Caledonians (Celtic confederacy)

The Caledonians (Latin: Caledones), or Caledonian Confederacy, is a name given by historians to a group of indigenous peoples of what is now Scotland during the Iron Age and Roman eras.

The Romans referred to their territory as Caledonia and initially included them as Britons, but later distinguished as the Picts.

The Caledonians are enemies of the Roman Empire, which is the occupying force then administering most of Great Britain as the Roman province called Britannia.The term Caledones may derive from the Brythonic elements caled "hard, tough" plus the Celtic 'great' suffix, thus *caledonos "great, hard/tough person", *caledoni "great, hard/tough people".

Alternatively, it may be derived from the Brythonic calet-donia, again meaning "hard/tough people".

The Caledonians, like many Celtic tribes in Britain, are hillfort builders and farmers who defeat, and are defeated by, the Romans on several occasions.

The Romans never fully occupy Caledonia, though several attempts qre made.

Nearly all of the information that we have about the Caledonians comes from their Roman enemy, and therefore unbiased information is difficult to obtain.Peter Salway, author of Roman Britain (1981), a volume in the Oxford History of England series, considers the Caledonians to have consisted of indigenous Pictish tribes 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 reach an accommodation with Brythonic tribes such as the Votadini as effective buffer states.

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