Thank you so much, Pat, for that introduction. As Pat says, we have a book just out just now called The King in the North, the Pictish Realms of Fortune and Kay, available in all good bookstores. That's my talk over for the evening, thank you very much. Very reasonable price, 14.99 or less. So thanks for that introduction, Pat, and yes, the Picts are still relatively mysterious elements of Scotland's early history, but one that's increasingly illuminated by archaeological and new historical work as well, which has really came to the fore in the last two decades, I would say in particular, particularly the last 10 years really, with lots more archaeological projects and understanding of the Picts beginning to emerge through renewed focus on the Picts and their archaeology. So for those of you who don't know much about the Picts, well the Picts are essentially the equivalent of the Anglo-Saxons, contemporaries with Anglo-Saxons in southern Britain, and the Picts are first mentioned in late Roman sources as these troublesome groups who live north of the Roman frontier in AD 297, and they go on to cause all sorts of havoc in the Roman Empire involved in the barbarian conspiracy, for example in AD 3467 when they get together with the Franks and the Scots and other groups and raid areas south of Hadrian's Wall. But it's really in the post-Roman period that the Picts particularly come to the fore in terms of becoming one of, if not the most powerful, series of kingdoms and over kingship of northeast Scotland, and ruling over an area that's stretched from modern-day Fife up to the Northern Isles as far as we know, and probably across to the Western Isles, and really ruling until the 10th century when there seems to be some sort of merging of the Picts and the Scots to create the Kingdom of Alba, which is essentially the forerunner of the medieval Kingdom of Scotland. And this is a period particularly in the post-Roman period where we begin to see a whole series of different developments in society and in archaeological record, we can see that there's developing hierarchies, the first mention of kings, for example, occurs in the post-Roman period in Northern Britain. And we see the emergence of things like cemeteries, major cemeteries for powerful families and lineages. We see warfare coming to the fore in terms of how kings gain new territory and retain followers. And we also see the emergence of things like the written word, and also developments in religion with the adoption of Christianity, for example, from the 6th and definitely the 7th century AD onwards. So as I say, the Picts are first mentioned in this late Roman context in AD 297. And as far as you can see, that seems to represent some sort of amalgamation of different tribal groups under a larger political and social grouping known as the Picts, which essentially is a Roman nickname, means the painted people. So it's another word for barbarians, essentially. But that's a name that seems to be adopted by the neighbours of the Picts and presumably by the Picts themselves, although we know very little of that because we have very few historical records from the Picts themselves, apart from a series of kingless. And we can see that the Picts were major enemies of Rome. They're repeatedly referred to in terms of conflict north of and around the Roman frontier. And there's this fantastic dice tower from the imperial frontier in Germany that has this statement on here in Latin, the Picts are defeated, the enemies destroyed, playing safety. So we can see the Picts were playing on the Roman mentality as being major enemies and the epitome of the enemies of Rome. As I say, there's very few historical records for the Picts themselves. So that really is simply a list of kings, which in one version has this origin myth, which talks about Cruthony, the father of the Picts, and he has seven sons. And those sons are essentially a claim to territory for they have geographically focused names, for example, fief for fife, cate for caitness. So it's really telling us where the Picts ruled or saw themselves as ruling. And it's one of the information sources we're used to reconstruct maps like this with the territories of the Picts and other ethnic and social groups within early Scotland or what came to be Scotland. The most powerful group of the Picts seems to be the group known as Furture. And the kings of Furture become the over kings of the whole of Pictland from the 7th century after a major battle called the Battle of Nectansmere, in which King Brithay defeats King Egfrith of Northumbria and essentially wrestles back control of major parts of Pictland that had been controlled by the Northumbrians for a number of decades. And this territory of Furture was always thought to be located down in Central Scotland, in where we traditionally see the kind of cradle of the Scottish Kingdom in Central Scotland. But more recently it's been thought that this kingdom Furture actually occupied an area much further north, around about the Murray Firth region, due to a whole range of place name and historical evidence. So that gave new lights or new focus on the Northern Picts, the Northern Territories, beyond the mints around a bit Stonehaven and Aberdeenshire. New vigor and recognition that the Northern parts of Pictland were clearly important. And that's really where our projects at the University of Aberdeen really kicked off in terms of beginning to look from an archaeological perspective at Northern Pictland. If this was such an important region, can we identify any of the major social and political centres? And can we track the development of this polity and these power groups through time? And there were already things in the archaeological record that actually suggested the importance of the North. So one of the iconic monuments of the Picts are these symbol stones and these are focused very much in Northern Pictland territories to the Aberdeenshire, the Murray Firth and stretching further north. But how do you identify that the centres of power in this time period? Well, the few references that we do have tend to refer to fortified sites, forts, promontory forts, hill forts as being centres of powers, centres of settlement and centres of kings and the rulership. But these were fairly poorly documented for the time period. And the other major monument that is of interest, I think, to a whole range of disciplines, art historians, archaeologists, etc, are these symbol stone monuments, which are still a fascinating element of the Picts. And they tend to have these paired symbols on the early monuments. And the best guess of them is that there's some sort of identity marker telling you something about the name or the rank or the identity of probably elites within society. And these are also found on Christian monuments from the seventh century onwards, marking people in this case here. So you can see it's definitely something about the identity of individuals judging by this kind of iconography. So what I want to do tonight is really just take you on a quick tour of three different landscapes within Pictland to highlight some of the work that we've been doing and how this feeds into our growing picture of how these Pictish societies are developing through time. And I want to start with this site at Danakere, which is just south of Aberdeen, near Stonehaven, near Donautor Castle for any of you who've been there. And this was a site that was known since the 19th century to as being the fine spot of a number of car stone monuments. And these were quite rough and ready symbol stones compared to what you'll see in some of the other sites, later sites. So they're always thought to be perhaps early examples of the Pictish symbol tradition. So you can see things like double discs here, crescents, and a fish here. And these came from this site. It's tiny, what is today a tiny sea stack just to the north of Donautor Castle. It doesn't look like much today. And it was quite a difficult place to excavate and get to. We had to hire a professional climber to get us on top of this sea stack. And what do we find? Well, we actually found that this site would have been much more impressive in the past. It's a highly eroded promontory, we think. So it would have been a promontory fort with houses and buildings on top of this promontory. And essentially an early version of what becomes these key power centers, a fortified settlement. And the way we could tell us is through excavation around about the edge of the sea stack, for example, we found traces of a wall. These are beam slots, timber slots here and stone facing for a timber lace rampart. So this is a classic way of defending Roman Iron Age and medieval high status promontory forts through a timber framework and stone facing to that. And then we found buildings inside. So here you can see, for example, the stone curbs, fireplaces here, and some of these dirty brown layers right about being partly excavate here were the floor layers of dwellings within the fort. And we found evidence for their daily lives, things like spindle whirls for spinning yarn, grinding stones for grinding grain, but also markers of higher status contacts and activities. So we had burnishing stones for high status metalworking and very rare Roman finds. So by the time this site was in operation in the third, four centuries, it was far north of the Roman frontier of Hadrian's Wall. But yet they were receiving Roman goods, including really rare types of Roman glass and shards of same in which don't look like much today. This is essentially the rubbish that people thrown out. But we got to imagine, you know, the whole vessels, which would have been very rare and precious objects. So these people were connected. They were elites within society. And the really fascinating thing about Denekeia was that the forts of this time period actually really, really unusual. So radiocarbon dates showed that the site was constructed probably in the second century AD and went through to the fourth century AD. So with its height really in the third, four centuries. And really this is an ideal location for launching raids on the empire, the seaborne raids that the late Roman sources talk about in terms of things like the barbarian conspiracy. And Gildas talks about in the fifth century, about the picks being seaborne raiders. So it looks like in this late Roman Iron Age, they are beginning to construct sites like this, clearly with a view to expanding territory and influence and networks of contact in this time period. So it's really a glimpse into the origins of the picks and that bigger polity that seems to emerge in the face of empire in that late Roman context. Right, so our second site for tonight is further inland at Riney. And this is about 40 minutes drive west of Aberdeen, just south of Huntley. And this