Research Ritual and remembrance at a prehistoric ceremonial complex in central Scotland: excavations at Forteviot, Perth and Kinross Gordon Noble 1 & Kenneth Brophy 2 Aerial photography and excavations have brought to notice a major prehistoric ceremonial complex in central Scotland comparable to Stonehenge, although largely built in earth and timber. Beginning, like Stonehenge, as a cremation cemetery, it launched its monumentality by means of an immense circle of tree trunks, and developed it with smaller circles of posts and an earth bank (henge). A change of political mood in the Early Bronze Age is marked by one of Scotland’s best preserved dagger-burials in a stone cist with an engraved lid. The perishable (or reusable) materials meant that this great centre lay for millennia under ploughed fields, until it was adopted, by design or by chance, as a centre of the Pictish kings. Keywords: Scotland, Strathearn, Neolithic, Bronze Age, third millennium BC, cremation, palisaded enclosure, timber circles, henge, cist burial, dagger burial, Pictish palace Introduction The Perthshire village of Forteviot in central Scotland has been cited since the seventeenth century as the location of a ninth–eleventh century AD royal palace and a fine collection of Pictish carved stones and crosses (Alcock & Alcock 1992; Aitchison 2006). However, it took 1 Department of Archaeology, University of Aberdeen, St Mary’s Building, Elphinstone Road, Aberdeen AB24 3UF, UK (Author for correspondence, email: g.noble@abdn.ac.uk) 2 School of Humanities, University of Glasgow, The Gregory Building, Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK (Email: kenny.brophy@glasgow.ac.uk) Received 5 July 2010; Accepted: 9 August 2010; Revised: 17 September 2010 ANTIQUITY 85 (2011): 787–804 http://antiquity.ac.uk/ant/085/ant0850787.htm 787