Unearthing the Picts

By Christopher Bowles

The Picts are, perhaps, the least understood of all Dark Age European cultures. Known mostly by their mysterious carved stone symbols, archaeologists have long sought clues to the social makeup of these Early Medieval Scottish residents. We know from historical sources, for instance, that the Picts were actually comprised of several Celtic tribes dubbed ‘Pictoi,’ or painted-ones, by the Romans. They lived principally in the Northern Isles of Shetland and Orkney, the extreme northern mainland of Scotland, the Highlands and down the east coast to the Firth of Forth. They were involved in raiding southern Britain during both the Roman and later periods, were converted to Christianity by the saints Ninnian and Columba, and were eventually subsumed into the Kingdom of Scotland when Kenneth MacAlpine unified it in the ninth century AD. Little is known beyond this.

The remains of the Hilton of Cadboll Stone, which sits in the Royal Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, was partially defaced in the 17th century. Exciting recent excavations have recovered the fragments of stone removed during the defacement, and attempts at reconstructing them are under way. It is hoped the finished product will provide new insights into why stones were carved, and the political nature of stone placement in the landscape.

Join archaeologist Christopher Bowles and travel
through the remote areas of Scotland in July.

Tiwanaku’s New Sculpture Museum

By Dr. Jason Yaeger

One of the highlights of Tiwanaku is the striking new sculpture museum at Tiwanaku, completed in 2002. The sculpture museum provides an excellent complement to the older site museum, which displays a very large collection of beautiful pottery, stone tools, metalwork and other objects representative of different eras in the site’s 2000-year history. The spacious galleries of the sculpture museum contain some of the finest examples of Tiwanaku stone carvers. Although Inka masonry is justly famous, most scholars recognize that the stone carvers of Tiwanaku surpassed even the Inka in their skills. Entering the main gallery, you are greeted by the large stone head, over 5’ tall, of one of the ancient kings of Tiwanaku. Carved over 1,200 years ago, this sculpture is a powerful reminder of the political might exercised by the rulers of this ancient metropolis. Other sculptures in the round depict kings and priests, and some show pumas and other animals important in ancient Tiwanaku cosmology.

The centerpiece of the museum, however, is the awe-inspiring Bennett Monolith. Another statue showing one of the city’s kings, Wendell Bennett found the sculpture in his excavations of the Semi-subterranean Temple in the 1930s, and it was then moved to a park in front of the Miraflores football stadium in La Paz. In 2002, the 7-meter tall, 17-ton monument made its triumphal return to Tiwanaku and was installed in a place of honor in the new museum. This monument is arguably the most powerful and most intricate Pre-Columbian sculpture in the Andes, and it will be one of the highlights of your visit to the site.

See the museum on Archaeology of Bolivia in July 2005.