In just over two weeks, on Thursday 26th June, it will be the Groam House Annual Academic Lecture – “Dying a Pict: barrows, carved stones and the landscape”, at 7.30 pm in the Seaforth Lodge, Fortrose.

The speaker, Dr Adrián Maldonado, is an archaeologist with a particular interest in the early medieval period and is very pleased to have the opportunity to come and speak to us. Adrián studied Medieval History at Harvard  before going on to do  a Masters in Archaeology at the University of Glasgow where his PhD in 2011 was on Christianity and Burial in Late Iron Age Scotland. Since then he has been expanding his research to include all aspects of early Christianity in Britain.

The following is  a preview of Adrián's lecture:

The distinctive square barrows and carved stones of northeastern Scotland have long been seen as expressions of Pictish ethnic and religious beliefs. However, it has become clear that not all of the dead were commemorated in barrow cemeteries, and that very few excavated burial sites have direct associations with Pictish stones. Barrows and symbol stones both seem to be connected with places of pre-existing sacred power and assembly, but their distribution is almost mutually exclusive. Furthermore, recent excavations show that the use of ‘Pictish’ barrows stretches across the first millennium AD and these barrow landscapes could be surprisingly long-lived. The question of whether the dead under barrows were Picts, kings or pagans is perhaps the wrong way to look at these sites – instead, this approach shifts attention to the ways in which memory, myth and ritual are performed in and through the landscape. Rather than straightforward expressions of a ‘Pictish’ identity, barrows and carved stones reveal the ways in which this notion was created, used and subsequently forgotten across the first millennium AD.

​Adrián's lecture to us promises to be a fascinating insight into this aspect of the Picts and, if the last two GHM lectures are anything to go by, you'll have to arrive in good time to be sure of a seat!  For those of you who will be coming to this venue for the first time, there is good parking straight across from the Lodge.  As usual admission will be £4 or, for Museum members and students, £2.  Tea and coffee will be available after the talk.