 My talk is going to focus on the elements the project is looking at at central places in Scotland and Ireland with particular focus on Ireland. And so our project is all about comparative context particularly between the major case studies in Ireland and Scotland. And then the obvious problem in that sense is that you know in Ireland there's an incredibly well preserved settlement record from this time period. It's something like 47 thousand ring forts known and hundreds of those excavate. And if we compare that to Scotland where the number of other medieval settlements, picture settlements in particular is can be numbered in the dozens if you're generous. And in terms of elite settlements, we know from the historical records, a few historical records we have from this time period that hill forts and fortified settlements are key centres of power. But if we look at that list of hill forts for example at Scotland, then if you search on medieval dates, then you get 27 sites with medieval dates from the whole of Scotland. And if you look at the certainty of dating here, you only have four with a high degree of certainty of dating. So you know that comparative context is quite difficult when your record is like that. So this is where you get if you look at high degree of certainty of dating a very few sites from this time period. And that's one of the traditional problems of looking at the pics really is where are the sites, where are the settlements and the like. One thing that Pickland does share with areas of Ireland is that these fortified settlements in their medieval period when they appear is a second generation of these enclosures. So there's quite a big gap generally between the Iron Age construction of hill forts and the uptake of this tradition once again in the fifth and sixth centuries in particular when these enclosures become more common across the landscape again. So really part of our project and part of our previous project on the pics project has been trying to increase the data set of sites from this time period by undertaking lots of keyhole excavations across northeast Scotland in the territory of the pics in the main. And undertaking dozens of excavations, survey work, etc. trying to increase that data set. I think we've been successful in some cases, yes, but we've also been very successful at finding sites between 400 and 200 BC. So perhaps we should rename our project 400 to 200 Cal BC project because that's when the majority of these defended enclosures date to in Scotland, but we have increased the data set a little bit. But what really is the conclusion of that is that, you know, enclosure is quite rare in this time period. It's not something that you find widely dispersed across the landscape. Now in 400 to 200 BC in the Iron Age, it seems that everyone had a hill forked or they were very common across the landscape. And what we're really also lacking is the kind of intermediate sites as well. So unlike in Ireland where you have ring forts and you have more complex ring forts and you also have promontory forts and the like in some cases. There's not really that tradition of enclosed settlements found widely across the landscape. And again, I think, you know, the recent work looking at these sites has really supported that again enclosure is something that's rare. And when we do find it, it seems that we're really dealing with the elite within society. So what we're really looking at when we look at enclosed settlements in the early medieval period in Scotland is a character of enclosure that's quite different to what came before. These sites were rare. And although we can't compare the numbers to Ireland, what is telling is that comparison in terms of this tradition was much more exclusive and rare in this in this context. And that's quite interesting because if you also look at the historical record, and I think Nick will talk more about this, is that the historical records for Scotland also focus more on the occurrence of these fortified settlements. And that's a really interesting element of the historical record. And then in terms of the character of these enclosures, again, what we're looking at in terms of comparing this to what came before the Iron Age tradition in Scotland is generally a much smaller class of fortified settlement and enclosure. So if we compare it to some of the larger Iron Age examples, here we've got one of our beloved sites from the project at Riney, a high-status settlement that looks like from the 15th and 6th centuries on the left compared to the Iron Age enclosure. We're dealing again with something that's very different. It's a different scale of social organisation perhaps that's leading to the construction of these. And again, perhaps the focus is more on a more exclusive element of society, you know, a family, an immediate lineage rather than perhaps the wider Canaan tribal networks that led to some of these Iron Age enclosures. And that's the case even when we look at the more developed nuclear forts, so-called nuclear forts from early medieval Scotland, places like Dynad, which are seen as the capitals in the traditional sense of these polities. And again, you can see how small these were compared to much earlier traditions. So how do we make sense of that? Well, I think one interesting element, again, if you look at the comparative context, is that in Pickland there was from quite an early date an