd call sociological, and compensates for the scanty evidence with copious abstraction. (This often makes her references to what evidence there is so vague that they can't be pursued). She also writes mostly in the passive voice. And of course, as her title makes clear, she's only interested in the north. Even given that restriction, there are better books; see the page on Dalriada for one.

RESEARCH

Archæology generally:

• Scotland: Environment and Archaeology, 8000 BC - AD 1000. Edited by Kevin J. Edwards and Ian B. M. Ralston. Chichester etc.: John Wiley & Sons, 1997. A paperback edition: Scotland After the Ice Age: Environment, Archaeology and History, 8000 BC - AD 1000. [Edinburgh]: Edinburgh University Press, c 1997, 2003. This has the same pagination. This book is somewhere between an ordinary archæological textbook and a book specifically about environmental archæology. Thus, half the chapters are topical, covering changes in climate, landscape, soils, flora, and fauna, and the other half chronological, dealing with conventional archæological periods from a more or less environmental perspective. Of these latter, three cover the period this page deals with: "The Iron Age" by Ian Armit and Ralston, pp. 169-193; "The Roman Presence: Brief Interludes" by William S. Hanson, pp. 195-216; and "The Early Historic Period: An Archaeological Perspective" by Ralston and Armit, pp. 217-239. Note that all references in these chapters refer to the unified bibliography on pages 267-309. In the paperback edition, "A Guide to the Literature since 1996" is on pages 311-320, of which pages 311-312 are general, pages 317-319 cover the periods dealt with here, and page 320 is general.

The Iron Age:

• "Society in Scotland from 700 BC to AD 200". Richard Hingley. Pp. 7-53 of volume 122 of the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 1992. Although Hingley writes badly, he has a responsible sense of what can really be known, and he offers significantly more references on this period than does the relevant chapter of the Edwards and Ralston book just cited. In particular, his map of 101 sites provides publication references for each site.

Early history:

• Warlords and Holy Men: Scotland AD 80 - 1000. Alfred P. Smyth. Volume 1 of 'The New History of Scotland', Jenny Wormald, editor. London etc.: Edward Arnold, 1984. The standard work, and the most recent full treatment, this book has more than its share of controversy and poor organisation. But it's redeemed by a wonderfully helpful evaluative bibliography. Update that with the (much more selective) references from The Picts and the Scots, Lloyd and Jenny Laing, Stroud, Gloucestershire and Dover, New Hampshire: Alan Sutton Publishing, 1993, (a book too narrow in topic for me to have evaluated for this document).

NOTE

This entry in the FAQ contains references to Web sites. Please note that the entire FAQ, which is huge and difficult to do, is on an extremely slow update schedule. While I may correct changed addresses and the like when notified of them, and will certainly do so when/if those addresses' owners ask me to, I will not be actively checking links, and will have other things on my plate.

Created July 27, 1997. Last updated May 28, 2005. Next due for full update July 27, 2002 (yes, that means it's now overdue).

Reviewed by old-irish-list in its 1997 incarnation (now much changed). Thanks to Rod McDonald, Rachel Cailliach and Richard Marsh for suggestions.

URL: <http://turing.postilion.org/these-survive/regions/scotland.txt>

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Copyright 1997-2005 Joe Bernstein. Electronic transfer permitted.