is just a small village today, but clearly it was a real hotspot of activity and a real influential landscape in the Pictish period. And the reason we were interested in landscape at Riney was a number of things, a number of hill forts here, including Tappanoth in the background. But primarily for the number of carved stones that came from the vicinity of the modern village of Riney, which includes the cross day number one there, which still stands in situ to the south of the village today. The carving of warrior, he's quite worn there, but you can just see his shield and he's carrying a spear. And probably the most impressive monument, the Riney man, this fearsome looking figure carrying an axe over his shoulder. A number of the more conventional symbol stones with these paired symbols abstract and animal based symbols. And there's the Riney man and close up this fearsome teeth. And as I say, the cross stain here, the with the salmon and the Pictish beast, as it's known, still stands in the field today. And that's quite unusual for these to still to be standing in situ. An aerial photography in the late 1970s when the Riney man was discovered just downslope from that stone, revealed a whole series of enclosures buried underneath the ground. So some sort of settlement here. And then the the final reason we were interested in this landscape was this really interesting place name, because we have so few historical sources, things like place names are incredibly useful in terms of hinting at the significance of past places. So Riney's got this unusual place name element to read for King, and seems to mean a place associated with a great tour of sacred King. So this was all the ammunition we needed to go and have a look at the site where the cross stain stands. And excavations from 2012 to 2017 revealed a very high status elite settlement and enclosure complex. What you see here is the dark bands are actually ditches for another fortified enclosed settlement with buildings inside represented by these postals and the like. And here's a drone shot of our excavations. It's hard to see, but this is quite a prominent knoll today. And it's this knoll that's been enclosed by ditches, and then laterally by a huge palace at a big wooden wall, which would have been created this really impressive enclosure with buildings inside. So here in the Blue Peter moment is one we made earlier showing how it might have looked like with a big wooden wall in its latter stages and the buildings inside. And nearby we discovered a cemetery of square barrows, and the warrior figure clearly came from this cemetery down by the modern day village. So a cemetery contemporary with with the settlement. And the reason we could tell that this was a very high status settlement was because of the again the kind of bits and pieces that have been left behind by people living at the site. So again, these are just little fragments, but they're really significant fragments in terms of these are shards of late Roman amphora, which actually come from the Eastern Mediterranean. In the sixth century, which is very unusual long distance contacts in this time period. And this material turns up places like Tintagel and documented royal sites in Ireland. And there's only two other fine spots in Scotland. One is Wittorn, the famous ecclesiastical and probably major power center. And the other is Dumbarton Rock, which was the later seat of the Strathclyde Kings. So in elite company here. And we can see that perhaps the part of the reason for the wealth of this landscape and settlement was that it was a major center of production. So again, we are finding the things left behind. So we found lots hundreds of molds for making high status brooches, handpins, all the sort of things that elites were wearing in this time period, and also molds for making things like ingots, which are little bars, which people of Roman, I forgot to say about the late Roman amphora is that they were probably for storing wine. So this is what the pigs were drinking their wine from in this time period. And also elements of the elite culture in terms of dress as well. So my internet's a bit unstable, so I just switched my video off. So we also found things like dress pins, cloak pins, and parts of brooches. And also more unusual metalwork, things like this amazing little iron pin, which actually has in the shape of an axe and has a serpent biting on to the end of the axe there. And we also found molds for making animal figurines and of the type of animals seen on the Pictish stones itself. Sorry, can you all hear me? Okay, my internet seems a bit dodgy. We can hear you, Graham. Okay, that's good. Sorry. Yeah, so we found these figurine molds as well for making little animals of the type of animals you see carved on the Pictish stones. So we're beginning to see elements of material culture that you can actually see in the iconography of the Pictish stones. So really making a link between those iconic monuments and the actual settlements in the archaeology we're finding in the ground. And then the dates for this site were really interesting as well. So like Danacharis, just starting in the kind of Roman Iron Age in the 4th century AD, but it goes through to the middle 6th century AD. Just round about the time when we begin to get the first historical references to Pictish kings that we can identify with other sources, cross-reference with other sources. And really that was an incredible discovery at Riney and a really exciting one, but we didn't really realise at the time that it was really just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what's in the Riney Valley. So overlooking Riney here, so you can see this is a drone shot of Tappanoff, this really impressive hillfort, Scotland's second highest hillfort on the top here, overlooking the village which you'll see in the background there. And there's two forts at Tappanoff, the top one is Iron Age, so much earlier, but 400-200 BC. But you can just maybe make out this lower wall towards the bottom of the picture here, which was always thought to be earlier in dates than the Iron Age fort on top, but much to our surprise that wasn't the case. So we did some early work here doing survey work, particularly using something known as a lidar, so laser scanning essentially of the hill. And this showed up these incredible house platforms here, or what we now know as house platforms. So you can see all these little divots almost in the hill shown up by this image on the left here. And it was always, well it's been recognized since the 1970s, really there were a number of house platforms here, maybe a couple of hundred, but this laser scanning and also photogrammetry survey showed that there were actually as many as 800 platforms on the hill here at Tappanoff. So what date were these and what was the character of this site? Well the lower rampart of Tappanoff is really impressive. It encloses 17 hectares, so it's the second largest hill fort known in Scotland.  And this palisade must have went for 1.5 kilometres, so just imagine the amount of resources, the amount of wood needed to enclose this site. So a huge monumental effort. And then we excavated a number of house platforms and showed that some of these had Roman finds on them. So like Dunacare, these people were connected in this Roman period, but also finds suggesting activity going on into the early medieval, the Pictish phases as well. And that was shown and proved by the radiocarbon dates we got from the site, which go from the third and fourth centuries AD through to the sixth century. So it really implies that what we've got at Tappanoff is a huge settlement. And so far all the platforms we dug to date seem to be broadly contemporary. So it looks like potentially you get a huge settlement here, and if only a proportion of those 800 platforms are in use at any one time, you're talking about a population of certainly hundreds and not thousands, almost a proto town. Whether that's a seasonal settlement, perhaps people gathering at certain times of the year, perhaps to give tribute to the kings living in the valley below, or is it apparently occupied year round settlement, and that's the subject of ongoing research at Aberdeen. Right, so that's looking at the middle Pictish period when the Pictish kings really begin to emerge and begin to establish themselves. The final site that I'm going to look at tonight really tells us more about the heights of the Pictish kingdoms and also their eventual decline really. And this I'll discuss through looking at this final site, which is a burgh head up in the Murray coast in the Murray Firth area. And this is another promontory fort, like Dunacare, but you can see that it's in an altogether different scale and different preservation level to what we found at Dunacare. So what you're looking at here is the modern town of burgh head in the background, and then the foreground is the remains of the Pictish fort. So on the left, you can see the ramparts of the lower citadel, the middle ramparts here, and seaword defences, or what's left of them of the upper fort. And you can maybe just see some excavations in the garden here of the Coast Guard station house, which was our excavations a couple of years back. And this unfortunately is a slightly sad tale of destruction at burgh head. So in the 19th century, the modern town of burgh head was built over around about 50 to 60 percent of the fort was destroyed by the modern town of burgh head. And this is James McDonald in the 1860s talking about that destruction. But the ramparts, the landward ramparts being hurled down the hill, thrown back into their ditches, and the upper surface of the fort being desecrated, robbed for stone. And you know, fantastic kind of throwaway line here about how many coins, battle axes and spearheads then found were given to any English tourists who came that way. So if you're in England just now or anywhere else around the world or near burgh head, go and have a look in your grandparents' attics and see if you can find any of these artifacts from burgh head. So unfortunately, a real tale of destruction, but that destruction also led to some quite remarkable discoveries at burgh head, which has whetted the appetite for the site for centuries. So Professor Stewart of the University of Aberdeen in 1809 describes how all around the top of the rock are seen the remains of a rampart, talking about the timber and stone element too. That's another kind of timber lace rampart as we tend to identify on sites of this time period. And also talking about the number of carvings from the site, particularly of a bull, he says, very well-executed. And indeed we have six surviving stones with carvings of bulls on them, one in the British Museum, one in the National Museum, two on site at burgh head and two in Elgin Museum.  