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Caledonians
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The Caledonians (Latin: Caledonii), or Caledonian Confederacy, is a name given by historians to a group of the Indigenous peoples of Scotland during the Iron Age that the Romans initially included as Britons, but later distinguished as the Picts. The Caledonians were enemies of the Roman Empire, which was the occupying force then and administering over most of Great Britain as a Roman province called Britannia. We do not know by what name the Caledonians called themselves.
The Caledonians, like many Brythonic tribes, were hillfort builders and farmers who defeated and were defeated by the Romans on several occasions.
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The Caledonians (Latin: Caledonii), or Caledonian Confederacy, is a name given by historians to a group of the Indigenous peoples of Scotland during the Iron Age that the Romans initially included as Britons, but later distinguished as the Picts. The Caledonians were enemies of the Roman Empire, which was the occupying force then and administering over most of Great Britain as a Roman province called Britannia. We do not know by what name the Caledonians called themselves.
The Caledonians, like many Brythonic tribes, were hillfort builders and farmers who defeated and were defeated by the Romans on several occasions. The Romans never fully occupied the territory they called Caledonia (broadly corresponding to modern Scotland) and resistance by the Caledonians was one of the factors that led to the Romans' abandonment of plans to occupy the area.
Nearly all of the information that we have about the Caledonians comes from their enemy; therefore it is necessary to be aware of the possibility of bias in the historical record. Tacitus mentions that they had red hair and large limbs (Agricola, 11).
An assessment by a modern historian
Peter Salway considers the Caledonians to have consisted of indigenous Pictish tribes augmented by fugitive Brythonic resistance fighters fleeing from Britannia. The Caledonii 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. There is some debate as to whether the Picts were Brythonic. The Romans reached an accommodation with Brythonic tribes such as the Votadini as effective buffer states.
History from the Roman perspective
See also Scotland during the Roman Empire
In AD 83 or 84, led by Calgacus, the Caledonians' defeat at the hands of Gnaeus Julius Agricola at Mons Graupius is recorded by Tacitus. Tacitus avoids using terms such as king to describe Calgacus and it is uncertain as to whether the Caledonians had single leaders or whether they were more disparate and that Calgacus was an elected war leader only.
In AD 180 they took part in an invasion of Britannia, breached Hadrian's Wall and were not brought under control for several years, eventually signing peace treaties with the governor Ulpius Marcellus. This suggests that they were capable of making formal agreements in unison despite supposedly having many different chieftains. However, Roman historians used the word "Caledonii" not only to refer to the Caledonii themselves, but also to any of the other tribes (both Pictish or Brythonic) living north of Hadrian's Wall, and it is uncertain whether these later were limited to individual groups or wider unions of tribes.
In 197 AD Dio Cassius records that the Caledonians aided in a further attack on the Roman frontier being led by the Maeatae and the Brigantes and probably inspired by the removal of garrisons on Hadrian's Wall by Clodius Albinus. He says the Caledonians broke the treaties they had made with Marcellus a few years earlier (Dio lxxvii, 12).
The governor who arrived to oversee the regaining of control over Britannia after Albinus' defeat, Virius Lupus, was obliged to buy peace from the Maeatae rather than fight them.
The Caledonians are next mentioned in 209, when they are said to have surrendered to the emperor Septimius Severus after he personally led a military expedition north of Hadrian's Wall, in search of a glorious military victory. Herodian and Dio wrote only in passing of the campaign but describe the Caledonians ceding territory to Rome as being the result. Dr. Colin Martin has suggested that the Severan campaigns did not seek a battle but instead sought to destroy the fertile agricultural land of eastern Scotland and thereby bring about genocide of the Caledonians through starvation.
By 210 however, the Caledonians had re-formed their alliance with the Maeatae and joined their fresh offensive. A punitive expedition led by Severus' son, Caracalla, was sent out with the purpose of slaughtering everyone it encountered from any of the northern tribes. Severus meanwhile prepared for total conquest but was already ill; he died at York in Britannia in 211. Caracalla attempted to take over command but when his troops refused to recognise him as emperor, he made peace with the Caledonians and retreated south of Hadrian's Wall to press his claim for the throne. Sheppard Frere suggests that Caracalla briefly continued the campaign after his father's death rather than immediately leaving, citing an apparent delay in his arrival in Rome and indirect numismatic and epigraphic factors that suggest he may instead have fully concluded the war but that Dio's hostility towards his subject led him to record the campaign as ending in a truce. Malcolm Todd however considers there to be no evidence to support this.
In any event, there is no further historical mention of the Caledonians for a century save for a c. AD 230 inscription from Colchester which records a dedication by a man calling himself the nephew (or grandson) of "Uepogenus, [a] Caledonian". This may be because Severus' campaigns were so successful that the Caledonians were wiped out.
In 305, Constantius Chlorus re-invaded the northern lands of Britain although the sources are vague over their claims of penetration into the far north and a great victory over the "Caledones and others" (Panegyrici Latini Vetares, VI (VII) vii 2). The event is notable in that it includes the first recorded use of the term 'Pict' to describe the tribes of the area.
Archaeological evidence
There is little direct evidence of a Caledonian archaeological culture but it is possible to describe the settlements in their territory during their existence.
The hillforts that stretched from the North York Moors to the Scottish highlands are evidence of a distinctive character emerging in northern Great Britain from the Middle Iron Age onwards. They were much smaller than the hillforts further south, often less than 10,000 square metres in area, and there is no evidence that they were extensively occupied or defended by the Caledonians, who appear to generally have had a dispersed settlement pattern. Suggestions of widespread warfare in Scotland at this period have been made.
By the time of the Roman invasion there had been a move towards less heavily fortified but better sheltered farmsteads surrounded by earthwork enclosures. Individual family groups likely inhabited these new fortified farmsteads, linked together with their neighbours through intermarriage.
The reason for this change from hilltop fortresses to farms amongst the Caledonians and their neighbours is unknown. Barry Cunliffe considers that the importance of demonstrating an impressive residence became less significant by the second century because of falling competition for resources due to advances in food production or a population decline. Alternatively, finds of Roman material may mean that social display became more of a matter of personal adornment with imported exotica rather than building an impressive dwelling.
See also
Bibliography
- Cunliffe, B, Iron Age Britain, Batsford, London, 2004, ISBN 0-7134-8839-5
- Frere, S, Britannia, Routledge, London, 1987, ISBN 0-7102-1215-1
- Salway, P, Roman Britain, OUP, Oxford, 1986
- Todd, M, Roman Britain, Fontana, London, 1985. ISBN 0-00-686064-8
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