Caristios

The Caristians were a pre-Roman people established in the north of the Iberian Peninsula, in the lands of the current provinces of Vizcaya and Álava, in the western part of the Basque Autonomous Community, Spain. The first to mention the Caristians was Pliny the Elder, who called them caries and linked them to the Vennese. II d. C. (II, 6, 52, 54 and 64), which no longer mentioned the Venetians and located the Caristians to the east of the Autrigones and to the west of the Várdulos, on the Deva river, reaching the coast, in addition to cite some of the civitates that belonged to them. The Ebro river separated them: "Between the Ibero river and part of the Pyrenees to the east of the Autrigones are the Caristios through them (of Autrigones and Caristios) said river passes...". To these few and late literary testimonies, it is worth adding, for the knowledge of these protohistoric peoples, the information provided by some archaeological documents, although unevenly distributed throughout the territory occupied by the Caristians, with greater density in Álava. Their history, apparently, had already ended in the V century, when the chronicler Hydacio, reporting on the looting carried out in those lands by the Heruli, spoke of the cruel damages caused in the maritime landscapes of Cantabria and Vardulia, not to mention the Caristians.

Historical studies on the Caristians and their Autrigon, Várdulo and Vascon neighbors began in the XVIII century with works of Manuel de Larramendi, who included all those towns as Cantabrians, with a very broad conception of these. A second historiographical current, represented by Bosch Gimpera already in the XX century, brings together Caristians, Autrigones and Várdulos together with the Basques properly considered in the group of Basques. Finally, a third and more recent historiographical current, formulated by Martín Almagro Gorbea and others, based on archaeological and linguistic sources, places Caristians, Várdulos and Autrigones in the orbit of Indo-European and Celtic languages, locating the original territory of Proto-Euskera in the western Pyrenees, with a special presence to the north, in Aquitaine.

Small gold jewel, in the form of an excavation torque of the castro of Peñas de Oro. (Álava).

Ethnicity

There is no record of any inscription in the Caristian language, except place names and anthroponyms, and ancient historians did not mention the ethnic affiliation of the Caristians, except their proximity to the Venetians, so the only indications to determine the linguistic family to which they belonged are those provided by ancient and current toponymy, as well as by ancient anthroponyms. In this sense, and for a later period, when studying the language spoken in the early Middle Ages in the current Basque Country, José María Lacarra wrote in 1956:

in the history of the Middle Ages of the Basque Country we are constantly concerned to be reconstructing the past of a people who express themselves in writing in a language that is not the one who speaks, and that his is escaped through the documents [...] before these dates [the 12th century] it can be said that there is no more than toponymy and anthroponimia [...] a toponymy, that yes, characteristic and different from that of the territory that would be different;

Old place names

Given the absence of testimonies written in Basque from ancient times and the lack of news referring to the language spoken by the Caristians and their Basque, Várduli and Autrigones neighbors, ancient toponymy, as transmitted by Greek and Roman writers, constitutes the only approach to knowledge of the linguistic situation in pre-Roman times. The presence of place names with Indo-European roots, common to other peninsular regions, is well attested. The ethnonym Caristios itself would have this origin, the same as Vennenses and perhaps Veleia and Tullica, civitates of the Caristian area. Of the 75 preserved ancient place names, 55 can be understood from a non-Celtic Indo-European root, 18 of them from the southern stratum, to which should be added the Celtic place names, such as Deva and Suestatium in caristia area.

Very significant is the case of hydronymy. Greek and Roman sources transmit the name of six rivers located in the current territory of the Basque Country: Deva, Menosca, Nerva, Sauga, Saunium and Uria. Five of them have Indo-European roots and only one, Uria, could be interpreted from the Basque root ur-, "water", although there are other rivers with the same name in various parts of Spain and Europe.

