What happened to the Maeatae from Dumyat who lived in tents and carried spears?
DIGGING INTO THE PAST with Dr Murray Cook
As you read this I will be on Dumyat braving wind and rain to conduct the first major excavation on the site…. if you are free why not come up and see? As you all know Dumyat is the most prominent peak in the Ochils.
The name means the Fort of Maeatae and the fort is to the south-west of the main hill and is called Castlehill.
The Maeatae were the people who resisted Rome’s might and whose fort was destroyed in an enormous furious fire that was so intense that the stones melted and fused with each… the process called vitrification.
They are also mentioned in Adomnan’s Life of Columba as barbarians resisting an invasion from Argyll.
We’re not really sure what happened to them.
They were first conquered by the raiders from Argyll, then battered by Angles from Northumbria and finally taken over by the
Picts, but they probably survived and kept living under their new ruler.
Our most detailed account comes the Roman historian Cassius Dio who describes them as inhabiting‘wild and waterless mountains and desolate and swampy plains, and possess neither walls, cities, nor tilled fields...they dwell in tents, naked and unshod, possess their women in common, and in common rear all the offspring.
‘Their form of rule is democratic for the most part, and they are very fond of plundering; consequently they choose their boldest men as rulers’.
Their weapons comprised‘a shield and a short spear, with a bronze apple attached to the end of the spear-shaft, so that when it is shaken it may clash and terrify the enemy’.
Now while this may be propaganda there are depictions of naked warriors with spears with ‘bronze apples’at the base, like this example from Perth….did he visit Dumyat?