Editing Picts (section)

==Definitions==
[[File:Norrie's Law hoard 1 (cropped).jpg|thumb|Silver plaque from the [[Norrie's Law hoard]], [[Fife]], with double disc and Z-rod symbol]]

There has been substantial critical reappraisal of the concept of "Pictishness" over recent decades.<ref>{{harvnb|Fraser|2009|pp=1–11}}</ref> The popular view at the beginning of the twentieth century was that they were exotic "lost people". It was noted in the highly influential work of 1955, ''The Problem of the Picts'', that the subject area was difficult, with the archaeological and historical records frequently being at odds with the conventional [[essentialism|essentialist]] expectations about historical peoples.<ref>{{harvnb|Wainwright|1955}}</ref> Since then, the [[culture-historical archaeology|culture-historical paradigm]] of archaeology dominant since the late nineteenth century gave way to the [[processual archaeology]] (formerly known as the ''New Archaeology'') theory.<ref>{{harvnb|Jones|1997}}; {{harvnb|Fraser|2011}}</ref> Moreover, there has been significant reappraisal of textual sources written, for example by [[Bede]] and [[Adomnán]] in the seventh and eighth centuries. These works relate events of previous centuries, but current scholarship recognises their often allegorical, pseudo-historical nature, and their true value often lies in an appraisal of the time period in which they were written.<ref>{{harvnb|Fraser|2009|pp=1–14}}</ref>

The difficulties with Pictish history and archaeology arise from the fact that the people who were called Picts were a fundamentally heterogeneous group with little cultural uniformity. Care is needed to avoid viewing them through the lens of what the cultural historian Gilbert Márkus calls the "Ethnic Fallacy".<ref>{{harvnb|Markus|2017|p=ix}}</ref> The people known as "Picts" by outsiders in late antiquity were very different from those who later adopted the name, in terms of language, culture, religion and politics.

The term "Pict" is found in Roman sources from the end of the third century AD, when it was used to describe [[Romanization (cultural)|unromanised]] people in northern Britain.<ref>{{harvnb|Markus|2017|p=38}}; {{harvnb|Foster|1996|p=11}}; {{harvnb|Evans|2022}}</ref> The term is most likely to have been pejorative, emphasising their supposed [[barbarian|barbarism]] in contrast to the Britons under Roman rule.<ref>{{harvnb|Markus|2017|p=38}}; {{harvnb|Fraser|2009|p=48}}</ref> It has been argued, most notably by [[James E. Fraser (historian)|James Fraser]], that the term "Pict" would have had little meaning to the people to whom it was being applied. Fraser posits that it was adopted as an [[Exonym and endonym|endonym]] only in the late seventh century, as an inclusive term for people under rule of the Verturian hegemony, centered in [[Fortriu]] (the area around modern-day [[Inverness]] and [[Moray]]), particularly  following the [[Battle of Dun Nechtain]].<ref>{{harvnb|Fraser|2009}}; {{harvnb|Fraser|2011}}; {{harvnb|Woolf|2017}}</ref> This view is, however, not universal. Gordon Noble and Nicholas Evans consider it plausible, if not provable, that "Picts" may have been used as an endonym by those northern Britons in closest contact with Rome as early as the fourth century.<ref>{{harvnb|Evans|2022}}; {{harvnb|Noble|Evans|2022|p=9}}</ref> 

The bulk of [[recorded history|written history]] dates from the seventh century onwards. The [[Irish annals|Irish annalists]] and contemporary scholars, like Bede, use "Picts" to describe the peoples under the [[Fortriu#Verturian hegemony|Verturian hegemony]]. This encompassed most of Scotland north of the Forth-Clyde isthmus and to the exclusion of territory occupied by [[Dál Riata]] in the west. To the south lay the Brittonic [[kingdom of Strathclyde]], with Lothian occupied by Northumbrian Angles. The use of "Picts" as a descriptive term continued to the formation of the [[House of Alpin|Alpínid dynasty]] in the ninth century, and the merging of the Pictish Kingdom with that of Dál Riata.