The historical background of King’s Seat

King’s Seat’s 5th to 7th century AD period of use sits
in an infuriatingly opaque period in the history of the
region, later than the last Roman sources and earlier
than the earliest securely datable early medieval
references to the area. The name Dunkeld itself means ‘Fort of the Caledonians’ (Watson 1926: 21; Noble and Evans 2022: 105). Ancient references to the Caledonii and related terms place these Caledonians at the heart of a newly emerging ‘Pictish’ identity – at least in the eyes of the Roman world (Fraser 2009: 15-22). In the middle of the 3rd century AD, Cassius Dio described them as one of ‘two principal races of the Britons’ in the north, alongside the Maeatae (Cary 1927: 263), whereas by c. 392 AD, the Dicalydones (seemingly ‘“twin” or “double” Calidones’) were included by Ammianus Marcellinus under the term Picti (Noble and Evans 2022: 7).