Anthroponyms

The epigraphic remains from the Roman period preserved in the territory of the current Basque Country provide indigenous, Roman and, in a very small number, also Greek anthroponyms. As for the first, 32, in some cases difficult to read or with two different forms to be expressed, they are all of Indo-European roots, widely located in other parts of Hispania, except Beltesonis, an anthroponym of a Basque-Aquitanian nature, to which one could only add in the Caristian territory the supposed anthroponym Illun or Illuna, in Álava, according to the conjecture of Joaquín Gorrochategui based on an inscription that reads [---]una.

This abundance of Indo-European place names and anthroponyms, explained by Gorrochategui as a result of the entry of Gallic and Celtiberian speakers «to the bowels of the Basque territory, leaving their place names to posterity, like the Celts of the Deva or the valley of Ulzama (Uxama)", would be better explained, in the opinion of Martín Almagro Gorbea and others, by the Celtic or even pre-Celtic roots of these towns, with the presence of a substratum of clear Indo-European lineage, dating back to megalithism and the Bronze Age. Dolmen-type collective burials and the irruption of the Beaker vase in the Chalcolithic, very well represented in the Basque Country, with the associated social changes and the substitution of the collective burials by individual ones show these contacts with other European peoples —and not necessarily invasions— in a process common to the tour of the other peninsular peoples.

Linguistic families of the Iberian peninsula before romanization
C1: Galaicos / C2b: Cars / C3: Cars / C4: Astures / C5: Vacceos / C6: Turmogos / C7: Autrigones-Charist / C8: Vardules / C9: Beans / C10: Pelendones / C11: Belos / C12: Lunch / C13: Titos / C14: Olcades / C15: Carpetians / C16: Vetons / C18-C19: Celtics / C20: Conios / L1: Lusitanos / Igettanos

Historical references

They are first mentioned by Pliny the Elder, who calls them caries along with another people called Vennese.

In eundem conventum Cluniensem Carietes et Vennenses V civitatibus vaduntPliny, Nat.His. III, 26.

Its existence is also attested epigraphically in an inscription from Brescia (CIL V 4373) in which a COHORS CARIETVM ET VENIAESVM is mentioned and in another dedication found in Rome (AE 1992, 169) that reads CARIETES V[…].

Territory

Ptolemy (II,6,8 and II,6,64) places them between the Deva river, in the province of Guipúzcoa, and the Nerva river (Nervión), in a territory with a more or less triangular shape, reaching by south to Trifinium, present-day Treviño County. His territory bordered on the Varduli to the east and the Autrigones to the west. Its civitates were Tullica, of which the only news is that provided by Ptolemy, identified for phonetic reasons with Tuyo on the banks of the Zadorra, where no remains of Roman age; Suessatio or Suestatium, mentioned in the Antonino Itinerary and in two funerary inscriptions located in Aldeanueva del Camino (Cáceres) and Sasamón (Burgos), and variously identified with Arcaya, Armentia and Zuazo; and Veleia, already mentioned by Pliny and, like Suestatio, located on the Roman road from Bordeaux to Astorga, which could be the current Iruña-Veleia, where an oppidum< has been located and excavated. /i> which has provided rich materials. From the I century d. C. the region was already deeply Romanized, as indicated by the high number of Roman inscriptions located in Álava, one of the peninsular areas with the greatest abundance of them.

In the V century, the chronicler Hydacios no longer mentioned the Caristians when reporting the looting carried out by the hérulos in the marine areas of Cantabria and Vardulía. This silence, however, for authors such as Ildefonso Gurruchaga, could be explained by taking as a starting point the data provided by Ptolemy and Pomponio Mela, who did not mention the caristians in their Chorografia, written around 45 AD. d. C., due to the existence of an ethnic affinity between caristios, autrigones and várdulos proper, generically described all of them as várdulos by Mela and Hydacio. The extension, a little later, of the name Vasconia to the entire territory of the current Basque Country, would have in turn displaced the generic Vardulia to the north of the current province of Burgos, the Burgos Bardulia, origin of the later Castile County.