Bulletin
4, 1998
Comments on the Tarbat Story So Far
Martin Carver
The prehistoric phases at Tarbat continue to remain elusive. The inhabitants in Sector 1 cultivated with ards and erected dwellings, and perhaps mortuary structures, of turf and timber, the traces of which have been seen on Int 25. No pottery has been found up to now. Such features have been defined outside the large D-shaped enclosure which otherwise defines the Tarbat site,and is still assumed to date to the late Iron Age or early Pictish period (2-6th century AD) (Harden in Bull. 1 1995, 19). No features inside it have yet been dated although a possible souterrain and a bag-shaped building may prove to be contemporary with the enclosure. These phases will be further studied in the excavation and mapping of sector 1 which is to continue in 1999, and is likely to include the south-east corner (and possible entrance)of the enclosure.
The likelihood of a principal occupation in the late Pictish period (7-8th century) has increased, with the sighting in the Glebe Field site of buried stone structures and the recovery of a fragment of glass and an eighth-century coin. Some of the pieces of carved stone from the same site may also date to a period before the 9th century.
Most of the early medieval sculpture at Tarbat is likely to date to the 8th or 9th century, and the assemblage is currently dominated by material (pins, combs, pottery) dated to the 9-11th century. The objects concerned have their best parallels with others assigned to Norse or Hiberno-Norse settlements or phases in the northern and western seaboard of Scotland or in Ireland. Although evidence for occupation is plentiful, the stone foundations and drains and the hints of timber posts which have been defined here and there amongst the later debris have yet to resolve themselves into satisfactory buildings. The principal task for 1999 will be to define and distinguish buildings of the late Pictish (7-8th century) and the succeeding Norse (9-11th century) period.
The medieval phase has, in contrast, gradually reduced its presence. No certain buildings have been defined and the activities are agricultural and light industrial. Stock were led down through a revetment wall into the damp meadow, which perhaps featured a water-hole. Above the revetment wall, hearths were used for forging iron and working copper-alloys. A small assemblage of medieval pottery has been recovered of similar date to that from the church(12-15th century). The site was used to dump middens of shells, and diggings cut through the earlier Norse and Pictish levels, scattering finds onto the water meadow beyond the revetment wall.
The discovery of the two imports of the pre-Viking period (the glass and the coin) has great significance for the study of early nations in the North Sea world. By the 8th century, if not before, the people living at Portmahomack appear to have occupied a key location in an emerging kingdom which forms the main object of our inquiry. When was this kingdom formed and what was its economic structure? When and why did it convert to Christianity? And to Christianity of what type? (Carver 1998). Knowing that early contact was probable between northern Pictland and travellers from the Rhineland and even Scandinavia, as well as Anglo-Saxon England and Ireland, allows us to see the northern Picts as conscious of the political movements and alignments of the day, making decisions about their own future with the appropriate factors in mind. It remains to discover which those decisions were and what kind of society they created.
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