So the one in the British Museum is near the Sutton Hoo ship burial and National Museum down in the prehistoric galleries. And as many as 30 or more of these stones with bulls were found in the 19th century, but the majority of them went into the construction of the modern harbour. So again, a real tale of loss there really. But we have these ones remaining to give us a hint as to what these carvings looked like and the impressive nature of the fort. And there was also lots of other fragments of sculpture found in that 19th century, destruction and later excavations as well, which include Christian crosslabs and fragments of box shrines. So these are early Christian monuments of the eighth ninth century. And their character and their fine spots suggest that there was a major church at burgh head actually within the fort. So this is talking of a very different type of power center where Christianity is very much embraced by these later Pictish rulers in the seventh eighth ninth centuries AD. And you can see the power of power of the church and of God is very much seen as part of the rulership of these Pictish elites. So excavations at burgh head has had a long history, not always glamorous history. But James McDonald in the 1860s did some great work and actually pretty well recorded for the time. He excavated in the lower citadel and did some wonderful watercolor drawings of the rampart, giving an idea of the scale of these features, showing that they were at least seven to eight meters thick and still survive today to six meters high in the lower citadel. So huge numbers of resources, again going into the construction of these forts. And McDonald's showing in his work, others that again there was timber lacing, there was timber framework joining the two wall faces and with a kind of rubble core. And then Hugh Young in the 1890s, the grandson of one of the youngs who built the modern town excavated in the fort. And again, he showed the impressive nature of the rampart. And there's actually some early photographs of his work at burgh head. This is one of my favorites showing just the fragments of the wall face down in the lower part of the photograph. And hopefully you can just see in the background is his workmen, the laborers who would have actually done all the hard work of excavation in that time period. But also you can see the relatively poor standards in terms of excavation techniques in the 1890s. But Hugh Young did get some remarkable finds from burgh head, some lots of animal remains, bone refuse and things like axe heads and spearheads from the excavations. But it wasn't really until the 1960s that they actually dated the fort was established. So in the 19th century it was often thought to be a Viking fortress or a Roman site, anything but Pictish really. But Alan Small in the 1960s excavated on the henwood and got some of the first radiocarbon dates showing that it was indeed of the Pictish era, but not very accurate dates in that context. So this is as a site survives today, less than half of it surviving. And really in our early work at site we had very low hopes of survival there. And all the previous records suggested that the interior of the fort had largely been dug out and there was nothing surviving. But what we found in contrast was actually one of the best preserved Pictish sites there is. Because actually all that later landscaping in some cases is actually preserved to the quite delicate floor layers of buildings. And also burgh head is essentially a big sand dune. So over the centuries there's been lots of sandblow events sealing some of the archaeology below those horizons. So excavating in the gardens of the Coast Guard station in the early years 2015 to 19 we found floor layers of buildings. This is an eighth to ninth century building here with the hearth here and all the black layers is actually destruction levels from the destruction of this building. And we got some really nice finds from the floor layers. This is two coins of King Alfred the famous Anglo-Saxon King. But the the Picts didn't use coins. So you can see these have actually been pierced for wearing. So the Picts were literally wearing their wealth around around their necks. And then so less glamorous pieces. These are what we think might be bits of shield fittings or furniture fittings and also bits of weaponry. This is a hilt of a sword again coming from the floor layer of that building. And also more mundane things like leather working tools here. And we basically wherever we dug a trench in the burgh head we actually found buildings and structures and floor layers including going underneath the modern buildings of burgh head. And then in 2018 and 19 we began to look at the ramparts themselves digging up against the ramparts showing that so these are seem to be seventh eighth century in date. So later than Riney in that kind of height of of the Pictish kingdoms and some really nice finds began to merge things like bramble headed pins little mace headed pins and from really good bone preservation on site. And then we also saw like land aquariums the kind of remarkable wall of the fort, which in some cases still stands free three and a half meters high. And you can actually see the burnt timber beams, horizontal beams and transverse beams going into the wall face. So one of the best preserved walls we have from this time period showing the construction methods of these timber laced ramparts and then down the lower citadel lots of evidence for activity. And our early dates suggested that this site was in use from the sixth century. So roughly when Riney and the landscape there seems to show a big decline through to the 10th century in the time period in the pics disappear as an identity. And we're actually just back from the field from Boracayd. This was our first major excavations for two years due to the global pandemic. So it was actually quite exciting and emotional to be back in the trenches. And this year we dug a trench up in the upper citadel and one down in the lower citadel, as you can see here. And this is because we've just gotten a big grant from Historic Environment Scotland for the Citadel project, basically because parts of the seaward defences are falling into the sea due to coastal erosion. So over the next five years we're going to excavate a large area at the end of the headland and try and understand more about the fort. And at the same time do less invasive excavations down the lower citadel to compare the two elements of the fort. So in the upper citadel we found more evidence for buildings shown in green here, sunken floor buildings, also metal working areas and more nice finds coming out, more Anglo-Saxon coins than in this case from Northumbria. This little one here is a coin of Bishop Wigamond of York for example showing again the connections of these late Pictish rulers. And then down in the lower citadel we found huge activity areas up against or towards the ramparts there including evidence for buildings marked in orange here. And again really nice finds emerging to tell us a bit about the kind of lifestyles of the people living here. So beautiful bone pins, bone combs of the type you see carved on Pictish stones, and we think you have to get this fully identified but we think this might be a stylus from writing, you know, on wax tablets and the like. So evidence for a literate culture here at Burkhead. This is a close-up of one of these beautiful delicate pins, probably hair pins, and also pictures of the remarkable bone preservation at Burkhead. So things like cattle skulls, red deer mandibles, horse mandibles. Bone preservation in Scotland tends to be pretty poor so it's quite exciting for us to find this type of evidence. So really to kind of sum up what we've got at Burkhead, well we've got the largest enclosed site of this time period. It clearly was a densely occupied site so as I say wherever we sink trenches we were finding buildings. So this wasn't just a site that was retreated to at times of warfare, it was clearly a major, major settlement. And within that the archaeology we're finding here we should be able to tell you a lot more about how such a major settlement and centre was actually fed. So the bone preservation will allow us to look at things like the animal economy. So mainly domesticate animals but there are some evidence of hunting. And we can see that cattle is incredibly important and that's really interesting because in contemporary Ireland for example where we have much better historical records cattle is really the driver of the medieval economies. So something like 70-80% of the bone assemblages of some of these major pictures sites are from cattle. And we can also do some really interesting archaeological science on these faunal remains. So we can do things like a strontium and oxygen isotope analysis to look at the diet of the domesticates and also look at the catchment. And so far it looks like cows are actually coming from a larger area than just from the local area. So it may well be cattle actually being brought as tribute to this major elite centre and presumably royal centre in this time period. And also we can see as I say that this was very much a Christian centre, unlike perhaps Rhine or Danukere, with all the Christian sculpture demonstrating the wealth and power and the Christian nature of these late Pictish societies. And on the back of one of the cross-lab fragments in the National Museum there's actually a carving of a warrior. So you can see how secular and religious power was intertwined in this time period. And we also have some interesting objects from that one in particular just came up recently, which is a carved stone head. And these tend to be thought to be pagan monuments, particularly Iron Age, but they do occur in later contexts as well. And these could well go with bull carvings in terms of being part of an early perhaps pagan element to the site maybe in the sixth century prior to the fort reaching its height in the seventh, eighth and ninth centuries. And just finally in terms of the dating of the site, what's really interesting is the end date of the site, which is in the 10th century AD. And it's in the 10th century that's really the Pictish kingdoms come to an end. So there seems to be some sort of merging of the Picts and the Scots to create this kingdom of Alba in the ninth century and the beginning in the 10th century. And the most likely driver for that change is the beginnings of North settlement in the Northern Isles, which take over large parts of Northern Pickland and also parts of Del Rio de of the Scots in the West. And it's probably that Viking pressure that leads to the eventual merging of the Picts and Scots to fight this enemy very much like the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms had to transform in the face