Nicholas Evans
My research focusses on understanding the medieval history of Britain and Ireland, in particular Celtic-speaking countries. I am particularly interested in how they interacted with each other and their neighbours, especially the English, and how Celtic societies are relevant for our understanding of historical developments. In an era of dynamic interactions between peoples with different identities, we can only truly gain a deep understanding of the period and each geographical area by studying all of the British Isles rather than restricting ourselves to particular modern 'nations'.
My research focus tends to be on medieval texts which dealt with the past: chronicles, king-lists, origin-legends and similar sources which allow us to reconstruct how people recorded and perceived their own era and their past. However, I am also interested other types of evidence, and how these can used to understand medieval societies.
I am currently employed as a Research Fellow (Part-time) working on the University of Aberdeen ‘Comparative Kingship: the Early Medieval Kingdoms of Northern Britain and Ireland’ project, led by Dr Gordon Noble. I will study the textual evidence for kingship in the first millennium A.D. in the project’s case study areas of Munster, Dál Riata (roughly Argyll and the Inner Hebrides) and Pictland in a broader international context. A major part of this research will also be on the sites of Cashel (Co. Tipperary), Dunseverick (Co. Antrim), Burghead (in Moray), and Rhynie (in Aberdeenshire), considering the written evidence, reconstructing their hinterlands’ political, administrative and parochial units, as well as studying their place-names. The aim is to integrate the evidence of textual sources with the project’s archaeological and environmental approaches in order to better understand how kingship and governance developed in regions of Britain and Ireland which had not been integrated into the Roman Empire in comparison with elsewhere in Europe.
Supervisors: For Ph.D. was Prof. Dauvit Broun, University of Glasgow
My research focus tends to be on medieval texts which dealt with the past: chronicles, king-lists, origin-legends and similar sources which allow us to reconstruct how people recorded and perceived their own era and their past. However, I am also interested other types of evidence, and how these can used to understand medieval societies.
I am currently employed as a Research Fellow (Part-time) working on the University of Aberdeen ‘Comparative Kingship: the Early Medieval Kingdoms of Northern Britain and Ireland’ project, led by Dr Gordon Noble. I will study the textual evidence for kingship in the first millennium A.D. in the project’s case study areas of Munster, Dál Riata (roughly Argyll and the Inner Hebrides) and Pictland in a broader international context. A major part of this research will also be on the sites of Cashel (Co. Tipperary), Dunseverick (Co. Antrim), Burghead (in Moray), and Rhynie (in Aberdeenshire), considering the written evidence, reconstructing their hinterlands’ political, administrative and parochial units, as well as studying their place-names. The aim is to integrate the evidence of textual sources with the project’s archaeological and environmental approaches in order to better understand how kingship and governance developed in regions of Britain and Ireland which had not been integrated into the Roman Empire in comparison with elsewhere in Europe.
Supervisors: For Ph.D. was Prof. Dauvit Broun, University of Glasgow
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Books by Nicholas Evans
Published by Birlinn, Paperback: £22, ISBN: 9781780277783
This is the first account of this northern heartland of Pictavia for a more general audience to take in the full implications of this and of the substantial recent archaeological work that has been undertaken in recent years. Part of the The Northern Picts project at Aberdeen University, this book represents an exciting cross disciplinary approach to the study of this still too little understood yet formative period in Scotland’s history.
Available 23 May 2019
This study incorporates up-to-date research to provide a guide to the written sources for the northern Picts. It introduces different types of evidence, including chronicles, histories, literary texts, Saints' Lives, king-lists, place-names and later medieval territories, discusses how their testimony can relate to major questions about the northern Picts: how did their kingship and power struggles develop? How and why did the Picts' language and identity die out, to be replaced by the Gaelic culture of Alba (the forerunner of the kingdom of the Scots) and viking settlements in the north and west? Did aspects of northern Pictish society survive later in Scotland? This introduction for both the general public and archaeologists analyses the fragmentary written evidence so that future discoveries can be placed in their historical context.
Ireland has the most substantial corpus of annalistic chronicles for the early period in western Europe. They are crucial sources for understanding the Gaelic world of Ireland and Scotland, and offer insights into contacts with the wider Christian world. However, there is still a high degree of uncertainty about their development, production, and location prior to 1100, which makes it difficult to draw sound conclusions from them.
This book analyses the principal Irish chronicles, especially the "Annals of Ulster", "Annals of Tigernach", and the Chronicum Scotorum, identifying their inter-relationships, the main changes to the texts, and the centres where they were written in the tenth and eleventh centuries - a significant but neglected period. The detailed study enables the author to argue that the chroniclers were in contact with each other, exchanging written notices of events, and that therefore the chronicle texts reflect the social connections of the Irish ecclesiastical and secular elites. The author also considers how the sections describing the early Christian period (approximately 431 to 730 AD) were altered by subsequent chroniclers; by focussing on the inclusion of material on Mediterranean events as well as on Gaelic kings, and by comparing the chronicles with other contemporary texts, he reconstructs the chronicles' contents and chronology at different times, showing how the accounts were altered to reflect and promote certain views of history. Thus, while enabling readers to evaluate the sources more effectively, he also demonstrates that the chronicles were sophisticated and significant documents in themselves, reflecting different facets of contemporary medieval society and their shifting attitudes to creating and changing accounts of the past.
