A student has discovered what is thought may be a rare carving of a Pict’s face while volunteering on a dig.
Jodie Allan was digging at East Lomond hill fort in Fife, Scotland, when she found what she initially thought was a piece of slag while sieving soil excavated from an early medieval building there.
However on closer inspection, it could be seen that the object was a carving with two eyes and a nose, leading experts to suggest it may depict a human face.
The hill fort and surrounding settlement are located in what is thought to have been the southernmost part of the Pictish kingdom, which ruled a large part of what became Scotland.
Professor Gordon Noble, of the University of Aberdeen, and Joe Fitzpatrick of the Falkland Stewardship Trust have been co-leading excavation work at the site for the past four years.
Ms Allan, a third-year archaeology student at the University of Aberdeen, said she initially did not think much of it when she spotted an object of around 10-12cm in her sieve.
She said: “I had no idea I was holding anything significant.
“But I took a closer look because of its size and because the colour – a sort of oxidised coppery green – caught my eye.
“I showed it to Professor Noble, who took one look at the stone and his reaction told me it was something special – with what appears to be a carved face on it.”
Ms Allan had volunteered at the site to gain valuable field experience during the summer break.
Prof Noble said the find adds to the growing body of evidence that East Lomond was an important Pictish settlement.
He said: “This is an early schematic carving with two eyes, a nose and what appears to be a hairline at the top.
“We need to get this fully analysed but it appears to be a carving of a face, and resembles some of the human faces you see in early medieval manuscripts.
“It is incredibly rare to have a representation of a human face in this time period. We’ll have to look at all the parallels, but if it really is a human face it’s nice to think it could be a rudimentary portrait of a local Picts who lived at East Lomond.
“The building we found appears to be from the final phase of activity in the annex settlement which would place it in the fifth to seventh century phases.
“The discovery could offer new insights into how Picts understood themselves and represented their own identities through crafting and stone carving.
“The face suggests that Pictish people here were making more expedient carvings, perhaps something for family members living at the site rather than public display like the more famous Pictish symbol stones.”
The archaeologists will now work to find out more about the carving through radiocarbon dating of the floor layers and settlement deposits associated with the building.
They will also examine other art historical parallels to understand more about the character and context of the small carved stone object.
Mr Fitzpatrick said: “There is an incredible depth of archaeology here with hearth built upon hearth and building upon building.
“Everything points to this being a wealthy settlement connected to the wider world and we are finding a good number of complete objects within the context of stone and turf buildings – which is unusual for the Pictish period.”
The work at the site is featured in the History Hit documentary Enemies Of Rome: In Search Of The Picts.