of Viking threat. So finally, I'll put out my hat. If you want to support our project, we've got a Just Giving page. And I don't think I mentioned that we have a book out either, which is available in all great bookstores online as well, 1489. What a bargain. Anyway, thank you very much for listening and happy to field questions. Thank you very much indeed. Gordon for a really interesting talk about a really rather mysterious group of people. What we generally do now is to have a short break of just five minutes or so during which time people can type their questions into the Q&A, not into the chat please, but if you have questions for Gordon, please put them in the Q&A and I will put them to him on your behalf. So we'll just pause for a little bit so that people get a chance to think of what questions they'd like to ask Gordon. Hi, Gordon, can you hear me okay? Yeah, I can hear you. We've got quite a lot of questions. So I'll try to get through as many as possible. One of the first questions that was asked was about whether or not the picks built boats and might they have explored the coast very much and perhaps gone to, for example, Orkney. Do we know anything about that? Yes, they almost certainly had a fleet and had access to boats. Some of our earlier references, for example, talk about Pictish kings from the mainland destroying the Orkneys. So clearly that must have been a seaborn raiding party and that's a 7th century reference and there's a 8th century reference to 150 Pictish ships being wrecked off the coast of Aberdeenshire and I think that's probably likely to have been a raiding party as well in 150 ships and that's the reason it was recorded in the annals. It must have been such a major event at the time. In terms of the archaeology of Pictish boats, unfortunately we don't have any remains, but if we are going to find them, Burghead seems like a likely spot so there's wonderful sheltered harbour to the west of Burghead and also what used to be the sea lock at Spiny would have given a sheltered anchorage. It seems very likely that Burghead was one of the maritime points or major centres of the Pict since maybe why it was such an important centre really. So yeah, lots of evidence, well not lots but glimpses of evidence for that and certainly like the Vikings or other societies they were raiding by sea. Okay and while we're on the subject of sea, there's also a question about whether they is there any evidence that they ate marine food fish or shellfish? Yeah, that's an interesting issue. Actually after the Neolithic, the first farmers, 4000 BC, there's actually relatively little evidence for the consumption of fish, certainly as a major part of the diet really until the Viking age. The Vikings seem to really create an upshot in the use of the marine economy and deep sea fishing and the like. But it was probably a minor part of the diet and certainly in the later phases of Burghead we're finding fish bone, cod, salmon and also shellfish as well which might either be consumed or being used as bait for fishing. So yes, part of the diet but probably a very minor part of the diet and we can see that isotopically when we analyse skeletons of the Picts you can see that they must have consumed largely a terrestrial diet. That's surprising, is it not? It is surprising but it doesn't mean to say they're not eating fish a couple times a week but it's not a major driver of the diet and that's not leaving a major signature on the bones of Picts that we find in the ground. There's a number of questions about the language. Do we have any idea what language we may have spoken? Yeah, we know it must have been a branch of Bretonic so place name evidence suggests that it was a Bretonic language as do one or two place names and historical records. Bede for example talks about there being four languages in northern Britain at this time period Anglo-Saxon, Bretonic, Gaelic and Pictish. So it seems like Pictish was distinct from Bretonic but as I say the place name evidence suggests it was related to Bretonics so perhaps it was a more localized dialect of Bretonic and that's one of the reasons that we maybe have relatively little records of the Picts is because Gaelic becomes the major language of early Scotland certainly by the 11th century through to the 13th century so you know Pictish language gets forgotten essentially and gets erased. There were records written in Pictish for example they may well not have been kept. And then there's some questions about Christianity and how it took root among the Picts and whether it might have come for example from my own or by what root do you think it took off? Probably different roots there's probably some level of Christianity from influences from Roman Britain and people living around about Hadrian's wall there's inscribed stones from the 5th century for example down in southern Scotland that are Christian but there's no doubt that Iona and Irish missionaries were important and the traditional narrative is that Columba converts the northern Picts and Ninian converts the southern Picts and certainly Gildus talks about some of the Picts as being apostates so implying that they were had been at least some of them had been Christian at one time and there was certainly some conversion in the 6th century in northern areas and certainly by the 7th century our sources have no indication that Picts were pagan or anyway different in terms of religion so and certainly the archaeology would back that up in terms of you know our early churches and early carved stone monuments are likely to be 7th, 8th centuries so certainly by that time period by the time of Burghead at its height these were fully Christian kingdoms. There's also a question about the symbols on the stones and that there's been a previous suggestion that they might have been kinship but were they also sort of totem poles and has that idea received any real critical appraisal or is it just speculation? Oh yeah you can imagine you know that's been one of the fascination of the Picts since the 19th century is you know how do we crack the code, how do we understand this symbol system and to be honest you know we probably won't ever unless we find some sort of a Rosetta stone that allows us to decipher. I think the most likely interpretation is that they are a naming tradition so as I showed in some of the early slides you can see some of the later stones that show individuals and they're marked by paired symbols and it's not like hieroglyphs where you get lots and lots of these symbols there tend to be you know pairs or the most four symbols so the messages must have been very short so again it seems most likely that names or some sort of identity marker is most likely. In terms of their context we can now show that they're actually found in a variety of different contexts. So some of the early scholarships suggest that they were you know marking burials and in some cases they do seem to mark burials but they're also clearly found at settlement sites like Riney standing at the entranceway to the complex at Dunacare looks like they were built into the Rampart and Burracare as well they look like they were at the entranceway to the to the Fort or the Bulls were anyway. So they're found in a variety of different contexts which again if it was a naming tradition makes sense you know you might have a name of someone who's buried at a monument and named perhaps of a ruler at a settlement so multi-purpose and that's our best guess at the moment. There's also a question about whether there's any genetic evidence of the pics that we can see or trace in modern Celtic people or whatever you know and the idea of red hair and freckles and so on being pictitious is that again pure conjecture or is there a genetic signature of pics? Well yes it is conjecture you'll read lots about this and you know there's various organizations will you know take your money to do modern DNA tests and say you're you know 10% pictitious but it's all based on modern DNA patterns so until we get more ancient DNA it's all nonsense really and it's just you know wild not necessarily wild speculation but speculation for sure. Problem is we don't have a huge number of pictitious cemeteries and there's only been some very preliminary studies of that including we're involved in a few DNA studies so I think watch this space but you know whether we can you know relate that to modern genetics well we can obviously but yeah it's time will tell basically. Okay so there are human remains from the cemeteries but not from the citadel type sites. As a general rule yes but actually not something I mentioned tonight but we actually have a skull and a long bone from Burghead that's in the National Museum and we just recently dated that we think that they're from James McDonald's excavations in the 1860s and he talks about a cemetery just outside the fort on the other on the Seaworth side and we dated those to the seventh date century so they're from the height of the the fort's cemetery just outside the fort there so you know we may well find other cemeteries within the fort or near the near the chapel site within the fort so yeah it'd be great to find more remains of actual pics you can see lived at these sites we do have one burial from Reiny as well where we got a date from the human remains and might be able to DNA sample other than that there's a few cemeteries that maybe have you know a couple dozen burials at most as I say soil in Scotland is generally pretty acidic so not good for a bone survival. Can the public visit the site for example the site at Burghead does it open in any way to the public? Yes yes you can wander around it's the modern time today but during the warmer months there is a little centre at the you may be noticed a little white tower at the end of the promontory is the old Coast Guard station and there's a little museum in there that has a couple of the Burkhead bulls fragments of the Christian sculpture and a great model of what the fort looked like so it's well worth a visit. Reiny it's you know you can see some of the stones the old church there and done a care not a huge amount to see other than the stack today but there are great museums like Elgin Museum, Tarborough Discovery Centre so yeah get yourselves there and support those places please. And there's a question intriguing question about slavery. I mean I know there are some early drawings of what appear to be slaves is there any evidence of slavery being part of that kind of culture? Very tossing question. Absolutely absolutely and it's one we tend to shy away from a little bit but there's no doubt the Picts had slaves. Gildus in the 5th century rails against the Picts for slave trading and for taking into captivity some Christian communities and people from further south and there's also references in the