Medieval Scotland: A Future for its Past

Abstract

The main recommendations of the panel report can be summarised under five key headings. Underpinning all five areas is the recognition that human narratives remain crucial for ensuring the widest access to our shared past. There is no wish to see political and economic narratives abandoned but the need is recognised for there to be an expansion to more social narratives to fully explore the potential of the diverse evidence base. The questions that can be asked are here framed in a national context but they need to be supported and improved a) by the development of regional research frameworks, and b) by an enhanced study of Scotland’s international context through time. 1. From North Britain to the Idea of Scotland: Understanding why, where and how ‘Scotland’ emerges provides a focal point of research. Investigating state formation requires work from Medieval Scotland: a future for its past ii a variety of sources, exploring the relationships between centres of consumption - royal, ecclesiastical and urban - and their hinterlands. Working from site-specific work to regional analysis, researchers can explore how what would become ‘Scotland’ came to be, and whence sprang its inspiration. 2. Lifestyles and Living Spaces: Holistic approaches to exploring medieval settlement should be promoted, combining landscape studies with artefactual, environmental, and documentary work. Understanding the role of individual sites within wider local, regional and national settlement systems should be promoted, and chronological frameworks developed to chart the changing nature of Medieval settlement. 3. Mentalities: The holistic understanding of medieval belief (particularly, but not exclusively, in its early medieval or early historic phase) needs to broaden its contextual understanding with reference to prehistoric or inherited belief systems and frames of reference. Collaborative approaches should draw on international parallels and analogues in pursuit of defining and contrasting local or regional belief systems through integrated studies of portable material culture, monumentality and landscape. 4. Empowerment: Revisiting museum collections and renewing the study of newly retrieved artefacts is vital to a broader understanding of the dynamics of writing within society. Text needs to be seen less as a metaphor and more as a technological and social innovation in material culture which will help the understanding of it as an experienced, imaginatively rich reality of life. In archaeological terms, the study of the relatively neglected cultural areas of sensory perception, memory, learning and play needs to be promoted to enrich the understanding of past social behaviours. 5. Parameters: Multi-disciplinary, collaborative, and cross-sector approaches should be encouraged in order to release the research potential of all sectors of archaeology. Creative solutions should be sought to the challenges of transmitting the importance of archaeological work and conserving the resource for current and future research.