Where are all the dead Picts?

The Picts usually leave our guests with more questions than answers. We admire their carved stones, puzzle over their symbols and discuss what happens to their identity. Then comes a rather practical question. Where are they all buried? At university, I was fortunate to be taught by the UHI archaeologist Martin Carruthers, who suggests an intriguing possibility. Some people, perhaps those lower down the social order, may be committed to the sea. In that interpretation, the shore marks a boundary between the world of the living and another world beyond it. A funeral need not leave a grave for us to find.

At Ackergill, on Sinclair Bay in Caithness, other dead receive a very different farewell. Excavations reveal bodies laid in long stone-lined graves beneath low monuments, some square or rectangular, others circular. White quartzite pebbles cover parts of several structures. That detail catches my attention. These are carefully arranged places on the coast, with surfaces we can imagine catching the light. The dead are given a recognisable presence in the landscape. I find myself wondering who returns to them, what they remember, and whether the graves matter to more than their grief.

For a powerful family, an ancestor can remain useful long after death. If your claim to land or leadership depends on those who come before you, their burial place may help make that claim visible. You have somewhere to point to, somewhere your family’s history takes physical form. An account written in the seventh century describes an elderly Pictish leader buried beneath a cairn beside the sea, a monument said to remain visible when the author writes decades later. We cannot give everyone at Ackergill a title, but we can consider why keeping certain ancestors present might matter to their descendants.

Ackergill requires more imagination today. Excavation, erosion and later disturbance have changed the site, but photographs, drawings and published descriptions preserve much of what was found. They allow us to picture the graves beside the water, even when their original appearance is difficult to recognise. When we explore this coast, I want to bring those people back into the landscape. Some of the missing dead may leave no lasting monument, while others may be remembered precisely because their descendants need them to remain.

To learn more, book one of our North Coast Explorer private tours.