Novantae

The Novantae were a people of the late 2nd century who lived in what is now Galloway and Carrick, in southwestern-most Scotland. They are mentioned briefly in Ptolemy's Geography (written c. 150), and there is no other historical record of them. Excavations at Rispain Camp, near Whithorn, show that it was a large fortified farmstead occupied between 100 BC and 200 AD, indicating that the people living in the area at that time were engaged in agriculture.

Their ethnic and cultural affinity is uncertain, with various authorities positing different links, beginning with Bede, who referred to the Novantae as the Niduarian Picts, and including the Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.), which described them as “a tribe of Celtic Gaels called Novantae or Atecott Picts.” Scottish author Edward Grant Ries has identified the Novantae (along with other early tribes of southern Scotland) as a Brythonic-speaking culture. However, the region has a history that includes the culture of the Gaels, Picts, and Brythonic speakers at various times, alone and in combination, and there is not enough information to make conclusions about the ethnicity of the Novantae..

The only reliable historical reference to the Novantae is from the Geography of Ptolemy in c. 150, where he gives their homeland and primary towns. They are found in no other source.

They are unique among the peoples that Ptolemy names in that their location is reliably known due to the way he named several readily identifiable physical features. His Novantarum Cheronesus is the Rhins of Galloway, and his Novantarum promontory is the Mull of Galloway. This pins the Novantae to that area. Ptolemy says that their towns were Locopibium and Rerigonium. As there were no towns as such in the area at that time, he was likely referring to native strong points such as duns or royal courts.

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