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Royal Pedigrees of the Insular Dark Ages: A Progress Report
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 May 2014
Extract
The fall of the Roman empire and the rise of its successor states in continental Europe is reasonably well-documented and royal pedigrees are both brief and among the least of our sources of information. In the islands Roman administration ceased in Lowland Britain in 410, and had never obtained in northern Highland Britain or in Ireland, so that continuing and successor states existed side by side. It is likely that their secular influences on one another are masked by the common process of the conversion to Christianity in the fifth, sixth, and seventh centuries; certainly the “waves of saints” are prominent both in accounts of the period and in present notions about it. This is no doubt one reason why the various bodies of royal pedigrees have remained until recently (or still) only partially published and little studied.
The matrilinear Picts, however, became a subject for historical and anthropological consultation a century ago. Unfortunately, as we shall see, this conversation has not continued, and it is only of recent years that historians of the Insular Dark Ages have once more become aware of the possibilities of learning (both positively and negatively) from the insights and procedures developed by anthropology. The present moment, when both disciplines are grappling with the problem of what constitutes historical evidence for pre-archival periods, may be a propitious time for recommencing joint consideration of our common interests.
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References
NOTES
1. Gilla in Chomded's text was first remarked on by MacNeill, Eóin, “Early Irish Population Groups: Their Nomenclature, Classification, and Chronology,” Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, 29C(1911), 93.Google Scholar
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30. This is a summary of the arguments in my “Matriliny by Treaty: the Pictish Foundation-Legend” in Ireland in Early Mediaeval Europe: Studies in Memory of Kathleen Hughes, ed. R. McKitterick et al, forthcoming, and “Eanfrith's Pictish Son,” Northern History, 14(1978), 47–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For other views see, among others, Jackson, A., “Pictish Social Structure and Symbol Stones,” Scottish Studies, 15(1971), 121–40Google Scholar (which proposes an avunculocal matriliny throughout the population on the Trobriand model); Anderson, Kings and Kingship (a single royal matriline, not necessarily extended to the rest of the population); Boyle, A., “Matrilineal Succession in the Pictish Monarchy,” Scottish Historical Review, 56(1977), 1–10 (accepts Anderson's view)Google Scholar; Kirby, D.P., “…per universas Pictorum provincias” in Famulus Christi, ed. Bonner, G. (London, 1976), 286–324Google Scholar (posits a cousinhood matriliny and other Hibernicizing features of the social structure).
31. For details see my “Disputed Horizon.”