The Britons (reconstructed P-Celtic *Pritanī, , ), also known as Celtic Britons or ancient Britons, were the Celtic people who inhabited Great Britain from at least the British Iron Age until the High Middle Ages, at which point they diverged into the Welsh, Cornish, and Bretons (among others). They spoke Common Brittonic, the ancestor of the modern Brittonic languages.
The oldest written evidence for the Britons is from Greco-Roman writers in the Iron Age. The earliest known mention is by Pytheas ( BC), who refers to the as being (Celts). Although later Greco-Roman writers do not call them Celts, they spoke a Celtic language and had Celtic cultural traits. Ancient Britain was made up of many tribes and kingdoms, associated with various hillforts. The Britons followed an ancient Celtic religion overseen by druids. Some of the southern polities had strong links with mainland Europe, especially with Gaul and Belgica, and minted their own coins.
The Roman Empire conquered most of Britain in the 1st century AD, creating the province of Britannia. The Romans invaded northern Britain, but tribes such as the Caledonians(Picts) in the north remained unconquered, and Hadrian's Wall (which bisects the modern English counties of Northumberland and Cumbria) became the western edge of the empire. A Romano-British culture emerged, mainly in the southeast, and British Latin coexisted with Brittonic. It is unclear what relationship the Britons had with the Picts, who lived outside of the empire beyond the Firth of Forth in northern Britain; however, most scholars today accept that the Pictish language was related to Common Brittonic, being either itself a Brittonic language, or a related branch of P-Celtic, known as Pritenic.Jackson, Kennth (1955) The Language of the Picts
Following the end of Roman rule in Britain during the 5th century, Anglo-Saxon settlement of eastern and southern Britain began. The culture and language of the Britons gradually fragmented, and much of their territory gradually became Anglo-Saxon, while the north and the Isle of Man became subject to a similar gradual settlement by Gaelic-speaking tribes from Ireland who eventually formed Scotland. The extent to which this cultural change was accompanied by wholesale population changes is still debated. During this time, Britons migrated to mainland Europe and established significant colonies in Brittany (now part of France), the Channel Islands, and Britonia (now part of Galicia, Spain). By the 11th century, Brittonic-speaking populations had split into distinct groups: the Welsh in Wales, the Cornish in Cornwall, the Bretons in Brittany, the Cumbrians of the Hen Ogledd ("Old North") in modern southern Scotland and northern England, and the remnants of the Pictish people in northern Scotland.Scottish Archaeological Research Framework (ScARF), Highland Framework, Early Medieval (accessed May 2022). Common Brittonic developed into the distinct Brittonic languages: Welsh, Cumbric, Cornish and Breton.
Name
In Celtic studies, 'Britons' refers to native speakers of the Brittonic languages in the ancient and medieval periods, "from the first evidence of such speech in the pre-Roman Iron Age, until the central Middle Ages".
The earliest known reference to the inhabitants of Britain was made by Pytheas, a Greek geographer who made a voyage of exploration around the British Isles between 330 and 320 BC. Although none of his writings remain, writers during the following centuries make frequent reference to them. The ancient Greeks called the people of Britain the Pretanoí or Bretanoí. Pliny's Natural History (77 AD) says the older name for the island was Albion, and Avienius calls it insula Albionum, "island of the Albions". The name could have reached Pytheas from the Gauls.
The P-Celtic ethnonym has been reconstructed as *Pritanī, from Common Celtic *kʷritu, which became Old Irish cruth and Old Welsh pryd. This likely means "people of the forms, shapely people", and could be linked to the Latin name Picti (the Picts), which is usually explained as meaning "painted people". The Old Welsh name for the Picts was Prydyn. Linguist Kim McCone suggests the name became restricted to inhabitants of the far north after Cymry displaced it as the name for the Welsh and Cumbrians. The Welsh prydydd, "maker of forms", was also a term for the highest grade of a bard.
The medieval Welsh form of Latin Britanni was Brython (singular and plural). Brython was introduced into English usage by John Rhys in 1884 as a term unambiguously referring to the P-Celtic speakers of Great Britain, to complement Goidel; hence the adjective Brythonic refers to the group of languages. "Brittonic languages" is a more recent coinage (first attested in 1923 according to the Oxford English Dictionary).
In the early Middle Ages, following the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, the Anglo-Saxons called all Britons Bryttas or Wealas (Welsh), while they continued to be called Britanni or Brittones in Medieval Latin. From the 11th century, they are more often referred to separately as the Welsh, Cumbrians, Cornish, and Bretons, as they had separate political histories from then. From the early 16th century, and especially after the Acts of Union 1707, the terms British and Briton could be applied to all inhabitants of the Kingdom of Great Britain, including the English, Scottish, and some Irish, or the subjects of the British Empire generally.
Culture Language
The Britons spoke an Insular Celtic language known as Common Brittonic. Brittonic was spoken throughout the island of Britain (in modern terms, England, Wales, and Scotland) and the Isle of Man. According to early medieval historical tradition, such as The Dream of Macsen Wledig, the post-Roman Celtic speakers of Armorica were colonists from Britain, resulting in the Breton language, a language related to Welsh and identical to Cornish in the early period, which is still used today. Thus, the area today is called Brittany (Br. Breizh, Fr. Bretagne, derived from Britannia).