life of Colombo to slaves within the Pictish court of King Berthay and contemporary Ireland where we have a really rich historical record you know as whole different categories of slaves so yeah unfortunately this is an incredibly hierarchical society and we shouldn't romanticise society in this time period as much as we do really it's fascinating and it's really interesting to find out about these societies and communities but we certainly shouldn't romanticise them. There's a question about textiles. Is there any sign of textiles or you mentioned that you mentioned weaving at one point but no textiles? No nothing surviving we tell a lie. No there is one there's the Ortony Huude which is a woollen shawl which is in the National Museum a fantastic item that was found in a peat bog up in Ortony Isles which dates from the Pictish period. There's a couple of leather shoes from a site in Dundarn which you've got beautiful punch decoration and then obviously we've got all the brooches and things surviving that survive better so these people would have been incredibly well dressed at certainly at these elite centres and you know there must have been quite sites to see I would imagine and also you know the name pics implies that they were painted they were tattooed certainly in the earlier period so yeah they would have probably been very striking individuals I would think. There are questions connected with you know what happened to them what brought it all to an end was it Norse invaders what was it from other cultures in Scotland I mean you mentioned that they joined in order to fend off the Vikings but did they lose? Well yeah I mean that's one of the big questions about the pics and the bit of early medieval Scotland is what happens to the pics because that identity just seems to suddenly really just disappear from the records in the late 9th century early 10th century I think is the last reference. I think there's a whole minor different things going on there's definitely a language shift so Gallic becomes the major language so and that's probably partly to do with influence of the church and Irish mission race but also probably due to Viking pressure in the west and the north probably leading to more Gallic settlers coming into the east and so Pictish clearly goes out of use and as maybe you're already going to use for example things like the symbols yet you actually don't really see much of those at some of these later royal centres of the 9th century so it's probably you know partly losing territory to the to the Norse language shift and probably the need to unite against you know new enemies I guess and really it's you know also losing that kind of ethnic dimension to the name as well in terms of Alba is just a name for Britain so it's you know it's it's more of a territorial name rather than ethnic name so you know by time you know in the 9th century if you've got Gallic speakers you've got Pictish speakers you've got Norse speakers in living in areas of Pickland maybe even Anglo-Saxon speakers as well then you know you you can imagine that these territorial names based on ethnicities are gonna gonna go so you know the later historiography is full of you know game of throne style massacres of the gales killing all the Picts but there's nothing in the contemporary sources that suggests anything quite as dramatic as that I think you know there does seem to be a shift towards Gallic speaking kings and language but doesn't that doesn't mean that that's you know a dramatic you know knight in the back and all the pics get massacred type event other questions about their interaction with the Romans you mentioned that the the different sort of tribes in Scotland might have united to fend off the new enemy coming from the north but what about the old enemy the Romans and the moving down on the Antonine wall or did they laid down theirs or they did they go as far as yeah the dreams wall you know what why and why did the Scotland not unite more against the Romans well I think that's an earlier example of uniting against against a common enemy so so as I say the Picts does seem to be an amalgamation of lots of different tribal identities you get get referred to in the 1st and 2nd centuries AD by the time you get to the 3rd and certainly the 4th century they really only talk about the Picts you know the the painted people and that could just be a nickname you know they don't know much about what's going on north but you know as you find in other areas of frontier situations you do tend to certainly in that late Roman period get people and groups merging together to try and take on the empire and resist the empire so I think really it's the Romans that lead you know create the Picts you know create their own enemy and they create a source of power that actually you know helps lead to the demise of occupation of of Roman Britain and eventually withdrawal of the of the Roman troops so the Picts are a major part of that big event in AD 367 the barbarian conspiracy which you know really took Roman Britain to its knees really so yeah creating their own eventual downfall really. You showed a couple of coins in your talk with holes drilled in them but and he also said the Picts didn't use coins these are coins from elsewhere so what what did they use? Yeah I mean it was only certain areas of English sex in England in certain time periods that used used coins you know the Irish and platonic areas were also non-coin using and essentially it was a barter system and you know a subsistence system so they would have been using things like raw materials cut up bits of silver you see things like Roman vessels being cut up and circulated to to native groups but also circulating within native society itself in that late Roman period and things like broaches we know that kings are giving up broaches and handpins to their followers to create that networks of allegiance and things like in early medieval Ireland you know again where you have things like law tracts that preserved you know you have to give your king every year or certain amounts of tribute and that's both in terms of food things like you know honey cattle but also service so you have to give certain amounts of labor and people and weeks per year to build the king's ramparts for example or to go to war with the king or to man vessels at sea so yeah that's the kind of thing for driving the economy. There's also a question about the hill foretip Bernacchi was is that also Pictish site or? Yeah I didn't really talk about that site tonight there's lots of sites I could have mentioned we've been working at Benehi as well in Aberdeenshire which is this really impressive citadel fort with a really impressive wall as well and we've we've excavated there recently and showed that was occupied in this time period as well seventh eighth ninth century's AD and there are a couple of lost Gaelic sagas that seem to refer to Benehi has been a major political center so again it looks like another one of these centers was one of these fortified hilltop settlements in that case actually much smaller than Tappanoth but may well have had settlements and buildings out with the fort as well. There's also a question you showed a slide of the dice tower the little on you know gain and the questioner says it reminds the shape of it reminded her of Dumfermland Abbey tower or is that just coincidence or I don't know I don't know anything about neither did she about when the tower at Dumfermland Abbey was built? Yeah it's just just coincidence it's you know the you know they're just they're essentially they're a form of gaming you know like my son plays gaming all the you drop the dice down and they fall down steps so they're like a table piece as part of a game so I don't think they're really meant to represent any particular building or building form per se and certainly nothing like that was you know constructed in in Scotland other than perhaps towers of Roman forts maybe. There's also a question a broader question about how you identify sites that are worth excavating how do you decide where to go is it based on where previous excavations have been or do you cruise about the country looking for say lightly sites and are there many more to be discovered do you think? Yes definitely lots more to discover but one of the traditional problems of Pictish archaeology is really finding the sites so as well as a lack of historical records there's actually very few archaeological sites so unlike the Iron Age you know for example where you've got thousands of hill forts of that time period you've got thousands of roundhouses that are found through excavation through development led excavation for example you know a number of Pictish settlements in eastern Scotland for example in the mainland you know you count on one or two hands really and it seems to be because they're going to build structures in different ways you know using things like turf walls and croc frames which archaeologically don't survive very well unless you've got a you know unique situation like Burkhead where you know sand below and later development kind of seals those down below. So yeah it's been a real challenge to find sites so we've been casting our net wide we've been excavating lots of forts only some of which turn out to be of this date and we also target sites that have been excavated for example at Burkhead was excavated in the 19th century done a care they had to find spots of the stones in the 19th century so it's that kind of clues that help but there's no doubting that is quite difficult to find sites like this but it shows you that you know little bits of work like Tappanoth you know where we've currently you know suddenly went from you know a handful of potential pictures buildings in eastern Scotland to you know perhaps as many as 800 houses on this hill you know you can just show you how quickly and dramatically you can change our understanding and the archaeological record overnight just by just by looking essentially. There was a question asking for you to post the crowdfunding link again and I see you've done that so again posted in the chat if you wish to take part in the crowdfunding there's a question about the pain you know the idea that pigs were painted people is there any anything from Pictish stones or the way in which people are depicted that would suggest that that was true it just occurred to me the word depicted is yeah yeah it probably means that yeah it literally means painted so yeah I think it almost certainly means they're certainly in the Roman Iron Age they are they're tattooed or they're decorated in some way you know perhaps with you know things like ochre and woad and all this kind of classic images you see I don't think we can doubt you know certain people probably were you know had you know decorated themselves in that