The global experience of the COVID-19 pandemic over the past two and a half years I am writing in the spring of 2022 has brought with it a renewed interest in public health and, when it comes to the Middle East, broader interest in how populations there e
The Golden Age of artisan efforts at the Tarbat monastery did not last nearly as long as the monastery of Iona; the industrial locations were burned in a site wide fire in the eighth or ninth century, indicating they had only been utilized for a couple centuries before the sites were rendered unusable. The artisan workshops were the first aspect of the monastery to suffer from the flames that would serve as the beginning of the end for the Pictish establishment identifiable by "multi-colored deposits white, pink, red, orange, black, the garish remains of straw, heather and timber consumed by fire at high temperatures".