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Tarbat 1 Description of stone

Event ID 1037332

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Early Medieval Carved Stones Project

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1037332

Portmahomack, Tarbat 1 (TR 1), Ross and Cromarty, Pictish cross-slab fragment

Measurements: H 0.65m, W 1.10m, D 0.15m

Stone type: yellow sandstone

Place of discovery: NH 9149 8402

Present location: National Museums Scotland, Edinburgh (X.IB.190)

Evidence for discovery: found lying in the churchyard sometime before about 1850, when it was taken to Invergordon Castle and erected beside the drive leading from the Castle to the church. A larger fragment of the stone is said to have been used in a grave in Tarbat churchyard.

Present condition: damaged and worn, and face C has sheared off.

Description

This is the lower part of a cross-slab with part of its tenon. It is carved in relief on the surviving broad face and on the two narrow faces, each contained within a plain flat-band moulding. Face A has an inner figurative panel within a flat-band moulding separating it from a wide border of vine-scroll inhabited by animals. The inner panel contains several animals and a pipe-playing human figure in profile.

Narrow face B is filled with an interlace pattern, while face D has at the foot an animal and above there are three symbols: a serpent and Z-rod beneath a tuning-fork, and a crescent and V-rod.

Although face C has sheared off, it has been suggested that Tarbat 4 may have been part of a cross carved in relief on this face (Carver et al 2016, illus 5.3.51).

Date range: eighth century.

Primary references: Stuart 1856, pl 30; ECMS pt 3, 73-5; Henderson 2008, 190-2; Carver et al 2016, 123, 125, 160, D42.

Desk-based information compiled by A Ritchie 2018

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