way but there are there is I forget who is but there is a later antique author who refers to the pics has been tattooed as well I think that's 6th century so yeah I'm sure they were it probably became for increasingly frowned upon in the Christian context I would think but you know who knows really and one of the ideas about the symbols and their origin is that they may well start as a tattooing system you know painting or actually tattooing your your name or your clan or your identity on your body and that seems you know plausible and that system gets transferred to presumably wooden monuments and as well as stone monuments you know it's just again it's a matter of survival all we have is the stone monuments but you know there would be no world of wooden leather and other organic materials that you know unfortunately with you know we very rarely get preserved we're going to run out of time soon we've been putting a lot of questions to you I'll just ask you if it's okay a couple more there's quite a bit of interest in the the animals that are either you know uncovered in the excavations from their remains or on the the stones and you showed these bull ones and so on and other ones that looked like there might be wolves or something like that do do we know anything about the relationship with not just the animals they ate but with animals that they may you know have had as symbols or companions or anything like that yeah yeah again without any historical records it's you know it's difficult to say for sure but certainly we know in you know contemporary cultures in the Roman Iron Age you know animals certain animals certainly were sacred and part of the pagan religion bulls I think you know are an obvious element of of a religious belief in terms of their strength and their fertility and we can see you know in earlier Iron Age culture you get deposits of cattle skulls in particular locations animal bones found within burials and as foundation deposits for buildings so I have no doubt that was part of the you know the spiritual and religious culture of both the pagans and the Christian picks obviously you know animals have lots of spiritual dimensions within the Christian culture as well and you know it's no coincidence that you know a number of the pictures symbols are animals and they they're not they're not your every cattle pig and sheep you never get sheep depicted pigs really only as well bore and you get the the fearsome bulls as well so you know they're they're choosing particular animals that may well have had more meaning and significance rather than the kind of everyday animals so yeah it's really fascinating to to think about that I think that's perhaps more aggressive animals yeah absolutely and one of things you see on the later Christian stones depicted are fantastic hunt scenes so people on horseback chasing stags and deer and there's no doubt that that would have been part of elite culture as well and we do find one or two you know examples of wild resources at places like Burkhead so it's you know it's not an everyday part of the economy but it's something that they really emphasize on the pictures stones as again I think a marker of elite culture and dominance over over nature I guess and hunting grounds and territory yeah and just final question then when you mentioned dominance over nature you've made frequent reference to these massive palisades that they constructed and I know you've had an interest in the history of forests in Scotland and I guess even by the time we're speaking about a lot of the woodland had been lost from Scotland perhaps do we know much about how forested the landscape they lived in yeah it would certainly been more forested than today but you know the winner had the the wild woods of of the Mesolithic or even the early Nilsic but certainly they were able to get hold of some very sizable you know oak timbers for building the ramparts so you know they're able to access you know hundreds if not thousands of oak trees to build places like Burkhead but such is the power of of those rulers they may well have been you know floating those timbers in from other parts of Scotland or moving them across land but yeah certainly we would have been a significant forest cover in terms of you know you would need that for things like hunting but yeah an ever decreasing forest cover so for example in the northern isles and Keith Ness at Pictish sites there you can see that by the later Pictish phase they're tending to use things like peat or animal dung for fuel clearly because there was less and less timber going around well it's almost nine o'clock Gordon and so I think we we should draw this to a close there are some more questions I'm sorry for the questions that we didn't manage to ask but for the questioners whose questions we didn't manage to ask but that was really a fascinating talk Gordon about you know as you said mysterious people really and Gordon's just put a link on to your facebook site and and as he mentioned he's got a book out on these northern Pictish and also a previous book on forestry so while the deforestation perhaps so the history of the forestry so thank you very much on behalf of the whole society and we can just end it there I just remind people that the next talk is on the 20th of October and it's been given by Steven Reichert from the University of St Andrews on what the pandemic has taught us about human nature which will undoubtedly be interesting so thank you very much indeed so good night everybody and see you on the 20th of October


I'm Ben Hewitt, and I'm here with Coco Mosley, co-host, and Ardent. Graham, you nixed roof or not. And we're joined by Graham today because Graham is, in addition to being Role Vermont's field organizer, he is also our policy liaison to our policy consultant, Andrea Stander. So he spends a fair bit of time in the State House and monitoring bills that are moving through the State House, and we thought it'd be great to get a little bit of an update from Graham. So Graham, can you tell us a little bit about the bills that have been surfacing this session and what you've been working on? Absolutely. So every session there are countless bills that are going to affect our constituencies, whether they're farmers or consumers or just anybody. And as an organization, we have to make a choice through talking with our constituency, but also our board members and our staff about which pieces of legislation we're going to focus on. And so at this point in the session, we're through what's called crossover, which is a deadline by which bills have to go from one chamber, from the House to the Senate, or from the Senate to the House to stay alive. So we're at a point now where there's been, some bills have died as goes to Parliament, and some still have legs, which means they're still alive. So I can talk about the remaining bills that we see as being the potentially most impactful some positively for our constituencies and some having some potential negative impacts. Two of the bills that we're really excited about and we think are going to have some positive impacts on our constituency are the right to forestry bill, which largely deals with nuisance lawsuits from forestry operations in the state of Vermont and makes it easier to have small forestry operations into whether small nuisance complaints are lawsuits. And the other bill is the ag enterprise bill. And this is a bill which Roland Mott worked on probably starting in September or October with a group of stakeholders from the ag community, but also the land planning community. And it seeks to make it easier for farms to have accessory on-farm businesses and also provides some consistency across the state with how municipalities have to deal, can or can't deal with those businesses. So that would make it just a much more level playing field for people across the state. There wouldn't be this tremendous variability from one town to another in relation to what people were able to do on their property. Absolutely. There's that variability between towns with no zoning or very relaxed zoning regulations and then towns with more zoning. And if you're a farmer in certain towns you can, as it is now, have more leeway to do certain things than in other towns. Yeah, so let's dive into the ag enterprise bill. In terms of accessory businesses, what are you seeing people wanting to do on their farms that may or may not be zoned depending on where you live? Sure. So the main thing this bill does is it makes it so that any town can't outright prohibit any accessory business. So it means that they can say, they can't say no. They can say no if you don't do this. So right now we're hearing that people are, in general, it's pretty hard to be a viable farm operation when you're just doing production-based agriculture. Ain't that the truth? It's sad, sad times, right? It's sort of interesting that this bill comes from a really core sort of issue which is that people can't really seem to make a viable living simply by farming anymore. Absolutely. And that's what we hear over and over again by people coming to give testimony. We hear they want to offer dinners on their farm around the produce they're growing or the meat they're growing or that they want to offer educational events on the farm. Some folks want to do lodgings and sort of farmstays. What's really important in what we've identified as crucial to this bill that satisfies both farmers and municipalities is that there needs to be a nexus between that accessory business and the farming operation. Do you think it's opened the eyes of legislators to see sort of the struggles of small farms that are trying to make a living farming? Absolutely. I mean, not just legislators, but also other policy influencers in the room, other organizations who are out there seeking their own policy changes for their own constituencies. When you have someone come in and they talk about the real challenges of running their farm they're turning to the accessory business because, one, because they might want to educate people around their farm operation, et cetera, but really because of the lack of viability of their farm operation. When you see farmer after farmer come in of different sizes, different scales, different types of farms speaking to this issue, I think that's definitely true. Yeah, they didn't necessarily get into farming to have a bed and breakfast. Yeah, host weddings, and we see farmers are really nimble and able to kind of learn new trades and take on new skills, but there is this other real kind of sad point to it that we, as a state, are having a hard time supporting viable small farms. Right, and in one sense I think that indicates that this bill is getting it supporting people's adaptation to an unsustainable economic system for agriculture and it really points