Kickoff! Field Season 2024

As of May 6th, I have begun the final and most substantial phase of my dissertation field research. If you are just now joining me, this research project (The Semiotics of Landscape and Identity in Pictland Project, or SLIPP) is my attempt at investigating how the figure of the Picts emerged in northern British late antiquity and how it continued (and continues) to be recast and redefined through practices of placemaking and engagement with the material remains of the past. 

View of the Iron Age hillfort at Tap o'  Noth, whose outer rampart encloses hundreds of Pictish-period hut platforms. This is the site that inspired this research project. 

The project is framed by three methodological approaches to three historical moments--as a friend recently put it, a "Pictish Triptych." Archaeological methods will allow me to explore how people in the Pictish past (ca. 300-900 CE) drew on the material remains of their past to formulate their own identity and that of their neighbors. Archival research gives me a glimpse into the 18th, 19th, and 20th century amateur and professional scholarly projects that defined Pictishness in relation to figures of the nation, people, and modern world. Ethnographic work will provide me the opportunity to trace the re-making of Pictishness today at sites of material heritage. These three windows into the process of (re)making Pictishness, held together on one project, destabilize the notion that past identities were only ideas in the minds of people long dead. Past identities, in fact, continue to be remade through our scholarly practices, popular imaginations, and heritage frameworks. The Picts are now past-tense, but Pictishness is still alive--with material consequences for the present. 

The anthropological work required for this project is multi-sited and multifocal; I have much in store for the upcoming season. Over the next six months, I will do my best to document my work here, as well as on Instagram and Twitter. I will update this project blog every other Wednesday, alternating with updates to my other blog, Chronotopography, which deals in broader, non-project-specific thoughts on placemaking. Please follow along!

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