Image of Tarbat Sculpture.Bulletin 1, 1995

Archaeological Contribution to the Management Programme:
The Tarbat Discovery Centre and its Display

 

Notes towards an archaeological specification for the proposed exhibition itinerary and themes

Figure 20: Design for Display by Hal Higgins

Figure 20: Design for Display by Hal Higgins
(Higgins, Gardner)

Summary

On entry: Left: Project Manager's console; Right: under-tens' play pen; Ahead: The DISCOVERY MAP. Specification of the Discovery Map: A large, tilted plaque, with indicator buttons (church, burial ground, cropmark, excavation sectors 1-4, beach, inscribed stone, Viking hoard). Area to be covered: Portmahomack from sea to sea looking south. The viewer is flying over the Dornoch Firth. Front foreground, beach, with model boats; top of model cliffs of Rockfield, with seascape on painting beyond. Centre of model: (1) Tarbat Old Church, (2) its graveyard, (3) Cropmark, showing position of ancient settlement, (4) Area of dig in sectors [life of dig 5 years] then replaced by reconstructed village.

On E wall of Project Manager's console: display guide for teachers et al. Then:

THEME 1: Kingdoms of the North

Area:

Time Zone:

The Players:

The Theme:

The Nerve Centres:

Also Tarbat - and mark the 'Firthlands' area to be highlighted in THEME 2.

The thoroughfares between them: sea-travel: (1) Brendan voyage (2) voyage based on Kvalsund ship; with quotes on navigation, (3) the beachmarket a Dark Age speciality. Add Quentovic, Gudme, Ipswich to map. Also admiralty wind-roses showing predominant winds in 'home-blowing system' which favours Scandinavia. Also model boats drawn up on Discovery Map. Also seagulls etc mewing.

THEME 2: Exploring the Firthlands

Area:

The Players:

The Clues:

  1. Place-names: Norse, Gaelic, Pictish
  2. Sculpture: Class I and Class II symbol stones, explanation, map, vignettes; a replica showing patterns and methods
  3. Aerial photography: examples of burial mounds [eg Garbeg], settlements, monasteries. [Use S porch as diorama of AP work; the visitor is looking through a plane window]

The Nerve Centres:

What was a Dark Age 'monastic site'?

  1. Timeline: known dates of missions
  2. Columba's 6th century journey up the Great Glen, his sighting of the Loch Ness monster and meeting with Brude, pagan King of the Northern Picts;
  3. What do we know? Art and archaeology at Iona, Whithorn, Jarrow, Lindisfarne [Lindisfarne gospels here]
  4. Monastic possibles in the Firthlands with their 'saints': Rosemarkie [=Groam House], Nigg, Tarbat.

THEME 3: DISCOVERY AT TARBAT

How the Tarbat site was discovered:

AP showing cropmark, trench cut through it giving C14 dates, stone fragments from churchyard with gravediggers; position of discovery of Tarbat inscription in Manse wall; position of discovery of Viking hoard.

Where the stones come from:

"The fragments of stone dug up by gravediggers and disturbed by the construction of the medieval and later buildings come from an earlier burial ground of the Pictish monastery, 6 feet under where you are standing ----- look down this hole [=crypt] if you want to see what it looked like..... " [Full sized replicas, based on Tarbat patterns, with standing monkish figure based on the Monk stone].

How we decided what to do:

Evaluation: geophysical mapping

What we decided to do:

the excavation programme, the reconnaissance programme in the Firthlands; the programme for experimental reconstruction.

What we have found so far:

A giant Bulletin Board, showing the

  1. area to be excavated, gradually being filled in as it is dug and
  2. the features, buildings discovered with explanations [mainly new photographs and drawings refreshed every year for first five years from dig and thereafter from reconstruction programme]

Interpretation:

[NB likely to change; uncertainty and question marks should be built in to maintain the 'quest' momentum]. The present story line is

  1. Pagan Pictish stronghold 200-700
  2. Pictish-Irish monastery (with later Northumbrian links) founded by St Cholmag
  3. Viking takeover

Materials available:

  1. Stone/clay objects - hones, querns, moulds
  2. Metal objects - pins, brooches, knives
  3. Animal bone
  4. Human bone
  5. Stone carvings

Themes: [eg]

  1. Food - quern grinding, bones butchered, pots cooking
  2. Metal working: lost wax; moulds, types
  3. Social organisation - animal bone analysis
  4. Health - human bone pathology

Presentation:

THEME 4: St Cholmag's Church and its People

Return on Gallery, via Interaction

Then into shop and off to the dig ........


 

Social and Economic Dividends from the Archaeological Excavation

The Excavation programme at Tarbat is primarily intended to increase knowledge of the human past. Although such knowledge is often thought to benefit mainly a limited group of specialists, this particular project is intended to address a large and important sector of the public. The principal discoveries made so far concern the Dark Ages, in which Picts, Scots and Scandinavians were involved in forming the kingdoms and states we still have. The research is therefore anticipated to have widespread contemporary relevance.

The objective is to use the Tarbat Archaeological Research Programme to deliver social and economic benefits to the area of NE Scotland.

The public constituency to be served can be divided as follows:

The methods by which the University expects to reach this constituency can be divided as follows:

The projects currently planned to deliver the objectives are:

Economic benefits

It is intended that the long-term result of the archaeological excavation will be:


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Last updated 10 October, 2003.
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