A book on military history might seem a surprising choice to include in the review section of the PAS Journal,especially since titles in this series more commonly cover such periods as the Napoleonic or American Civil Wars. Barbarian Warriors, however, has a chapter on Pictish (and Irish) warfare to which it is well worth bringing the attention of those interested in this major aspect of Pictish history.

The book's front cover features a painting of the 685 battle of Nechtanesmere between Picts and Northumbrians, done by the meticulously accurate historical artist Richard Hook, one of a number illustrating the various peoples covered. Most of the plates in this lavishly illustrated book, however, are photographs showing reconstructions of weapons, armour and battle tactics by members of the 'living history' group Britannia and others who specialise in recreating 'Arthurian' warriors of the early Dark Ages and their enemies, Celtic or Germanic. As the introduction states (7):

The aim of this book is to describe in detail the military equipment of a succession of peoples who inhabited these islands between the end of the Roman Empire and the Norman Conquest,and test the credibility and effectiveness of their original equipment by reference to its present day re enactment and recreation ...

This is a legitimate (and no doubt fun) form of historical research, and the re-enactors' attention to accuracy seems as painstaking as any historian could wish. The results can be astonishing: a full colour recreation of a 'Beowulfian' Geat warrior (102) is especially magnificent. Helmet and mail-shirt, based on excavated examples, are impressive enough, but it is the details which tell: fine embroidery on the hem and arms of the tunic, tablet-woven braids at the neck, Germanic bird appliques on the sheath of a seax, and the beauty of a pattern-welded sword showing the sheen it was meant to have instead of a network of rust.

Tell-tale let-downs of cloaks too plainly made from tartan travel rugs, and the odd rather overweight weekend warrior not looking at home in what he is wearing, are hinted at in some of the reconstructions, but the re-enactors' dedication to getting the past right is palpable.

The Pictish chapter relies heavily on the visual evidence of the carved stones, rather than archaeological finds as other parts of the book tend to do. This is inevitable given the extremely limited number of excavated Pictish weapons or fragments of weapon - an almost ludicrously small amount of material compared with the scores of Anglo-Saxon or the hundreds of Continental Germanic examples known. If only the burial of grave-goods with the dead had also been a common Pictish custom! The scuIptured stones are a rich source of evidence in their own way, but the reconstructions of Pictish equipment are inevitably more speculative than those in other parts of the book.

The evidence (or lack of it) for helmets, swords, shields and so on is gone through systematically, as it is in the chapters dealing with the other peoples covered in Barbarian Warriors. The authors have relied heavily on the writings of Graeme Cruickshank, whose paper on Pictish helmets in PAS Journal 5 and booklet on the Battle of Dunnichen are both cited. The possible representation of the battle on the Kirkton of Aberlemno stone is, as is weII known, the most informative surviving representation of Pictish equipment and tactics, and the 'Dunnichen battle block' of three mutually supporting warriors is reconstructed on page 55. Apparently, the formation functions:'with great effect against random and ordered forces of greater number' and is 'very hard to beat' in the field (65). A valuable new indication of the reality behind the famous battle-scene and perhaps the key to Bridei son of Bili's victory.

Other chapters in the book cover Arthurian Warriors. Saxons, Vikings and Nornmans. There is a Dark Ages Directory at the end, listing re-enactment societies (none based in Scotland), armourers and craftspeople who supply their equipment, and other useful addresses, including that of the Pictish Arts Society.

There are rather a large number of spelling mistakes in the text, and the authors make the occasional minor factual error, perhaps inevitable when dealing with a field at once specialised and diverse. Nevertheless, this is a valuable corpus of information on aII aspects of the military history of the early medieval British Isles, and indispensable for anyone interested in re enacting the period.

Niall M Robertson