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Articles

The Reinterpretation of the Pictish Symbols

Pages 29-65 | Published online: 18 Jul 2013
 

Abstract

The ‘meaning’ of Pictish symbols on stones exists at a number of levels. This paper deals first with the social context for the symbol stones. It is argued that they are memorial stones; by logical extension, the symbols must refer to the deceased Pict. The paper then deals with the ‘semantic’ meaning of the symbols. Thomas's interpretation is discounted because the proposed pseudo-syntactical or grammatical rules for reading symbolic messages are internally inconsistent and, no matter what ranks, professions, or tribal affiliations be substituted, the numerical distribution of the individual designs would produce an impossibly large number of ‘kings’ or ‘poets’ or ‘Pictish beast people’ in relation to other ranks or peoples. The division between commemorated and erector of the stone is likewise argued to be inconsitent and untenable.

It is finally suggested that the symbols conveyed the name of the deceased, but not by the equation one symbol = one name; the formula ‘X son of Y’ is argued to give an implausibly large number of Picts with the same name. Instead, individual symbols are taken to be themes from which names were built. The frequency of paired symbols is compared to the construction of Anglo-Saxon and Irish personal names which were regularly constructed from the pairing of thematic elements. This theory is argued to explain the numerical frequency of the paired combinations better than lineage marriage alliances or statuses and tribal affiliations, and explains the lack of distinct regional distributional concentration of any individual symbols.

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