UHI Research Database pdf download summary Evidence and artefact Cheape, Hugh Published in: Ancient Lives. Object, People and Place in Early Scotland. Publication date: 2016 The re-use license for this item is: Unspecified The Document Version you have downloaded here is: Peer reviewed version Link to author version on UHI Research Database Citation for published version (APA): Cheape, H. (2016). Evidence and artefact: utility for protohistory and archaeology in Thomas the Rhymer legends. In F. Hunter, & A. Sheridan (Eds.), Ancient Lives. Object, People and Place in Early Scotland.: Essays for David V Clarke on his 70th Birthday. (pp. 151-163). 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Sep. 2021 Sheridan (eds) Sheridan and Hunter ANCIENT ANCIENT ANCIENT LIVES Ancient Lives provides new perspectives on object, people and place in early Scotland and beyond. The 19 papers cover topics ranging from the Neolithic to the Medieval period, and from modern museum practice to ancient craft skills. The material culture of ancient lives is centre stage – how it was created and used, how it was rediscovered and thought about, and how it is displayed. Dedicated to Professor David V Clarke, former Keeper of Archaeology in National Museums Scotland, on his 70th birthday, the book comprises three sections which reflect some of his many interests. “Presenting the past” offers perspectives on current museum LIVES practice, especially in relation to archaeological displays. “Ancient lives and multiple lives” looks at antiquarian approaches to the Scottish past and the work of a Scottish antiquary abroad, while “Pieces of the past” offers a series of authoritative case-studies on Scottish artefacts, as well as papers on the iconic site of Skara Brae and on the impact of the Roman world on Scotland. With subjects ranging from Gordon Childe to the Govan Stones ANCIENT LIVES and from gaming pieces to Grooved Ware, this scholarly and OBJECT, PEOPLE AND PLACE IN EARLY SCOTLAND. accessible volume provides a show-case of new information and new perspectives on material culture linked, but not limited to, Scotland. ESSAYS FOR DAVID V CLARKE ON HIS 70TH BIRTHDAY Sidestone edited by ISidestoneSBN 978-90-8890-375-5 Press ISBN: 978-90-8890-375-5 Fraser Hunter and Alison Sheridan 9 789088 903755 This is a digital offprint from: Hunter, F. & A. Sheridan (eds) 2016: Ancient Lives. Ojects, people and place in early Scotland. Essays for David V Clarke on his 70th birthday. Leiden: Sidestone Press. Sidestone Press * A new generation of Publishing This is a free offprint, read the entire book at the Sidestone e-library! You can find the full version of this book at the Sidestone Press website. Almost all of our publications are fully accessible for free. For access to more free books visit: www.sidestone.com/library Download Full PDF Visit Sidestone.com to download most of our e-books. For a minimal fee you will receive a fully functional PDF and by doing so, you help to keep our library running. www.sidestone.com/library ANCIENT LIVES OBJECT, PEOPLE AND PLACE IN EARLY SCOTLAND. ESSAYS FOR DAVID V CLARKE ON HIS 70TH BIRTHDAY edited by Fraser Hunter and Alison Sheridan © 2016 individual authors Published by Sidestone Press, Leiden www.sidestone.com ISBN 978-90-8890-375-5 Lay-out & cover design: Sidestone Press Cover picture: House 1: Skara Brae, by Philip Hughes © and reproduced by courtesy of Philip Hughes Also available as: e-book (PDF): ISBN 978-90-8890-376-2 Contents Contributors 9 Introduction: ‘If I can put it like that…’ 15 Alison Sheridan and Fraser Hunter SECTION 1 – PRESENTING THE PAST 29 Museums and their collections 31 Mark Jones Presenting someone else’s past: the Caithness Broch Centre 59 Andrew Heald Reading Govan Old: interpretative challenges and aspirations 73 Stephen T Driscoll SECTION 2 – ANCIENT LIVES AND MULTIPLE LIVES 93 Robert Innes Shearer: a lost antiquary from Caithness 95 Stratford Halliday ‘Thanks to you the best has been made of a bad job’: Vere Gordon 111 Childe and the Bronze Age cairn at Ri Cruin, Kilmartin, Argyll & Bute Trevor Cowie Mary Boyle (1881-1974): the Abbé Breuil’s faithful fellow-worker 127 Alan Saville Evidence and artefact: utility for protohistory and archaeology in 151 Thomas the Rhymer legends Hugh Cheape Expiscation! Disentangling the later biography of the St Andrews 165 Sarcophagus Sally M Foster SECTION 3 – PIECES OF THE PAST 187 Scottish Neolithic pottery in 2016: the big picture and some details 189 of the narrative Alison Sheridan Skara Brae life studies: overlaying the embedded images 213 Alexandra Shepherd The earlier