page_title: Celtic Britons
section_title: Territory
hierarchical_section_title: Celtic Britons / Territory
caption_attribution_description: English: A modern reenactor portraying an Ancient Celt (Vacomagi tribe, a.k.a Caledonian/Pict/Briton) with carnyx trumpet, crested helmet, chain mail (chainmaille), and woad circa 100-300 AD. The carnyx was used for war (signaling and intimidation), and ritual occasions as depicted on the Gundestrup cauldron. The costume, helmet and appearance were inspired by contemporary depictions and written accounts.
context_page_description: The Britons, also known as Celtic Britons or Ancient Britons, were Celtic people who inhabited Great Britain from at least the British Iron Age into the Middle Ages, at which point their culture and language diverged into the modern Welsh, Cornish and Bretons. They spoke the Common Brittonic language, the ancestor to the modern Brittonic languages.
  The traditional view that the Celtic Britons originally migrated from mainland Europe, predominantly across the English Channel—with their languages, culture and genes in the Iron Age—has been considerably undermined in recent decades by the contention of many scholars that Celtic languages had instead spread north along the Atlantic seaboard during the Bronze Age. Moreover, the results of genetic studies show a large continuity between Iron Age and older British populations, suggesting trans-cultural diffusion was also very important in the introduction of the Celtic languages.
  The earliest evidence for the Britons and their language in historical sources dates to the Iron Age. After the Roman conquest of Britain in the 1st century, a Romano-British culture emerged, and Latin and British Vulgar Latin coexisted with Brittonic.
context_section_description: Throughout their existence, the territory inhabited by the Britons was composed of numerous ever-changing areas controlled by Brittonic tribes. The extent of their territory before and during the Roman period is unclear, but is generally believed to include the whole of the island of Great Britain, at least as far north as the Clyde–Forth isthmus, and if the Picts are included as Brittonic speaking people (as they more usually are), the entirety of Great Britain and its offshore island groups. The territory north of the Firth of Forth was largely inhabited by the Picts; little direct evidence has been left of the Pictish language, but place names and Pictish personal names recorded in the later Irish annals suggest it was indeed related to the Common Brittonic language rather than to the Goidelic (Gaelic) languages of the Irish, Scots and Manx. Indeed their Goidelic Irish name, Cruithne, is cognate with Brythonic Priteni. After the invasion of north western Britain by Gaelic-speaking Celts from Ireland from the 6th century AD onwards, part of the Pictish territory was eventually absorbed into the Gaelic kingdoms of Dál Riata and Alba, which became Scotland. The Isle of Man, Shetland, the Hebrides and Orkney were originally inhabited by Britons also, but eventually became respectively Manx and Scots Gaelic speaking territories, while the Isles of Scilly and Anglesey (Ynys Mon) remained Brittonic, and the originally Brittonic Isle of Wight was taken by Anglo-Saxons.
  In 43 AD, the Roman Empire invaded Britain. The British tribes opposed the Roman legions for many decades, but by 84 AD the Romans had decisively conquered southern Britain and had pushed into Brittonic areas of what would later become northern England and southern Scotland. In 122 AD, they fortified the northern border with Hadrian's Wall, which spanned what is now Northern England. In 142 AD, Roman forces pushed north again and began construction of the Antonine Wall, which ran between the Forth–Clyde isthmus, but they retreated back to Hadrian's Wall after only twenty years. Although the native Britons south of Hadrian's Wall mostly kept their land, they were subject to the Roman governors, whilst the Brittonic-Pictish Britons north of the wall remained fully independent and unconquered. The Roman Empire retained control of "Britannia" until its departure about AD 410, although some parts of Britain had already effectively shrugged off Roman rule decades earlier.
  Thirty years or so after the time of the Roman departure, the Germanic-speaking Anglo-Saxons began a migration to the eastern coast of Britain, where they began to establish their own kingdoms, and the Gaelic-speaking Scots migrating from Dál nAraidi (modern Northern Ireland) did the same on the west coast of Scotland and the Isle of Man.
  At the same time, some Britons established themselves in what is now called Brittany and the Channel Islands. There they set up their own small kingdoms and the Breton language developed there from Brittonic Insular Celtic rather than Gaulish or Frankish. A further Brittonic colony, Britonia, was also set up at this time in Gallaecia in northwestern Spain.
  Many of the old Brittonic kingdoms began to disappear in the centuries after the Anglo-Saxon and Scottish Gaelic invasions; Parts of the regions of modern East Anglia, East Midlands, North East England, Argyll and South East England were the first to fall to the Germanic and Gaelic Scots invasions.
  The kingdom of Ceint (modern Kent) fell in 456 AD. Linnuis (which stood astride modern Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire) was subsumed as early as 500 AD and became the English Kingdom of Lindsey.
  Rhegin (essentially modern Sussex and eastern Hampshire) was likely fully conquered by 510 AD. Ynys Weith (Isle of Wight) fell in 530 AD, Caer Colun (essentially modern Essex) by 540 AD. The Gaels arrived on the north–west coast of Britain from Ireland, dispossessed the native Britons, and founded Dal Riata which encompassed modern Argyll, Skye and Iona between 500 and 560 AD. Deifr (Deira) which encompassed modern day Teessid
caption: A fantasy costumed man with a modern replica carnyx, a trumpet with an animal-headed bell, used by Celtic Britons during war.[16][17]
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