When the Romans came to what they called Caledonia (Scotland), they did not come to empty fields. The native local peoples had been living in the area for thousands of years. When the Romans arrived, the locals who were Celtic tribes, were not too sure about them. 

Unlike the Romans, the Celtic people in south Scotland did not live in houses made of stone or bricks. Their buildings and homes were made of wood and moss. Wood is organic. This means that over time, wood disappears. Stone does not disappear. This is why we have more Roman ruins than Celtic ones. The Celtic people would live in round houses and hillforts. Round houses were easy to make, and they were easy to heat with a fire. Celtic families would all live together in round houses. These round houses could sometimes have two stories.  

The Celtic people did not have a written language like we do.  Theirs was an oral tradition. The Romans did have a written language, it was called Latin. The Romans liked to write down almost everything that happened and would send letters to each other from across the Empire. Since the Celtic people did not have a written language, we do not know as much about them as we do the Romans. 

What we know about the Celts is mostly from the 

 perspective. This means that the information about the Celtic people may be biased. The Romans believed that the Celtic people were 'barbarians' and not civilized. In today’s time, we know that is not true. The Celts just lived differently to the Romans, that’s all. 

Another source of information about the Celts is their characteristic art.

We do know that the Celtic people and the Romans did not get along. We know this from a few different ways. One way is from the Romans. The Romans wrote on how difficult the Celtic people were, and how they were always attacking the forts and settlements like Trimontium. This is different from the English down south, who did trade and work with the Romans. In England, the population became 'romanized'.  The Celtic people would get large amounts of silver from the Romans to stop attacking them. This worked for a time. We know that one of the reasons the Romans did not take over Scotland, is because of the fighting with the native Celtic peoples.  

When the Romans left Scotland for good, the local people used the stones from Trimontium over time. They used the stones to build their homes and later their churches. The local people had iron before the Romans, but iron became more popular because of the Romans.  The presence of the Romans activated a kind of ‘unity’ of the local tribes and they became “the Picts”. The name 'Pict' comes from Latin meaning “painted people”. The Pictish period begins when the Romans left. It lasted from the 4th to the 9th centuries.

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