in the 5th Century BC, the island of Great Britain was a mere rumour to the Mediterranean world.
It was known to some as a trading hub for tin, but to others as unconfirmed hearsay.
But fast forward 500 years and the Roman Empire would firmly bring this island into the
realm of certainty during their third and final invasion of the land that they called Britannia.
During these invasions the Romans would encounter dozens of different tribes all
across the island, who all spoke a Celtic language that they thought seemed similar
to Gallic, and it's these tribes that I'd like to take a look at today. In these two videos I want
In these two videos I want to map out the various Celtic tribes of Great Britain in the first century BC prior to any
sort of Roman interference, starting today with the tribes found in Southern England and Wales.
The first Brythonic tribe ever described in writing were a group of people called the
Cantii, who were mentioned by Julius Caesar during his two expeditions to Britain in 55 and 54 BC.
He tells us that they lived on the south-eastern tip of Britannia (which he thought was shaped like
a triangle), and that their culture and customs were very similar to the Gauls (the Celtic population
that inhabited modern-day France). Because of this, Caesar also believed that the Cantii were
the most civilized of all the Britons, how rude! figuring out exactly where the Canty or really
Figuring out exactly where the Cantii, or really
any of these tribes lived is going to be fairly difficult. The first description of the location
of the tribes of Britain was done by a Greek scholar named Ptolemy in the second century
and even then this was not precise. Fortunately for us, in southern and eastern Britain, we have a few
artefacts that could help us in this effort: coins!
Some of the Britons used coins and these coins
are useful to us largely in two ways: if we are lucky then the coin will be marked with the name
of a tribe, allowing us to identify their producer easily. More commonly though, they only contain the
name of a king (if anything at all). Sometimes we can connect these names to actual people mentioned in
historical sources, again allowing us to identify their producer fairly easily. But most of the time
we have to guess which tribe they belong to, based on the physical location of the coins.
Let's use an example: in the south-eastern tip of Great Britain we can find quite a large collection of Celtic
coins. Do any of them have the name of a tribe on them?
No, so we can't identify them in that way.
But do they contain the name of the king that produced them?
Yes, three kings in fact. Now while these Kings aren't mentioned in any surviving sources,
we can draw a rough boundary of the land that they might have ruled based on the physical location of their coins,
and thanks to the fact that Caesar and later Ptolemy both tell us that the people who inhabited this region are known as the Cantii,
we can assume that these men were Cantii kings, therefore we can use the boundary
of their Kingdom as a rough guide for where the Cantii tribe might have lived.
Interestingly, if you just count this single coin in eastern Sussex, then the hypothetical boundary of the
Cantii roughly looks like the modern day county of Kent, which also takes its name from this tribe.
To the west of the Cantii, we have the Atrebates, and I really hope I pronounced that correctly.
Culturally speaking they were quite different from both the Gauls and their Gallic-influenced
neighbours, with one massive exception though: their name, which they shared with a Gallic tribe just
across the English Channel. This bizarre situation seems to have occurred during the Roman invasion
of Gaul, which caused quite a few people to flee across the channel and into Britain, and one of
these people was a man named Commius, the former ruler of the Gallic Atrebates. Commius seems to
have fled across the English Channel and assumed leadership over the Britons here, forming a new
kingdom of the Atrebates. To his west, he would be joined by a large contingent of Belgic people,
also likely fleeing Caesar's invasion, and to the east we are told that he bordered a mysterious, new
polity known as the Regni. Commius likely took over an already existing Brythonic kingdom, and if
we examine the coins found in this area, we can identify an old, and wide-reaching group of them
dating to about 75 BC, seemingly indicating what the original Brythonic kingdom would have looked
like, although the original name of these people has unfortunately been lost to time.
If we travel further west we run into the Durotriges, an apparently close-knit and closed
off confederacy of smaller hillforts centred around a larger power base here. Culturally
speaking the Durotriges took very little influence from their neighbours, although they
did maintain close connections via trade routes, sending pottery and salt in exchange for coins.
Their coins tell us that they lived roughly around the modern day county of Dorset, with a small
Bosnia-style stretch of coast in the north, likely being bound by the Brue and Axe Rivers. Further west
still, past the River Axe, we have the Dumnonii. This tribe didn't actually use currency, but as they're
the only tribe mentioned by Ptolemy as living in the area, we can assume that they occupied
all of the lands west of the Durotriges. It appears they had close cultural connections to the people
living in modern day Brittany, as the architecture in the form of cliff castles and souterrains
are very similar, and this cultural link would persist, as in a few centuries time there would
be a migration of Celtic-speaking people from this region into Brittany, likely fleeing Irish raids,
and it'll be these people who would reintroduce the Celtic language to this area, which today is
known as Breton, one of the six remaining Celtic languages. The Dumnonii also appeared to have
reformed into a kingdom of their own following the Roman withdrawal of Britain as in the 6th
century A.D a monk named Gildas tells us of the wicked crimes committed by the king of Dumnonia.
