Able Minds and Practiced Hands

One hundred years on from J Romilly Allen and Joseph Anderson's 1903 landmark publication, The Early Christian Monuments of Scotland, twenty six essays explore the current state of knowledge of early medieval sculpture in Scotland. They demonstrate the unique value of this material in contributing to our understanding of the society and people that created it between 1000 to 1500 years ago. Today's approaches and techniques offer new insights, as well as great hope, for what might be learnt from future study of 'familiar' and new material alike. The essays exemplify the ever-diversifying, interdisciplinary approaches that are being taken to the study of early medieval sculpture. Key themes that emerge include: the interdependence of conservation, research and access; the need for a 21st-century inventory of the sculpture; the breadth and value of the wide range of the research tools that now exist; conservation issues, including the politics of how and where sculpture should be protected, and the pressing need to identify priorities for action; and, what is probably the most important development over the last 100 years, the increase in awareness of the range of values and significances that attaches to early medieval sculpture, including appreciation of context.

Sally M. Foster, Morag Cross

1. Introduction: Able Minds and Practised Hands: Historical Fact, 21st-Century Aspiration 2. Sculpture in Action: Contexts for Stone Carving on the Tarbat Peninsula, Easter Ross 3. That Stone was Born Here and That's Where it Belongs': Hilton of Cadboll and the Negotiation of Identity, Ownership and Belonging 4. Just an Ald Steen': Reverence, Reuse, Revulsion and Rediscovery 5. Fragments of Significance: The Whole Picture 6. Christ's Cross Down into the Earth: Some Cross-Bases and their Problems 7. Pictish Cross-Slabs: An Examination of their Original Archaeological Context 8. Hic Memoria Perpetua: The Early Inscribed Stones of Southern Scotland in Context 9. The Govan School Revisited: Searching for Meaning in the Early Medieval Sculpture of Strathclyde 10. Scotland's Early Medieval Sculpture in the 21st Century: A Strategic Overview of Conservation Problems, Maintenance and Replication Methods 11. The Containment of Scottish Carved Stones in Situ: An Environmental Study of the Efficacy of Glazed Enclosures 12. The Runic Inscriptions of Scotland: Preservation, Documentation and Interpretation 13. Understanding What We See, or Seeing What We Understand: Graphic Recording, Past and Present, of the Early Medieval Sculpture at St Vigeans 14. The Bulls of Burghead and Allen's Technique of Illustration 15. A Perfect Accuracy of Delineation': Charlotte Wilhelmina Hibbert's Drawings of Early Medieval Carved Stones in Scotland 16. Bird, Beast or Fish? Problems of Identification and Interpretation of the Iconography Carved on the Tarbat Peninsula Cross-Slabs 17. Figuring Salvation: An Excursus into the Iconography of the Iona Crosses 18. The Role of Geological Analysis of Monuments: A Case Study from St Vigeans and Related Sites 19. The Early Medieval Sculptures from Murthly, Perth and Kinross: An Interdisciplinary Look at People, Politics and Monumental Art 20. Know Your Properties, Recognise the Possibilities: Historic Scotland's Strategy for the Interpretation of Early Medieval Sculpture in its Care 21. Proposals for the Re-Display of the Early Medieval Sculpture Collection at Whithorn: The Evolution of an Interpretative Approach 22. Curators of the Last Resort: The Role of a Local Museum Service in the Preservation and Interpretation of Early Medieval Sculptured Stones 23. A Museum Curator's Adventures in Pictland 24. The Missing Dimension: Future Directions in Digital Recording of Early Medieval Sculptured Stone 25. Three-Dimensional Recording of Pictish Sculpture 26. Towards A 'New ECMS': The Proposal for a New Corpus of Early Medieval Sculpture in Scotland