Articles and Chapters by Nicholas Evans
Recent scholarship has become increasingly sceptical about the importance of Pictish identity in the first millennium A.D. It has been suggested that Picti was an external classical general label for people inhabiting northern Britain only adopted internally in the late seventh century. This article reviews the references to Picti in late antique and subsequent Insular sources from the late third century to A.D. 700. It proposes that the term was adopted in northern Britain by the end of the Roman period and maintained afterwards through the usage of Latin, due to imperial influence and conversion to Christianity. While not the only ethnic identity upheld in the region, the concept of Picti was used by the kings of Fortriu for their wider realm in the late seventh century because it was already known and significant.
This article studies the subject matter, details, and vocabulary of the Irish chronicle record relating to northern Britain from A.D. 660 to 800 in order to establish its sources. It rejects theories that the record from 660 to 740 preserves Applecross, Northern British or Pictish chronicles, arguing that an ‘Iona Chronicle’ accounts for nearly all items for northern Britain, and some, but not all, for Ireland. ‘The Iona Chronicle’ was a contemporary text whose style and interests gradually evolved over the period. After 740 the more limited evidence indicates that Iona and somewhere in southern Pictland probably provided written notices of events, but that the record's final form was produced in Ireland. The combination of common features and regional variation reflects the existence of more multiple ‘centres of recording’ which provided written notices of events to the ‘centres of chronicling’ at Iona and later Ireland, where the surviving chronicle text was produced.
The book can be read online for free, or purchased in hard copy or as an Ebook.
The book it is part of very affordable and is good value. See Links/URL and More Info - to buy online or get an order form, and to access the Scottish Society for Northern Studies website.
Published by Birlinn, Paperback: £22, ISBN: 9781780277783
This is the first account of this northern heartland of Pictavia for a more general audience to take in the full implications of this and of the substantial recent archaeological work that has been undertaken in recent years. Part of the The Northern Picts project at Aberdeen University, this book represents an exciting cross disciplinary approach to the study of this still too little understood yet formative period in Scotland’s history.
Available 23 May 2019
This study incorporates up-to-date research to provide a guide to the written sources for the northern Picts. It introduces different types of evidence, including chronicles, histories, literary texts, Saints' Lives, king-lists, place-names and later medieval territories, discusses how their testimony can relate to major questions about the northern Picts: how did their kingship and power struggles develop? How and why did the Picts' language and identity die out, to be replaced by the Gaelic culture of Alba (the forerunner of the kingdom of the Scots) and viking settlements in the north and west? Did aspects of northern Pictish society survive later in Scotland? This introduction for both the general public and archaeologists analyses the fragmentary written evidence so that future discoveries can be placed in their historical context.
Ireland has the most substantial corpus of annalistic chronicles for the early period in western Europe. They are crucial sources for understanding the Gaelic world of Ireland and Scotland, and offer insights into contacts with the wider Christian world. However, there is still a high degree of uncertainty about their development, production, and location prior to 1100, which makes it difficult to draw sound conclusions from them.
This book analyses the principal Irish chronicles, especially the "Annals of Ulster", "Annals of Tigernach", and the Chronicum Scotorum, identifying their inter-relationships, the main changes to the texts, and the centres where they were written in the tenth and eleventh centuries - a significant but neglected period. The detailed study enables the author to argue that the chroniclers were in contact with each other, exchanging written notices of events, and that therefore the chronicle texts reflect the social connections of the Irish ecclesiastical and secular elites. The author also considers how the sections describing the early Christian period (approximately 431 to 730 AD) were altered by subsequent chroniclers; by focussing on the inclusion of material on Mediterranean events as well as on Gaelic kings, and by comparing the chronicles with other contemporary texts, he reconstructs the chronicles' contents and chronology at different times, showing how the accounts were altered to reflect and promote certain views of history. Thus, while enabling readers to evaluate the sources more effectively, he also demonstrates that the chronicles were sophisticated and significant documents in themselves, reflecting different facets of contemporary medieval society and their shifting attitudes to creating and changing accounts of the past.
Recent scholarship has become increasingly sceptical about the importance of Pictish identity in the first millennium A.D. It has been suggested that Picti was an external classical general label for people inhabiting northern Britain only adopted internally in the late seventh century. This article reviews the references to Picti in late antique and subsequent Insular sources from the late third century to A.D. 700. It proposes that the term was adopted in northern Britain by the end of the Roman period and maintained afterwards through the usage of Latin, due to imperial influence and conversion to Christianity. While not the only ethnic identity upheld in the region, the concept of Picti was used by the kings of Fortriu for their wider realm in the late seventh century because it was already known and significant.
This article studies the subject matter, details, and vocabulary of the Irish chronicle record relating to northern Britain from A.D. 660 to 800 in order to establish its sources. It rejects theories that the record from 660 to 740 preserves Applecross, Northern British or Pictish chronicles, arguing that an ‘Iona Chronicle’ accounts for nearly all items for northern Britain, and some, but not all, for Ireland. ‘The Iona Chronicle’ was a contemporary text whose style and interests gradually evolved over the period. After 740 the more limited evidence indicates that Iona and somewhere in southern Pictland probably provided written notices of events, but that the record's final form was produced in Ireland. The combination of common features and regional variation reflects the existence of more multiple ‘centres of recording’ which provided written notices of events to the ‘centres of chronicling’ at Iona and later Ireland, where the surviving chronicle text was produced.
The book can be read online for free, or purchased in hard copy or as an Ebook.
The book it is part of very affordable and is good value. See Links/URL and More Info - to buy online or get an order form, and to access the Scottish Society for Northern Studies website.