To the Northwest we have the Dobunni, who lived roughly around the modern day county
of Gloucestershire, although their coins do stretch all along the Wye and Severn Rivers,
indicating that they may have had strong trading links with the people living along these waterways.
To their East we have the Catuvellauni, the "pre-eminent fighters", whose coins and culture
are extremely similar to their neighbours the Trinovantes which means the "very rigorous ones".
These people were so similar in fact that we actually cannot tell them apart. If Ptolemy
didn't tell us that a different group of people were living here then we would have no idea.
The historian Barry Cunliffe believes that we can draw a rough boundary between these two
peoples by using the coins of a king named Cunobelinus this man was the king of the Catuvellauni,
and we are told that he greatly expanded his territory sometime around AD 30 and if we look
at where we can find his coins, and compare them to where we can find the other Catuvellauni coins,
then we can see that he must have exerted control over the area of the Cantii, and
this region of Eastern England ,ultimately telling us that perhaps the Catuvellauni did
not control this coastline before, and instead that it was the territory of the Trinovantes.
To the north of these people we have the Iceni, who were famous for being the home of
Boudicca, the Brythonic queen who led a rebellion against the Romans and burnt down the city of
Colchester, two goals that I believe everyone in the UK aspires to achieve. And to their West we
have the Corieltauvi, who were separated from the Iceni by the Wash and the Fens: a large tidal swamp
that covered a huge area of Eastern England, that would only begin to be drained in the 17th century.
The Corieltauvi themselves were a bit of a trading powerhouse, exporting valuable iron,
salt, and agricultural products in exchange for high quality pottery from Gaul. The Corieltauvi
are the eighth and final Brythonic tribe that used coins, meaning that from here on out the
evidence we have for where these remaining tribes lived becomes a lot more speculative.
as we move west the Corieltauvi coins begin to taper out, and Cunliffe believes that they may
have had a boundary in the Trent Valley with their neighbour, the Cornovii, who we are told inhabited
areas around the Roman cities of Viroconium and Deva, modern day Wroxeter and Chester, likely
stretching up to the Mersey river. They also likely shared a western boundary with Ordovices tribe
in Wales although where that border was is hard to define. One clue might be found in three hill
forts located here, which appear to have a blend of Cornovii and Ordovician features
possibly indicating that they were located on the border between the two tribes, and subsequently
became a hub for a cross-cultural contact, resulting in the blended features in the fort.
The Ordovices themselves are one of the five Celtic tribes that inhabited Wales, likely living
in hillforts across the modern day counties of Gwynedd and Powys, and they also likely inhabited
the island of Ynys Môn, an apparent stronghold of the Druids, who were a group of religious leaders
present all across Britain and Gaul, but Caesar, and many historians today believe that they may have
had their origins here in Britain, and possibly here on Anglesey. Just south of the Ordovices
we have what Ptolemy calls the "promontory of the Gangani" which is likely referring to the
Llŷn Peninsula. The Gangani were also named as a tribe somewhere in South West Ireland so what
Ptolemy is potentially telling us is that by the second Century A.D, the Irish Gangani may
have established a colony in this part of Britain. This would not be all that unusual for the time,
as Irish raids would soon begin to ramp up in this era, and following their own withdrawal
from Britain Irish colonizers would establish one, or potentially two, entire Kingdoms in Wales.
to the west of the Ordovices, we have the Deceangli.
We can't exactly discern where these people lived, but according to the Roman historian
Tacitus they were the tribe that was invaded by the Roman general Ostorius in 48 A.D, meaning
that they likely lived along the northern coast of Wales, between the Dee and Conwy
rivers, and that they are the first people in Wales to ever be mentioned in recorded history.
And to the South we have the Silures, who seem to have lived
between the Wye and Tawe rivers, and they were quite the thorn in the Roman's side.
In 47 and 48 A.D they invaded Roman Britain, under the leadership of a man named Caractus, who had
formerly been the king of the Catuvellauni tribe that I mentioned earlier. And only four years later
they would defeat the Roman 20th Legion, only being conquered themselves in AD 75, two decades later!
And finally for Wales we have the Demetae, inhabiting the modern day counties of Ceredigion,
Carmarthen, and Pembrokeshire. This tribe was unusually decentralized, rather than being
say a few small forts centred on one large fort, they appear to have instead been a large
collection of medium-sized forts without any sort of central authority. And with that we've covered
all of the tribes found in southern Britain from the coin-wielding Gallic-influenced kings in the
East, to the druidic strongholds and fortified hilltops in the west, and we've roughly mapped
out what their borders would have looked like. This is Southern Britain in around 100 BC prior to the
Roman invasion of both Britain and Gaul. This is the clearest picture we can get of the islands
that the Romans never knew, as their invasion of modern day France would lead to irreversible
changes of the British political landscape, causing countless amounts of history to be lost to time.
Thank you for watching, if you'd like me to cover these tribes in more detail feel free
to leave a comment below and join me next time for my video on the Northern tribes of Britain.