“Shared Space” usually refers to mixed pedestrian and vehicle surfaces without boundaries in urban areas – enabling co-existence. This is Exhibition Road, London taken from an article in the 7 December 2011 Evening Standard:-
Investigations in this website set out to explore whether the surfaces of Pictish Symbol Stones could be considered in a similar way.
With carved objects on their surfaces having minimal boundaries, segregation or demarcation – the Symbol Stones seem to have provided a “Shared Space” that variously accommodated expressions of Celtic, Mithraic and Christian beliefs. The range of carvings expanded beyond beliefs to record hunting and battle scenes; over time there were additions of Ogham script.
Primarily the Investigations in this website consider prospective relationships between the depictions of beliefs. Across the Stones there are different mixes of carvings – Mithraic with Celtic, Mithraic with Christian, Celtic with Christian and Mithraic, Celtic & Christian together.
From the almost total lack of defacing, disfiguring or otherwise damaging them the Stones look little different today as they would have done when they were originally carved. If these Stones did enable a truly “shared” space, why was this so successful? This website has aimed to find out why.
Investigations into different combinations of beliefs are comprehensively detailed followed by
With the V-Rod & Crescent and the Z-Rod & Double Disc having Pictish-Mithraic decodes and Christianity represented by the Latin Cross, this Stone (Cossans, St Orland’s) suggests, at minimum, acceptance of these two beliefs within a “Shared Space”.
A fuller introduction into “Shared Space” in the context of Pictish Symbol Stones is in this PDF:- Shared Space in Context.