Today when we talk about the Picts we are referring to the ‘Historical Picts’, those Iron Age people living in the present Scotland and who had come to the attention of classical writers after their encounter with the Romans in the 1st. century AD.
This was not always the case however. Three decades ago discussion also involved the ‘Proto Picts’ the people whom scholars of the time thought were the predecessors of the ‘Historical Picts’.
Since then the ‘Proto Picts’ have faded from the scene, and, if the current trend in archaeological thinking continues, the term ‘Picts’ will also disappear.
Fraser Hunter, writing on the Roman coin hoard found at Birnie near Elgin (Current Archaeology NO. 181) takes a long time in mentioning the Picts.. He also makes a statement with which I totally disagree viz…..to understand the Picts we must look to the power-politics of the Roman Iron Age. By this latter I take it he means the Iron Age in Scotland during the R/B period. The Picts have always been a problem and archaeologists and historians try their utmost to dismiss them. But the problem will not go away
It is rather silly to say that a race of people just suddenly burst on the stage of history. Even the Romans had their antecedents. And Bede, the father of British Historians, was sufficiently confident to mention the Picts as a separate people with their own language. More, he even sub-divided them into North and Southern Picts. But all we know about them now is their magnificent inscribed stones and the single place-name element Pit (pett) meaning a place(location) or a portion (of land).
Current thought states that the Picts were a very early Celtic speaking people. If so, why no trace of them in England, Wales or Ireland?
I feel we must turn to other aspects of prehistory that are unique to that part of Scotland occupied by the Picts. What springs to mind readily are, Recumbent Stone Circles, Four Poster Stone Circles and Brochs.
These, taken together and in the present context, form sufficient evidence to suggest that the people who were in the northern parts of Scotland from the Mesolithic, Neolithic and Bronze Age remained in splendid isolation, dictated by their physical environment, until the coming of the Scotti with whom they had racial/cultural affinities and with whom they affiliated to form an army sufficiently powerful to halt the northern expansion of the Northumbrian Angles at the Battle of Nechtansmere and, much later, the eastern expansion of the Norwegian Vikings at the Battle of Spynee Lake