Caledonians

The Caledonians (Latin: Caledones or Caledonii; Greek: Καληδώνες, Kalēdōnes) or the Caledonian Confederacy were a group of indigenous peoples of what is now Scotland during the Iron Age and Roman eras. The name is an exonym: the Ancient Greeks and Romans knew their territory as Caledonia and used the term vaguely in reference to its inhabitants. The Caledonians were initially considered to be a group of Britons, but were later distinguished as the Picts, a related people who nonetheless spoke a Brittonic language. The Caledonian Britons were enemies of the Roman Empire, which was the occupying force then administering most of Great Britain as the Roman province of Britannia.

The Caledonians, like many Celtic tribes in Britain, were hillfort builders and farmers who defeated and were defeated by the Romans on several occasions. The Romans never fully occupied Caledonia, though several attempts were made. Nearly all of the information available about the Caledonians is based on predominately Roman sources, which may suggest bias.

Peter Salway considers the Caledonians to have consisted of indigenous Pictish tribes speaking a language closely related to or a branch of Brittonic augmented by fugitive Brythonic resistance fighters fleeing from Britannia. The Caledonian tribe, after which the historical Caledonian Confederacy is named, may have been joined in conflict with Rome by tribes in northern central Scotland by this time, such as the Vacomagi, Taexali and Venicones recorded by Ptolemy. The Romans reached an accommodation with Brythonic tribes such as the Votadini as effective buffer states.

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