Novantae
The Novantae were a Celtic tribe in the late 2nd century in the region of present-day Galloway and Carrick in southwestern Scotland . Except in Ptolemy's Geographia , they are not mentioned in any historical work.
Excavations at Rispain Camp near Whithorn in southern Scotland reveal a fortified farm that was inhabited from AD 100 to AD 200. This find shows that the people of the region were knowledgeable about agriculture at the time.
Their ethnicity and cultural affiliation is controversial as British , Pictish , Gaelic, or combinations thereof are assumed. However, the region has a history that has known all three cultures at different times and there is not enough knowledge to rule out any one.
Ptolemy
The only reliable historical evidence of the Novantae is their mention in Claudius Ptolemy 's Geographike Hyphegesis , which mentions their homeland and cities. They cannot be found in any other source.
They differ from the other tribes described by Ptolemy in that their settlement area is precisely known. Ptolemy named important landscape features in addition to the names. The "Peninsula of Novantae" could be identified as Rhins of Galloway (a hammerhead-shaped peninsula on the southwest coast of Scotland) and the "Cape of Novantae" as Mull of Galloway (the southern tip of the peninsula). After Ptolemy, their cities were called Locopibium and Rerigonium. However, since there were no cities in that sense in the region at the time, he was probably referring to duns or royal courts .
Roman rule
The earliest reliable knowledge of the Galloway and Carrick region during the time the Novantae lived there is provided by archaeological exploration of Roman Britain. The only military base of the Roman army was a small fort at Gatehouse of Fleet in the southeastern part of the Novantae territory. The Roman excavation finds are portable, as if they had been carried into the region. The lack of evidence of a Roman presence contrasts the many legacies of the indigenous population and settlement areas. Rispain Camp near Whithorn was once thought to be a Roman settlement. Today it is known to be a fortified farm that was worked by the natives before and during Roman rule.
In his report on the campaigns of Gnaeus Iulius Agricola (governor from 78 to 84), Tacitus does not write anything specific about the tribes that lived in Scotland at the time. He says Agricola built forts in British territories in 79 after British dissatisfaction was resolved through violence and diplomacy. In 80 AD he marched on the Firth of Tay and fought the tribes that lived there. He only came back in 81, before that he consolidated his profit in the conquered area.
In the heart of the Novantae, as with the Damnonii and Votadini, no forts were built, which is possibly due to the fact that these tribes maintained a friendly relationship with the Romans, for example an alliance. There is at least no evidence that the Romans ever waged war against any of the tribes.
Contradicting Ptolemy
For a long time Ptolemy's location of the Selgover town of Trimontium on the south coast of Scotland was accepted. This changed when the explorer William Roy (1726–1790) moved it near Newstead and thus much further east. Roy tried to follow an itinerary from De Situ Britanniae (1757), a fictional description of the tribes and places of Britain. In his work Military Antiquities of the Romans in North Britain (1790) he writes that the relocation of Trimontium made the route more logical. Roy did not change the settlement area of the Selgovae in southern Scotland, but decided to add Trimontium to another tribe from De Situ Britanniae .
When De Situ Britanniae was exposed as a forgery in 1845, some historians retained its location of Trimontium. Some historians even gave the town back to the Selgovs by placing their area near Trimontium. Since the Novantae, according to Ptolemy, were neighbors of the Selgovae, their rulership was massively expanded, while Galloway was retained as their homeland.
A “bug fix” from the only reliable historical source (Ptolemy), which was only made to make a fictitious travel route in De Situ Britanniae seem more logical, is consequently retained . This spring is "enhanced" even further by moving the Selgovae far away from their only known area and to compensate for the extensive expansion of the Novantae territory.
While Roy's historical work goes largely unnoticed because he unwittingly relies on a fake source, his maps and drawings continue to be valued.
See also
Individual evidence
- ^ Claudius Ptolemy: Geographia 2.2, Albion Island of Britannia.
- ^ Sheppard Frere: Britannia: A History of Roman Britain. 3rd Edition, Routledge & Kegan Paul, ISBN 0-7102-1215-1 , pp. 88-89, 112-113, 130-131, 142-143, 347-348, Britannia.
- ^ Herbert Maxwell: A history of Dumfries and Galloway , William Blackwood and Sons, 1896: pp. 8, 9.
- ↑ Peter M'Kerlie: General History in History of the Lands and Their Owners in Galloway With Historical Sketches of the District, I , 1906: pp 1, 2
- ↑ Dennis Harding: The Iron Age in northern Britain: Celts and Romans, natives and invaders. Routledge, 2004, p. 62.
- ↑ Tacitus: The Life of Iulius Agricola (English edition)
- ^ William Roy: Military Antiquities of the Romans in North Britain. ( Memento of the original from October 15, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 1790, pp. 115-119.
