Able Minds and Practiced Hands: Scotland's Early Medieval Sculpture in the 21st Century(The Society for Medieval Archaeology Monographs)

This book presents essays that exemplify key themes including the interdependence of conservation, research and access; the need for a 21st-century inventory of the medieval sculpture; the breadth and value of the wide range of the research tools; and conservation issue.

Table of Contents:
1. Introduction: Able Minds and Practised Hands: Historical Fact, 21st-Century Aspiration 2. Sculpture in Action: Contexts for Stone Carving on the Tarbat Peninsula, Easter Ross 3. That Stone was Born Here and That's Where it Belongs': Hilton of Cadboll and the Negotiation of Identity, Ownership and Belonging 4. Just an Ald Steen': Reverence, Reuse, Revulsion and Rediscovery 5. Fragments of Significance: The Whole Picture 6. Christ's Cross Down into the Earth: Some Cross-Bases and their Problems 7. Pictish Cross-Slabs: An Examination of their Original Archaeological Context 8. Hic Memoria Perpetua: The Early Inscribed Stones of Southern Scotland in Context 9. The Govan School Revisited: Searching for Meaning in the Early Medieval Sculpture of Strathclyde 10. Scotland's Early Medieval Sculpture in the 21st Century: A Strategic Overview of Conservation Problems, Maintenance and Replication Methods 11. The Containment of Scottish Carved Stones in Situ: An Environmental Study of the Efficacy of Glazed Enclosures 12. The Runic Inscriptions of Scotland: Preservation, Documentation and Interpretation 13. Understanding What We See, or Seeing What We Understand: Graphic Recording, Past and Present, of the Early Medieval Sculpture at St Vigeans 14. The Bulls of Burghead and Allen's Technique of Illustration 15. A Perfect Accuracy of Delineation': Charlotte Wilhelmina Hibbert's Drawings of Early Medieval Carved Stones in Scotland 16. Bird, Beast or Fish? Problems of Identification and Interpretation of the Iconography Carved on the Tarbat Peninsula Cross-Slabs 17. Figuring Salvation: An Excursus into the Iconography of the Iona Crosses 18. The Role of Geological Analysis of Monuments: A Case Study from St Vigeans and Related Sites 19. The Early Medieval Sculptures from Murthly, Perth and Kinross: An Interdisciplinary Look at People, Politics and Monumental Art 20. Know Your Properties, Recognise the Possibilities: Historic Scotland's Strategy for the Interpretation of Early Medieval Sculpture in its Care 21. Proposals for the Re-Display of the Early Medieval Sculpture Collection at Whithorn: The Evolution of an Interpretative Approach 22. Curators of the Last Resort: The Role of a Local Museum Service in the Preservation and Interpretation of Early Medieval Sculptured Stones 23. A Museum Curator's Adventures in Pictland 24. The Missing Dimension: Future Directions in Digital Recording of Early Medieval Sculptured Stone 25. Three-Dimensional Recording of Pictish Sculpture 26. Towards A 'New ECMS': The Proposal for a New Corpus of Early Medieval Sculpture in Scotland

About the Author :
Sally M. Foster, Morag Cross