us to what do we do to actually deal with that root issue which is the lack of viability of farms to you because this is certainly supportive and that's a harder question because it really gets at things which state politicians have been telling us, it's harder to affect an economic system that's national or global. So yeah, if we're thinking of getting at that core issue, are there other bills that are addressing some of the challenges for small farms? Well we're hoping that this right to forestry bill can really be helpful for people who are integrating forestry operations on their farms and in terms of dealing with, we're seeing a lot more folks who are just having conflicts or complaints from neighbors in certain areas of state and that will help with that and that can be a big issue with shutting down what kind of nuisance reports, right? I mean we sort of, when we imagine Vermont and especially Vermont in the winter, forestry is a big part of what goes out in this state but what kind of nuisance complaints are farmers getting? They're oftentimes essentially like noise. Noise, yeah. Kate Bowen gave some great testimony on this bill. She farms down in, I believe, Putney with her family and I'd encourage folks, you can find that testimony on the Royal Vermont website, I believe, or our Facebook page at the very least. So there's been a number of great folks coming to testify who are working in the forestry community, either as foresters or as farms who are doing some forestry as part of their farm operation and I think that line between forestry and farm is getting blurred and for a good reason because these are both people, groups of people working on the working landscape, making a living from the land. Seasonal sort of adjusting. Yeah and having to manage not just your land in relation to what you're growing but also to your community and facing the repercussions of impacts of your business on the community. Is this primarily sort of firewood, lumber, building materials? I think a lot of nuisance complaints have come from firewood operations. Yeah, sort of small-scale firewood operations where you might be selling cords to your neighbors. And can you talk a little bit about Royal Vermont's position on these, to sort of talk specifically about these bills? I mean we've been basically supportive of these bills and I think believe in general that these are a step in the right direction should they actually come to pass. Is that jive with what your understanding is? Yeah, the right to forestry bill and the ag enterprise bill I think are the two bills we really see as having a positive impact especially for small-scale producers but really for people in the working lands in general. When we get to other bills, the hemp pilot program was something that we were, Royal Vermont's worked on hemp over time and we saw this as a potential bill because it really would seek to create a program at the agency bag which would allow farmers to research or easily research and grow and find processing equipment for this industry. And at this point we don't have that carved out at the agency. The hemp bill however has gone from a standalone bill to a part of a larger bill called the Royal Economic Development Bill which has gotten bogged down. So as an organization we look to hemp not necessarily for a number of reasons for fibers, for medicines, for oils as a potential product that could help Vermont growers. There's certainly been some concerns around industrial hemp in Vermont as well. It has a commodity crop but in general we think that hemp should be grown like a lot of other crops, there's a lot of great value to it and from a rotation crop to a fiber plant, etc. It's just been an issue we've been working on for a while and we're hoping to push this. Just to rewind a little bit just in case our listeners aren't sure what's the current status of growing hemp in Vermont. We get this question a lot at the office and so I think it's not really readily available to the public in terms of what the laws say right now about hemp production. Sure. So Vermont is one of the few states, Kentucky and South Dakota among others that have provided some means of farmers being allowed to grow agricultural hemp. So at this point farmers are allowed to grow in the state of Vermont but federally hemp is still considered associated with cannabis and a drug which could be so if the federal government saw fit they could certainly come in and do as they saw fit with a hemp operation is my understanding currently and there's both, there's a federal effort now actually by some of the more conservative lawmakers, I think Mitch McConnell, representative of Kentucky has recently proposed legislation federally which would make hemp no longer a drug and the state legislation would make it easier for people in the state to access seeds, to access research and to essentially convert what they can do now they're allowed to grow in the state into more readily create a product out of it and market it and research what's in the product, the integrity of the product. Has there been a lot of support from Vermonters for this hemp, Bill? No, like you said I think we've gotten more calls at the office about hemp over the last year than almost anything else and it's often times from growers who are interested or also people who own a facility that someone wants to use for processing so the interest is there and I think we've also heard like I said some concerns from people about just being displaced through another industrial commodity crop. So that's what I was going to ask you about because it seems like there is a lot of movement and sort of positive energy around hemp in the state right now but we've also heard from a handful of people about the potential for sort of unintended consequences of this popularity which is that concern for displacing perhaps some small scale grain operations or other agricultural operations for the production of hemp. Is that something you can expand on a little? It sounds like you're certainly familiar with that possibility or with those concerns. Yes, specifically heard from a couple of folks. One, a small vegetable farmer who's been leasing land and was told by the person they were leasing from that in the coming season they want to lease all that land out to hemp farmers and that person's made to find new land and from a bread baker who is concerned with Vermont based grains supplies and to some extent I think from an organizational perspective it's sort of like corn. I think there's 90,000 acres in Vermont or something in corn right now and as a commodity crop it clearly takes up a lot of space and it's responsible for a lot of the pesticide. Sure, there's a lot of management issues associated with corn which have environmental impacts or human health impacts or wildlife health impacts and I think in a sense like whether it's hemp or corn or other annual commodity crops we have to look at them as an organization we can support saying yes of course you have the right to grow corn or you have the right to have the right to grow hemp but how you grow it and how it integrates with the rest of our social and agricultural ecology needs to be considered as well so that we can have healthy thriving farms that aren't just dominated by an industry or one crop. So it's just not another replacement for large scale corn production so we can still have local grains and have a veggie farmer be able to find land to grow on. I'm curious where things are at with the there's been I think over the years a couple of different itinerations of a regenerative ag bill and I know that there's something at least in process right now and maybe you could just touch on that real briefly. Absolutely. I actually testified last week I think in the Senate Agriculture Committee about this so over the last few years like Ben said there's been a few different quote-unquote regenerative ag or regenerative soils bills out and rural Vermont has certainly been supportive and excited about testimony we've seen in the state house conversations we've seen within and without the state house that regard just that people are beginning to become more aware of the potential positive impacts of agricultural methods from sequestering carbon to protecting and improving water quality to improving wildlife habitat to you know growing more nutrition in foods so we're glad that those conversations are happening and people see that but the the challenge has been you know how are we going to incentivize producers to take on these practices and what's come forth have been a couple of different certification efforts last year there was a regenerative soils certification and this year there was an attempt to get the new Rodale Organic add-on in places law in Vermont and you know both of these certifications would require certifying bodies which requires funding and we also felt this organization that we really need to understand what how do farmers and community members in Vermont want to define regenerative is it just going to be about soil health isn't going to talk about farm worker quality of life in the social regenerative nature of things is it going to talk about economic regenerative quality like are you able to sustain yourself economically are you dependent on something else and if it is just going to be about ecological regeneration then what are the qualities we need to be measuring and is there real has there been enough stakeholder input on it and from our perspective over the last couple years the bills that we opposed didn't have enough stakeholder input this year what's happened is this Vermont environmental stewardship program which is a program that the agency of agriculture has been running it's a pilot program it's been in the works for a couple years I think this is the first year they're going to roll out with it they've substituted that program into as the regenerative ag piece of legislation so essentially it would make it would codify this program as a not just an agency of ag program but as a legislatively endorsed program which takes about 10 to 12 people per year and if you comply and you come in alignment with all their tests for environmental quality then you get a sign on your farm and like my testimony was essentially that you know rural Vermont is not going to stand in the way of this program we think any program out there that has some decent ways of improving farm practices and if farmers want to engage with those programs we're not going to stand in the way but in general we feel like the crisis is such environmentally in relation to agriculture and socially, economically in relation to agriculture that we need more than this we need real incentives that actually compensate farmers for the values that they are creating in terms of water or in terms of soil or in terms