Top billing for Pictish monastery project

THE unearthing of a Pictish monastery in the Highlands has been voted best archaeological project.

The Tarbat Discovery Programme at Portmahomack in Ross-shire began in 1994 to research the Pictish, Norse and medieval site and its context in the Moray Firth area.

The original monastery was built in the 8th century by the Picts on the Easter Ross peninsula but it was burned down a century later. Since then, six churches have stood on the site.

Gravediggers unearthed 13 fragments of Christian Pictish carved stone from in and around St Colman's churchyard between the 18th century and 1995. Decoration on the stone closely resembles that on one of the most famous Pictish stones found at the neighbouring village of Hilton of Cadboll.

The project involves the Tarbat Historic Trust, Highland Council and the University of York.

The announcement was made at the 2010 British Archaeological Awards held yesterday in the British Museum.

Highly commended in the section was the Inchmarnock Research Project which studies the archaeology and history of the island in the Sound of Bute from the earliest times down to the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

It was undertaken by Headland Archaeology and funded by Lord Smith of Kelvin, the owner of Inchmarnock.

Excavation to the north of St Marnock's church revealed the remains of what is interpreted as an early monastic enclosure, together with a number of workshops and pieces of inscribed slate dated to the 8th or 9th century AD.

The celebrated Orkney Venus, the only Neolithic carving of a human form to have been discovered in Scotland, failed to win the best archaeological discovery award. .

It lost out to the Staffordshire hoard - the largest collection of Anglo-Saxon gold ever found.