Common Brittonic developed from the Insular branch of the Proto-Celtic language that developed in the British Isles after arriving from the continent at some point between the 10th and the 7th century BC. The language eventually began to diverge; some linguists have grouped subsequent developments as Western and Southwestern Brittonic languages. Western Brittonic developed into Welsh in Wales and the Cumbric language in the Hen Ogledd or "Old North" of Britain (modern northern England and southern Scotland), while the Southwestern dialect became Cornish in Cornwall and South West England and Breton in Armorica. Pictish is now generally accepted to descend from Common Brittonic rather than being a separate Celtic language. Welsh and Breton survive today; Cumbric and Pictish became extinct in the 12th century. Cornish had become extinct by the 19th century but has been the subject of language revitalization since the 20th century.
Art
The La Tène style, which covers British Celtic art, was late arriving in Britain, but after 300 BC the ancient British seem to have had generally similar cultural practices to the Celtic cultures nearest to them on the continent. There are significant differences in artistic styles, and the greatest period of what is known as the "Insular La Tène" style, surviving mostly in metalwork, was in the century or so before the Roman conquest, and perhaps the decades after it.
The carnyx, a trumpet with an animal-headed bell, was used by Celtic Britons during war and ceremony.Hunter, Fraser (of Museum of Scotland), Carnyx and Co- piece by Hunter on the carnyx
Other customs Archaeological evidence suggests that the pre-Roman Britons did not eat chicken or hares. During the late Iron Age and early Roman period, humans were often buried with chickens, thus suggesting a holy veneration to the animal. It is thought that chickens and hares may have been treated as sacred, and were believed to guide souls to the afterlife. Julius Caesar once wrote in Commentarii de Bello Gallico that the Britons considered it "contrary to divine law to eat the chicken, the hare, or the goose." In some parts of Britain, chickens weren't widely consumed until the 3rd century CE, and they were primarily eaten in heavily Romanised urban areas. Another view suggests that hares and chicken weren't in fact considered sacred, rather as rare and exotic animals, since their consumption increased with their number even without Romanisation.
Tribal groups
Celtic Britain was made up of many territories controlled by Brittonic tribes. They are generally believed to have dwelt throughout the whole island of Great Britain, at least as far north as the Clyde–Forth isthmus. The territory north of this 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. Their Goidelic (Gaelic) name, Cruithne, is cognate with Pritenī.
The following is a list of the major Brittonic tribes, in both the Latin and Brittonic languages, as well as their capitals during the Roman period. Tribe Capital Atrebatēs Calleva Atrebatum Brigantēs/Brigantī Isurium Brigantum Cantiacī Durovernum Cantiacorum Carvetīī (*Carwetīī) Luguvalium Catuvellaunī (*Catuwellaunī) Verulamium Corieltauvī (*Corieltauī) Ratae Corieltauvorum Cornovīī (*Cornowīī) Viroconium Cornoviorum Damnonīī Vanduara (Loudoun Hill or Walls Hill) Deceanglī Canovium or Clwydian hillforts Demetae Moridunum Dobunnī/Bodunnī Corinium Dobunnorum Dumnonīī Isca Dumnoniorum Durotrigēs Durnovaria; Maiden Castle Īcenī/Ecenī Venta Icenorum Novantae (*Nowantī) Rispain? Ordovicēs (*Ordowicī) Dinas Dinorwig? Parisī Petuaria Reginī Noviomagus Reginorum Selgovae (*Selgowī) Eildon Hill? Silurēs Venta Silurum; Llanmelin Textoverdī (*Textowerdī) Coria? Trinovantēs (*Trinowantī) Camulodunum Votadīnī/Otadīnī Traprain
History Origins There are competing hypotheses for when Celtic peoples, and the Celtic languages, first arrived in Britain, none of which have gained consensus. The traditional view during most of the twentieth century was that Celtic culture grew out of the central European Hallstatt culture, from which the Celts and their languages reached Britain in the first millennium BC. More recently, John Koch and Barry Cunliffe have challenged that with their 'Celtic from the West' theory, which has the Celtic languages developing as a maritime lingua franca or language of trade in the Atlantic Bronze Age cultural zone, which included Britain, before it spread eastward. Alternatively, Patrick Sims-Williams criticizes both of these hypotheses to propose 'Celtic from the Centre', which suggests Celtic originated in Gaul and spread during the first millennium BC, reaching Britain towards the end of this period.
A 2018 archaeogenetics study found that the spread of the Bell Beaker culture to Britain in the early Bronze Age was linked with the Indo-European migrations and a massive genetic shift. It resulted in about 90% of Britain's gene pool being replaced within a few hundred years (from 2400 BC to 2000 BC), as people with Early European Farmer ancestry were mostly replaced by people with Western Steppe Herder ancestry. The authors of the study said that the spread of the Bell Beaker culture and this population turnover could be linked with the spread of Celtic language to Britain.