of animal health or nutrition and also that whole people accountable if they're doing the detrimentally so you know how it's just not enough and we don't have the answer to what that needs to look like but that's the conversation we need to be having in our opinion It gets back to our original conversation about farm viability Yeah I was just hearing you talk about that you know trying to develop that mechanism for acknowledging and maybe even compensating farmers for that value it occurs to me that we talk a lot about the ways in which our economy tends to externalize the environmental costs associated with you know more industrialized forms of agriculture but we're also sort of perhaps externalizing the environmental benefits in the sense that we aren't even acknowledging or recognizing those for people who are actually whose practices are actually nurturing to the environment and mitigating climate change and healing the land and building soil you know those benefits you know they stay with the farmer but they're much larger than that too they're really a benefit to society and community benefits and we're also externalizing that in the sense that we're not acknowledging it and we're seeing the repercussions of that right now with the lake and otherwise sure from decades you know I don't think we can expect to clean it up in a matter of just a couple years and just to say you know because you're mentioning some of these things that make me think you know one of the things we also said in testimony on this bill was that and we've said for a few years we really need methods of compensating people who are already exemplary farms because a lot of NRCS funding and otherwise goes to farms that really need to improve their methods and I should say rightly so you know farms that have problems should really be need to be improving those problems there should be funding but also folks who are doing that work and have been from the beginning are not being compensated and don't have any method for continuing to be incentivized to do those practices or in that sense they're losing their farm viability and they're not there's no compensation outside of potentially organic certification or some other label and in terms of a new label we just haven't figured out if that's really the path that farmers want to take to get compensated for this right and I think as an organization we have been a little bit agnostic on the issue of more certification you know I think it's probably safe to say that we're not generally speaking have not been necessarily supportive of adding yet further certification processes to the plate of farms that are often really over extended as it is unless there are really really very very clear benefits and do you see this where do you see this regenerative ag bill the one that's moving through right now is this still primarily a soils bill similar to the ones that have preceded it and does it have legs as you mentioned earlier yeah no I think it does it's interesting I don't think any no one wants to stand in the way of a program that could potentially improve practices I think but at the same time most people who are testifying are saying this isn't enough and this bill certainly focuses exclusively on soil health and ecological measures of regeneration or sustainability and again those are really good things to be measuring and I think there should be a broader discussion on what are the metrics we're going to use to balance to measure this for our standard because if we're going to say these are like the best of the best are the tests actually showing that are we just sort of making mediocrity the sort of best so if somebody who's listening wants to have some input in this bill or in the other bills that are shaken right now how would they go about doing that sure well there's a few different ways if you are specifically interested in a particular bill you can I think number one you can call or email Role Vermont and ask to talk to myself Graham or I think that'd be the best and I can either directly talk with you about how you can get involved that may be that may include giving testimony in person it may include giving testimony written if you are not someone who wants she feels like that's the way you can participate there's certainly other opportunities in which you can support our organization at helping to get more people's voices heard on this issue as well so I'd say just start by contacting us and we can direct you as best we can based on your own interests and skills that's great and if you have specific questions about other bills or other work that Role Vermont is doing or you want to see us doing feel free to email rvr at RoleVermont.org that inbox has been flooded by the way Koto I'm having a hard time waiting through all the queries but we will get to yours I promise so yeah please be in touch if you have questions or comments Graham thank you for your time and we'll definitely have you once the session maybe wraps up we'll have you back on and to sort of get the lay of the land at that point can I speak to one other bill please do yeah I know I was trying to be short but the pollinator there's a pollinator protection bill that I thought would be worth mentioning just because it's something that's been happening for a few years on and off you know members of the community have not have felt like bills have been insufficient and at this point this would be a bill we'd love to that you can make your voice heard right now on at the state house this bill is currently let me just check really quickly I believe it's still in the senate ag committee and it's been changed to H904 if you're interested so this is the pollinator protection bill and it specifically seeks to regulate neonicotinoid pesticides in the state and it's been incredibly weakened throughout the session and we're sensitive to farm viability issues associated with the cost of seed and challenges that farms have because they've sort of grown into via the industry the use of neonicotinoid treated seeds but homeowners as well across the state for treating ornamentals have been using this and the evidence points to not just significant pollinator damage but also broader insect and ecological damage associated with these pesticides and the bills a little weak light in that right now it originally asked for it required that seed dealers not only carry treated seed but also untreated seed which actually makes it possible for farmers and other growers to choose untreated seed but that provision has been struck so at this point it's really just a bill calling for a public education campaign around neonicotinoids adjudicated by the agency of agriculture and there's not much else to it right now so given that what would people be should people be doing sure it's again in touch with the pesticide action network or ourselves at rural Vermont we can direct you to some there's some letters going around circling which is suggesting some new language to be added to the bills specifically language which was recommended highly by the pollinator protection committee which was a legislative legislatively convened committee to address this issue and their recommendations have really not been being addressed or listened to so we could help direct you to petitions to sign on to evidence if you're looking just to learn more about the topic we can get you we can hopefully get you in to provide testimony about something you're interested in but I really just wanted to make this bill make you aware of this bill because it's something that our community's been interested in over the years and there's another iteration of it right now and it's just not sufficient and so people's input could be really valuable here as the bill gets stripped away absolutely it becomes less powerful absolutely we're seeing other interests sort of strip it away and if you feel like your voice if you want to make your voice heard now as an opportunity and is that sort of lobbyist for that are stripping away some of the protections or you know I would have to pass on who specifically has been giving testimony I know that there have been some feed dealer organizations and they're giving testimony you can see agriculture's been giving testimony but I'd defer that question to our consultant Andrew yeah awesome thanks again Graham so that email again Coco is RVR at realvermont.org and we would love to hear from you and I think I believe in our next episode we are going to be joined by Lindsay Harris going to have Lindsay yeah so she'll be talking to us about what's going on in Tunbridge and she's someone who's I think operation and livelihood really has been directly impacted by previous legislative sessions and what has resulted from those sessions so it'll be really interesting to talk to her about that impact on her farm and livelihood so thanks again Graham thank you Coco and thank you all see you soon


Are you worried that your deployment is going to affect your next promotion? Don't be. We've got you covered. Hi, and welcome to Sitrep, Army news that affects you. Since the STEP program was implemented in 2016, soldiers have been required to complete their online structured self-development and professional military education in order to be promoted to Sergeant through Sergeant Major. This potentially penalized deployed soldiers who didn't have access to training opportunities and couldn't break away to attend school. But effective immediately, operationally deployed soldiers who are fully qualified for promotion can now receive an exception to policy to defer the previously prerequired schooling. Soldiers who receive a professional military education deferment and get promoted will then have up to two years after returning from deployment to get to school. School deferred soldiers will still have to be fully qualified for promotion, possess the skills required of the next grade, meet or exceed their announced cutoff scores, and be commander verified that they have the capacity to serve at the higher grade. All deferred promotions must also be processed through their chain of command and may be delayed up to one month, and this will not be retroactive. It also does not relieve the NCO from completing the required school and will disqualify the soldier from any future promotions until the professional military education course is completed. This new update will ensure that qualified soldiers will be placed at the positions they deserve while also giving commanders another tool they can use to build better, more effective teams. For more detailed information, application guidelines, and the DA4187 format needed to apply for the deferment, head to the website below or talk to your S1. And if you have questions or topic ideas for Sitrep, let us know on Facebook or Twitter. Sergeant Martin, out.