66 SCIENTIFIC SURVEY OF ABERDEEN AND DISTRICT 
PICTISH SYMBOLISM AND THE SCULPTURED STONES OF 
NORTH-EAST SCOTLAND. 
BY 
W. Dovuctas Simpson, M.A., D.Litt. 
UNDOUBTEDLY the most distinctive subject of archzeological study that 
the North-east of Scotland offers is its mysterious Pictish symbolism. 
In not a few respects the Picts were a remarkable race: most of all in 
the unique development of symbolic art which characterised their sculp- 
tured monuments during the period of the Celtic church. Under a set 
of influences and with an evolutionary origin alike wholly unknown to 
us, there was then developed among the Picts of the North-east a highly 
elaborated, rigidly conventional and extremely artistic code of symbolism, 
to the meaning of which no key has yet been discovered. ‘This symbolism 
is marked by two significant characteristics. Firstly, save for a few 
stray ‘ outliers,’ it is entirely confined to the districts known to have been 
inhabited by the Picts; and within these limits it is overwhelmingly a 
product of the eastern lowlands. Secondly, the forms of the symbols 
wherever they are found, from the Shetlands to Galloway, and from 
Aberdeenshire to the Outer Isles, are so highly standardised that it is 
clear we have to deal with a fully articulated, well-understood and wide- 
spread system of ideographic art, the invention of which must be accounted 
an astonishing manifestation of the Pictish genius. 
Comparative study of these monuments shows that they fall into three 
classes, and it has been found possible approximately to delimit the 
chronological horizon of each class. 
Class I (before a.D. 800): Unshapen and undressed monoliths with 
incised symbols only. Of these, fifty-four examples are known in the 
district between the Dee and the Spey—well-nigh half the total number 
of this class recorded in Scotland. 
Class II (about a.D. 800-1000): Slabs roughly tooled and shaped, 
bearing in addition to the symbols a cross of Celtic pattern, and often 
elaborate figure groups ; the sculpture now being in relief, and the symbols 
and cross alike enriched with more or less complex ornamentation in the 
school of Celtic art. This class is represented in our district by seven 
examples, two of which have ogam inscriptions. 
Class III (from about A.D. 1000 to the extinction of native Celtic art 
by the Anglo-Norman infiltration in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries) : 
Slabs in which the symbols have now disappeared, so that there remains 
only the Celtic cross, carved in relief and often sumptuously decorated. 
At least sixteen examples occur in our district. It is not always possible 
to say whether certain plain crosses belong to the Celtic period or later. 
Whether the symbols were in their origin pagan or Christian is dis- 
puted. All that can be said meantime is that the associations of the — 
symbols, where determinable, are always Christian. Stones of Class I | 
occur again and again at known early Celtic church sites; and even 
