Product Description
by Martin Carver, Justin Garner-Lahire and Cecily Spall
This title is available as an open access e-book.
Rediscovered by archaeologists in the 1980s, from 1994 to 2007 the site at Portmahomack saw one of the largest research excavations to have taken place in Scotland. This richly-illustrated, voluminous book presents the archaeological discoveries made at and around Portmahomack, and considers their significance.
Martin Carver is Emeritus Professor of Archaeology at the University of York. He was previously the director of the Sutton Hoo Research Project.
The authors and the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland gratefully acknowledge funding towards the publication of this volume from Historic Environment Scotland. | ![]() |
Dr Gabor Thomas (Antiquity) – :
Martin Carver’s ten-year programme of excavations at Portmahomack—the first large-scale investigation of an early medieval monastery in the kingdom of the Picts—has been in the vanguard of [Pictish archaeology] research, and the publication of the culminating monograph represents a major landmark in Pictish studies. […] Overall this is an expertly crafted volume that does full justice to the spectacular sequence of archaeology unearthed at Portmahomack. It will stand as an enduring legacy for the pioneering achievements of the underlying excavations, and serve as a vital guide for future studies of Pictish and medieval Scotland and the archaeology of Insular monasticism more generally.
Dr Gabor Thomas, University of Reading in Antiquity
Jerry O’Sullivan (Journal of Irish Archaeology, Volume 26) – :
In Portmahomack Professor Carver and his co-authors admirably discharge the first duties of archaeological writing: to put the new evidence before us, to give it context and to make us think about it…It is a ‘must have’ book for students of early medieval society in Britain and Ireland.
Jerry O’Sullivan, Journal of Irish Archaeology, Volume 26
Tomás Ó Carragáin (The Antiquaries Journal, Volume 98) – :
This eagerly awaited volume presents the final results of a project that…has already transformed our understanding of the origins and development of early medieval monasticism in Pictland. […] The authors are to be congratulated on a stunning achievement.