Ronan Toolis is a Director of GUARD Archaeology Ltd, with over 25 years of experience of investigating archaeological sites. He has excavated extensively in Scotland, with particular emphasis on later prehistoric and early medieval settlements in southwest Scotland. In 2012 he led the excavation of Trusty’s Hill, a hitherto undiscovered early medieval royal stronghold. This is published as The Lost Dark Age Kingdom of Rheged. He is also engaged in the excavation of Tinnis Castle Hillfort, also believed to be an early medieval stronghold.
Early medieval Scotland is usually depicted as a patchwork of small kingdoms that disappeared over the course of time, during a period when the foundations were being laid for the separate nation states of Scotland and England. The historical evidence for many of these kingdoms is slight, tentative and contested.
But what is the actual hard, physical evidence for early medieval kingdoms in southern Scotland? What does archaeological evidence reveal about these kingdoms? Is it even possible to identify kingdoms from archaeological evidence? And what does archaeology reveal about the nature of society during this period.
