A REVIEW of PICTISH BURIAL PRACTICES in TAYSIDE and FIFE Sarah Winlow in His Chapter

A REVIEW OF PICTISH BURIAL PRACTICES IN TAYSIDE AND FIFE

Sarah Winlow

In his chapter “Houses and Graves”, published under the title The Problem of the Picts more than fifty years ago, Wainwright recognised that the study of Pictish burial practices was a basic requirement to reaching an understanding of their society. The problem was, however, that not a single grave had with any degree of certainty been identified as Pictish. Nonetheless, Wainwright forecast diversity in Pictish burial tradition, anticipated its prehistoric origins and suggested the pos- sibility of a relationship between burial practices and symbol stones (Wainwright 1955, 87–96). Aerial survey in 1976 identified the cropmarks of square-ditched enclosures with central pits, a type of site previously unknown in Scotland (RCAHMS 1978, 9–10). These sites were similar, but on a reduced scale, to the Iron Age Arras cemeteries in East Yorkshire (Stead 1979, 30). Like the Arras graves, these square-ditched enclosures have been interpreted as the remains of ploughed-out earthen barrows (Stead 1979, 29; Ashmore 1980, 353). Both upstanding barrows and ditched graves belong to a tradition of marked or defined inhumation, with subsequent land use the most significant factor determining the appearance of monuments today. The lexicon is important as ‘barrow’ suggests monumental architecture, the construction of which has involved purposeful effort to create a memorial. Boysack Mills, Angus (Fig. 10.1) was one of these newly identified sites and consisted of two square barrows measuring approximately 6m in diameter, one of which had a central grave pit aligned SE–NW. Excavation of this grave revealed that the individual had been buried within a wooden coffin at a depth of 1.5m and the grave pit backfilled with large boulders. The inclusion of a ring-headed pin, typologically dated from the first to third centuries AD, suggests the burial took place in the early centuries AD (Murray and Ralston 1997, 362–70). Since the excavation of Boysack Mills, discussion and analysis of Pictish burial practices (e.g. Ashmore 1980 and 2003; Cowley 1996) has included square barrow cemeteries identified by aerial survey along with low 336 sarah winlow

Fig. 10.1: Aerial view of Boysack Mills. (Crown Copyright: RCAHMS.) kerbed cairns (e.g. Lundin Links, Fife excavated 1965–7 (Greig et al. 2000), see Fig. 10.2) and flat grave cemeteries (e.g. Hallow Hill, Fife excavated 1975–7 (Proudfoot 1996)). The number of known and pos- sible Pictish cemetery sites has greatly increased since Wainwright’s day and this paper presents a review of the aerial photographic record for Pictish burial sites supplemented by evidence from excavation and records of chance discoveries within a study area of Perth and Kinross, Dundee, Angus and Fife (see Fig. 10.3). Detail from excavated sites has been collated in Table 6.