over-king ship that extended over quite a large territory. Again, this is something that Nick will, I think, fill up in more detail. And if you compare that to Ireland, where you have these multiple, you know, hundreds of Petite kingdoms extending across the landscape, then you've got something quite different going on in Pickland perhaps. And therefore that perhaps sets a new light on these defended settlements being again key to a different type of social structure and a more extensive notion of kingship and keenly control perhaps in Pickland. And that kind of extensive Pictish kingdom is obviously something that's puzzled various scholars in the past. So this is Chris Wickham, quite a famous historian, talking about the Picts here in 2009. First of all, saying how amazingly obscure the Picts are even today by British standards. And then talking about one of the 8th century kings and how he extended his polity over quite an extensive area. And this is how he sums this up. How the Picts managed this with no visible infrastructure and one of the most unpromising terrains in Europe, so rude, remains a mystery, but they at least show it as possible. So again, you know, how did that extensive polity really emerge in this unpromising terrain of northeast Scotland? So looking at these these sites has been a big focus of the project. And we began to put together all the evidence we have. And so this is a map of what we might term the elite sites in in Pickland and Dalreda on the bottom left here in pink. And you can again see we're dealing with quite small numbers really, less than 30. And this is the map based on historical sources, archaeology and place names. If we look at historical sources alone, then you get even smaller data sets. You're talking about, you know, a dozen sites or so. And when you begin to map on when these sites are first mentioned in historical sources, again, you see how partial our data is really. So you've got sites that are referred to in the 7th century and not again until much later or not at all in some cases. And then you got a whole group of sites mentioned in the 9th and 10th century in central Scotland, which is always seen as the kind of cradle of the later kingdom of Scotland. But again, you can see how late these references are really. So again, is it really giving us the full picture of where these these major power centers were in the early medieval period? And then just on a basic level, you know, what are these sites doing? What are they in the landscape? From the historical records, you get a rough sense that these places were settlements of some kind. They were involved in warfare for sure. And at times they were clearly quite extensive settlements, you know, Dunbarton, for example, British site. Vikings plundering in this in 870 and taking away 200 ships of plunder and slaves. So clearly they were quite extensive settlements. But in terms of our archaeological record, we have quite poor understanding of these sites. They also clearly had other roles within society as places of inauguration, for example, and ceremony in ritual. So this is the famous footprint stone from Dinad, interpreted as a place of inauguration of the kings of Daraera. And then in terms of, you know, our understanding these sites, archaeological investigation of them has been very, very slight. So famous program of Leslie Alcock in the 1970s, very much kind of keyhole trenches getting some basic dating evidence for these. And this picture here is one of probably four or five structure or houses from one of these sites within Pickland. So it's, you know, a real embarrassment of riches in terms of what we can draw to tackle these questions. So really just to kind of end the talk, just to give you a kind of brief highlights of some of the results of our project over the last four or five years. And beginning to get, I think, more of a sense of how these centres develop through time, their origins, and some of their dimensions, you know, as settlements, as places of ritual and ceremony, and really as clearly quite central nodes within early medieval society. So some of the earliest sites seem to emerge in the late Roman period. Exactly in the same time period, the picks are first introduced in historical sources in late Roman sources. And so this site here of Danicare in Aberdeenshire in North East Scotland is a really intriguing site. It's got early examples or what would traditionally be seen as early examples of pictures stones from this site. And in terms of the settlement and site, we also have structures that don't really resolve themselves as the classic iron age roundhouses. They look like they're moving towards oval or rectangular buildings. So we seem to have a change of architecture in that late Roman period. And that's really the time period when the settlement really disappears from the archaeological record to a large extent. And what we also have from the site, it's a very eroded promontory fork by the looks of it, is some really interesting evidence for contacts with the Roman world, including bits of glass, bits of pottery, very rare in this part of Scotland, and some very unusual materials, things like a sherd from a offline cup, a very beautifully decorated blue glass painted cup. So very unusual Roman material finding its way to this site in the late Roman period. So this is what it would look like, obviously. Here's one we made earlier. And