Autrigones

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·Red: pre-Indoeuropean tribes
·Blue: Celtic tribes]

Autrigones were a tribe described by the Roman historian Orosius as neighbours of Gallaecia which is in the northwest of Hispania. Their historical territory now lies split between the provinces of Cantabria (east of Ason river), Burgos (north-east), Biscay (west of Nervion-Ibaizabal river), Alava (west) and La Rioja (west). They had harbour in Flaviobriga and/or Portus Amanus. Pliny writes about the 'ten states of the Autrigones' and says the only ones worth mention are Tritium and Virovesca (possibly the present Briviesca). [Pliny the Elder, The Natural History (eds. John Bostock, M.D., F.R.S., H.T. Riley, Esq., B.A.) Book III Chap.4,3http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus:text:1999.02.0137&query=page%3D%23167]

Also known as ‘Austrigones’, they were a Central European Celtic people that originally settled the Garrone valley area in Gaul in the 5th Century BC, were they mingled with the Belgae. Around the beginning of the 4th Century BC they and some of their Belgae vassals migrated to the Iberian Peninsula. After crossing the Pyrennes, they pushed through the mountainous Navarra region and the upper Ebro basin into the northern meseta. By the mid-4th Century BC the Autrigones overrun the entire area corresponding today to the modern provinces of Santander and Burgos – which eventually became known as "Autrigonia" or "Austrigonia" – reaching the Pisuerga valley where they established their capital "Autraca" or "Austraca", located at the banks of the river "Autra" (Odra). They also gained an outlet to the sea by seizing from the Aquitanian-speaking Caristii further east the coastal highland region between the rivers Asón and Nervión, in the modern Vizcaya and Álava Basque provinces. However, their hold to this vast territory was meant to be short-lived; some time after 300 BC, they were driven out from southern Autrigonia (the western Burgos region) by the Turmodigi (see below) and the Vaccei, who seized the Autrigones’ early capital Autraca. Thrust back to their lands north of the Arlanzón valley during the 3rd Century BC, the Autrigones’ became in the 2nd-1st Centuries BC a tribal society similar to the peoples of the north-west around several mountain-top fortified towns ("Civitates") on the mountain ranges of the upper Ebro, chiefly among them "Tritium" and "Virovesca" (possibly the present-day Briviesca), protected by stout rammed earth walls of ‘Numantine’ type. Although being traditional allies of the Berones, they seem to have taken no part in the Celtiberian and Roman Civil wars and remained independent until the late 1st Century BC, when the mounting pressure of Asture and Cantabrian raiding finally forced them to seek an alliance with Rome.

Bibliography

* Ángel Montenegro "et alii", "Historia de España 2 - colonizaciones y formación de los pueblos prerromanos (1200-218 a.C)", Editorial Gredos, Madrid (1989)(ISBN 84-249-1386-8)

ee also

*Pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian Peninsula

Notes