Steps Toward Answering 'The Problem Of The Picts'
"Modern interest in the ancient Pictish peoples of Scotland was both reflected and stimulated by the publication in 1955 of a book called The Problem of the Picts . Unfortunately this choice of title has led to a situation where the Picts have continued to be perceived as essentially enigmatic, even unknowable ... Because we have no written records from the Picts themselves, they can seem almost historically invisible. Scotland as a whole has virtually no surviving documents from the First Millennium ... " (pp. 21,17, A New History of the Picts ) Two publications have caused some of this historical mist to clear. Both articles extend the reality of Pictland back to the era of Roman Britain. "The development of the Pictish symbol system: inscribing identity beyond the edge of Empire" (G Noble and others, 2018, Antiquity , 92.365, 1329-1348), uses radiocarbon dating of archaeological sites to establish a cultural continuum of stone art. " Picti : from Roman na