these are the dates, 200 to 400 AD. So again, very unusual site dating to that time period in Scotland in terms of an enclosed settlement. So it looks like it's emerging in this late Roman period. And then the big site we've been working on for the last eight, nine years is Reiny in North East Scotland again. And this dates to the late 4th century through to the 6th centuries. And what we see here, I think, is a much more obvious materialisation of rulership at this enclosed settlement. So it's, again, a landscape that's dotted with power stone monuments, including one of the warrior figures that Mark showed as a parallel for the Tulloch Walker. And that comes from a cemetery associated with the settlement at Reiny. And so I think you see the more obvious materialisation of elements of kingship. So for example, the famous stone from this site is the Reiny man, kindness axe. It's very similar to the axe you find in the Sutton Who ship burial. It's been argued to be associated with poleaxing cattle and cattle sacrifice in this time period. So the stones are really, I think, a very important clue as to how rulership is being depicted and denoted in this time period. And the fact that, you know, it's warrior ideologies beginning to be weaved into how these sites operate in the landscape. And then here you can see the dates, as say, kind of late 4th century through to the middle of the 6th century. And so beginning to, again, pin down the chronology of these sites in a much more definite manner. And then we've also been looking at these more developed hill forps that you get in the early medieval period as well. So-called nuclear forps with kind of hierarchical organisation and beginning to get a clearer chronology for these sites. So these seem to emerge in the late 6th century, early 7th century, and go through to perhaps 9th century, perhaps beyond. And we can see that these were clearly important regional centres. So this is one we've been working on recently in Middletap. Its place name is likely to mean Hill of the Kay. And the Kay is one of the seven sons of Cruthney who's mentioned in the Pictish Kingless. So it's clearly a regional centre, I think, in this part of the world. And excavation is just this year. So evidence for high-states metalworking, big animal bone assemblages that Ed's going to talk more about. And kind of more and more elaborate architecture to these sites. So this is a very elaborate well built into the lower rampart of the fort and based around this really impressive granite tour. And this again dates, some of the initial dates we've got, 7th, 8th century in date. And then what's really obvious about these kind of regional centres is just how this shared ideology of space is found quite widely. So Middletap and Denad in Dalreira, very, very similar organisations of space and scale. And you find that elsewhere as well. A couple of minutes. And then one other interesting element of our redating programme has been showing actually, in some cases, some of these sites have very long lived histories, but others seemingly have quite a short lifespan. So this is a site dug in the 50s and 60s, completely destroyed by quarrying now. But we had the animal bone assemblage and we've just commissioned a series of dates on the sites. And this is what we go back. And these are the dates from all the ramparts we could date and all the different phases of settlement within. And the dates are almost identical. It looks like this site had a very short lifespan. So some of these sites look like they're emerging. Huge investments in constructing ramparts and settlement. But actually some of them not enduring through time. So, you know, kind of failed elite centres in this time period. And then finally, just to end, this is our most recent work as part of the Comparative Kingship project. Looking at the site called Burghead, which is a big prom to fort in the Murray Firth region. Again, you can see some of the fantastic sculpture. You get these sites, bulls here, pretty obvious symbolism here. And also early Christian sculpture. So these sites going on into the second half of the first millennium AD. And again, the architecture getting more and more elaborate. And the size of these increasing in scale as well. This is almost five hectares, this site. And in terms of, you know, the embarrassment of riches, we kind of got the opposite here. Wherever we put trench in this site, we're finding building plans, structures, sunken buildings, buildings being constructed from the 7th century through to the 10th century. And again, getting a very good chronology for that. So really just to conclude, I think, you know, although we're not always comparing likely like in terms of number of sites and like between Ireland and Scotland, sometimes that's quite telling in its own right. And in this case, I think it really shows that something like in close settlement was much more exclusive and a rarer phenomena in Scotland. And that's perhaps how this more extensive over kingship of Pikmin was enacted. And these central places were very key in terms of that element. And some of these forks clearly remained in use right up till the 9th, 10th centuries AD. But places like Burkhead look quite destroyed in that late 1st millennium AD and that may well have led to big changes like the ending of the picturesque kingdoms in that 10th century context. Okay, so thank you very much.