Pellendones


The Pellendones, also designated Pelendones Celtiberorum and Cerindones, were an ancient pre-Roman Celtic people living on the Iberian Peninsula. From the early 4th century BC they inhabited the region near the source of the river Duero in what today is north-central Spain, an area comprising the north of Soria, the southeast of Burgos and the southwest of La Rioja provinces.

Origins

Possibly of mixed Illyrian and Celtic origin, the Pellendones migrated to the Iberian Peninsula around the 4th Century BC. Their original native name might have been *Kellendones, and is possible that they were related to the Gallic Belendi or Pelendi of the middle Sigmatis river valley in Gallia. They spoke a 'Q-Celtic' language.

Culture

A predominantly stock-raising people that practiced transhumance in the grazing lowlands of the Ebro valley, the Pellendones are attributed to the Iron Age "Culture of the Soria hillforts" that flourished between the 6th and 4th centuries BC in the north of present-day Soria province.
Their capital was Visontium, and are credited as being the original founders of Numantia and Savia. They also controlled the towns of Aregrada/''Arekorata, Arenetum, Quelia/Quelium and Contrebia Leukade, although the location of Viscintium, Lutia, Olibia and Varia'' remains either incertain or unknown.

History

Closely related with both the Arevaci – to whom they were a dependant tribe, though regarded as a separated people – and the Vettones, they threw off the Arevacian yoke possibly with Roman help in the late 2nd century BC, receiving the town of Numantia and respective lands when the Romans partitioned the territory of the defeated Arevaci amongst their neighbours. However, they lost these lands to the Uraci after supporting the ill-fated early 1st Century BC anti-Roman uprisings in Celtiberia. Later during the Sertorian Wars, they sided with Quintus Sertorius and provided auxiliary troops to his army. It remains unclear what role the Pellendones played during the period of unrest that rocked northern Celtiberia in 50-25 BC and in the subsequent Astur-Cantabrian Wars between 29-13 BC.

Romanization

In the late 1st Century BC, the Pellendones were aggregated to the new Hispania Terraconensis province created by Emperor Augustus, who founded on the site of Arekorata the Roman colony of Augustobriga in their territory.