   the caledonians (, ancient greek ÎÎ±Î»Î·Î´ÏÎ½ÎµÏ), 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,encyclopaedia romana. university of chicago. accessed march 1, 2007 but later distinguished as the picts. the caledonians were enemies of the roman empire, which was the occupying force then administering most of great britain as the roman province called britannia. the caledonians, like many celtic tribes in britain, were hillfort builders and farmers who defeated and were defeated by the romans on several occasions. the romans never fully occupied caledonia, though several attempts were made. nearly all of the information available about the caledonians is based on predominately roman sources, which may suggest bias. peter salway 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 reached an accommodation with brythonic tribes such as the votadini as effective buffer states. ==etymology== according to zimmer (2006), caledonia is derived from the tribal name caledones (or rather calÄ«dones), which he etymologizes as "possessing hard feet" ("alluding to standfastness or endurance", from the proto-celtic roots *kal- "hard" and *ÏÄdo- "foot").zimmer, stefan, "some names and epithets in culhwch ac olwen", in: studi celtici 3, 2004 [recte 2006], p. 163-179. similarly, moffat (2005) suggests that the name is related to the welsh word caled, "hard" (brittonic *caletv-), which could refer to the rocky land or the hardiness of the people, combined with the augmentative suffix -on-: thus *caletonos "great hardy one", *caletoni "great hardy ones". moffat (2005), p. 22. this etymology poses problems, however, as we would then expect *caletoni rather than than the attested caledones/calidones and it would not explain the inte
History_of_Scotland Late_Iron_Age_Scotland Picts Roman_military_occupation_in_southern_Scotland Scotland_during_the_Roman_Empire