prehistoric collections from the Culbin Sands, northern 233 Scotland: the construction of a narrative Richard Bradley, Aaron Watson and Ronnie Scott The provision of amulets and heirlooms in Early Bronze Age 245 children’s burials in Scotland Dawn McLaren On the edge: Roman law on the frontier 263 David J Breeze The Colour Purple: lithomarge artefacts in northern Britain 273 Martin Goldberg ‘Coal money’ from Portpatrick (south-west Scotland): reconstructing 281 an Early Medieval craft centre from antiquarian finds Fraser Hunter Silver handpins from the West Country to Scotland: perplexing 303 portable antiquities Susan Youngs Gleaming eyes and the elaboration of Anglo-Saxon sculpture 317 Alice Blackwell Combs and comb production in the Western Isles during the Norse 331 period Niall Sharples and Ian Dennis Playing the dark side: a look at some chess and other playing pieces 359 of jet and jet-like materials from Britain Mark A Hall Evidence and artefact: utility for protohistory and archaeology in Thomas the Rhymer legends Hugh Cheape Abstract An historical figure of the 13th century, Thomas the Rhymer, is recorded as poet and prophet but rarely merits mention in Scottish historical studies. This essay argues for the importance of the Rhymer as liminal figure for Scottish history and prehistory, as much for broader insights offered by him than for history of the individual. The Rhymer is commemorated in song and story, and is linked to the supernatural from where his gift of prophecy is said to derive. Markers in the landscape, especially in the Scottish Borders, may be ‘memorates’ serving present needs rather than original evidence, and prophecy may be indicative of cultural and political resource rather than individual cult. The extraordinary longevity of the Rhymer story is demonstrated by evidence in Scottish Gaelic in the 20th century showing how tradition shifted in response to circumstances or realpolitik. The subject has been developed in the research domain of a national museum with ready access to both historical and archaeological material and the benefit of a measure of independence from the constraining boundaries of academic disciplines and institutions. Keywords: Prophecy, liminality, memorates, Thomas the Rhymer Personae I offer this topic to David as an eclectic but informed mix of sources that I believe will appeal. As longstanding colleagues, I always enjoyed our conversations which customarily ranged across disciplines in ways that I believe reflected the intellectual inheritance of the National Museum. Thomas the Rhymer was, in brief and as far as we now know, a 13th- century Border landowner and a poet attributed with the power of prophecy. His reputation long outlasted him, telling us about attitudes to prophecy and its supposed efficacy, a phenomenon that is prominent from this time until the 17th century when the ‘scientific’ exploration of prophecy began (Cohn 1970; Hunter 2001). Consideration of this intriguing aspect of the human make-up has tended to be kept firmly outside mainstream Scottish history, the material rarely cheape 151 to be considered as a source and the written evidence to be confined, even firmly relegated, to literature. Even as ‘literature’, doubts remain over textual integrity and dating of the Rhymer’s surviving compositions, and they seem not to merit attention even in Scottish literature’s recent scholarly treatments. (See McDiarmid 1989, 29.) Thomas the Rhymer might be said to demonstrate ‘liminality’, both so far as an historical persona can be established and also in the consideration and treatment of his literary compositions. In the context of conventional scholarship and sustained separation of disciplines, Thomas the Rhymer seems to be marginal or invisible on the cusp of history and prehistory or times beyond documentation. In the field of folklore or its notional forerunner of ‘popular antiquities’, he was raised to cult status and his utterances reworked and conflated. What we know of Thomas the Rhymer offers particular insights into popular belief in Medieval Scotland and may suggest hypotheses for the understanding of past lives in prehistoric Scotland. There are historical sources to substantiate Thomas the Rhymer as a real person. These records were collected into the introduction and notes to Scott’s Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border to demonstrate that Thomas was a historical character (Scott 1803, 251). Thomas Finlayson Henderson brought such information that was known up to date in a four-volume edition of the Minstrelsy (Henderson 1932, IV, 79-137).