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Starts: 19:30
Ends: 21:00
Session with 3 online talks organised by Highland Council Historic Environment Team: 1) ‘Six heads are better than one?' 2) Visiting the ancient dead. Pictish interventions at a Bronze Age grave at Golspie, Highland 3) 'Mr and Mrs Culduthel': two rather interesting individuals from c 2200 BC
Three online talks showcasing recent work on grave finds in the Highlands, undertaken as part of the Boundaries Objects Project and showcased on Canmore in Context. Bookings via Eventbrite
1. Six heads are better than one?
Talk by Cecily Spall, FAS Archaology, on an unusual medieval burial excavated at St Colman’s Church, Tarbat, Portmahomack
2. Visiting the ancient dead. Pictish interventions at a Bronze Age grave at Golspie, Highland
Talk by Dr Matt Knight and Dr Adrián Maldonado, National Museums Scotland
3. ‘Mr and Mrs Culduthel’: two rather interesting individuals from c 2200 BC
Talk by Dr Alison Sheridan, formerly Principal Curator of Early Prehistory at National Museums Scotland.
About the Speakers:
Matthew Knight is a Senior Curator of Prehistory at National Museums Scotland, responsible for the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age collections. He can frequently be found obsessing over bits of broken bronzes whilst at other times he is fascinated by older objects in later contexts and the interactions of past populations with their own past. These interests have culminated in two recent books, the first an edited volume: Objects of the Past in the Past (2019, Archaeopress); and the second a monograph: Fragments of the Bronze Age (2022, Oxbow Books).
Adrián Maldonado is the Galloway Hoard Researcher at National Museums Scotland and author of the recent book Crucible of Nations: Scotland from Viking Age to Medieval Kingdom (National Museum of Scotland, 2021). He obtained a PhD from the University of Glasgow in 2011 on burial and Christianity in early medieval Scotland, and previously lectured in archaeology at the universities of Glasgow and Chester before joining the NMS as Glenmorangie Research Fellow (2018-2021).
Cecily Spall is a director of FAS Heritage and the Tarbat Discovery Programme. She co-authored the research monograph on research excavations around St Colman’s Church – ‘Portmahomack on Tarbatness’ – published in 2016 by the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland and now freely available online: Portmahomack on Tarbat Ness: Changing Ideologies in North-East Scotland, Sixth to Sixteenth Century AD | Open Access E-Books (socantscot.org) .
Dr Alison Sheridan FBA FRSE FSA FSAScot AcIFA Corr FDAI is a retired Principal Curator of Early
Prehistory (where she was part of the curatorial team that created the Early People gallery in the
National Museum of Scotland) and now Research Associate with National Museums Scotland,
Edinburgh. She has specialised in the Neolithic, Chalcolithic and Bronze Age of Britain and Ireland
and has written and lectured extensively about the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition and about 4 th to
2nd millennium BC material culture. You may have seen her on Time Team, Meet the Ancestors and
Digging for Britain…and on Harry Hill’s TV Burp, as TV Expert of the Week! She was President of the
Prehistoric Society 2010–2014 and is currently a Vice-President of Archaeology Scotland and a
member of the Board of Trustees of Urras nan Tursachan, the Calanais Stones Trust. In 2018 she
was awarded the British Academy’s Grahame Clark medal for prehistoric research; in 2019, the
Prehistoric Society’s EUROPA prize; and in 2020, she was voted Current Archaeology’s Archaeologist
of the Year. In 2019 she was elected a Fellow of the British Academy, and in 2020, a Fellow of the
Royal Society of Edinburgh. She delivered the 2020 series of Society of Antiquaries of Scotland Rhind
lectures on Neolithic Scotland (https://www.socantscot.org/event/rhind-lectures-2020/). In 2018–19
she was Principal Investigator on an AHRC-funded Network Project looking at gold in Britain’s
auriferous regions, 2450–800 BC, and has been a member of several national and international
projects including the Beaker People Project and Projet JADE.
