Until recently, the history of the Picts had seemed unrecoverable. Not only did they completely disappear as a people, but their art was ambiguous, their succession system singular, their isolation ubiquitous, and they failed to leave behind texts. They were deemed a people without history and therefore without importance. With new evidence and methodologies to re-examine old sources, many of these assumptions are being overturned. This research is sculpting a new image of the historical Picts as a vigorous and culturally innovative nation whose political trajectory was in lock-step with the rest of the Latin west.

Perhaps the biggest challenge is the persistent perception that the Picts were isolated. Certainly Adomnán and Bede's emphasis on their remoteness had a discouraging effect on interpretations of Pictish history and archaeology. The evidence, however, presents a different picture. Critical analysis of our historical sources reveals the extent to which the Picts actively shaped and intervened in northern political developments. Similarly we have archaeological evidence of the Picts’ participation in the dynamic social changes that swept the post-Roman west: the uptake of new monumental funerary rites in the fifth century; new agricultural technology; Christian religious conversion; the expansion of saints’ cults, and the later reform movements. The religious images employed on Pictish sculpture also demonstrate their engagement with eastern Christian theology, while the Picts’ origin myth reveals their scholastic knowledge of Latin texts. Furthermore, increasing evidence of trade can no longer be dismissed as the occasional diplomatic gift; nor can we ignore their maritime capabilities. A perceptual shift which considers the Picts, even in Orkney, as being connected into a mobilized western culture is resulting in a new understanding of the processes that drive social construction. The Picts’ conceptualization of identity is a case in point; revealing the flexibility of this political construct to externalize the exigencies of shifting alliances and invasion.

The uniqueness of the corpus of Pictish symbols is now interpreted as the valorizing of difference and an expression of participation in a political “Pictish” identity. By the eighth century, they were integrated into the design schema on crossslabs which held their own exegetical messages to the devout. Recent analysis of their imagery reveals the liturgical interests of Picts and something of the stories they told themselves.