The Novantae were people of the Iron age, as recorded in Ptolemy's Geography (written c. 150AD). The Novantae are thought to have lived in what is now Galloway and Carrick, in southwesternmost Scotland.

While the Novantae are assumed to be Celts, their specific ethnicity and culture have been the subject of debate for centuries. While Bede referred to a people called the Niduarian and suggested these were Picts, the Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.) described them as "a tribe of Celtic Gaels called Novantae or Atecott Picts." Scottish author Edward Grant Ries has identified the Novantae (along with other early tribes of southern Scotland) as a Brythonic-speaking culture.

Modern archeological excavations at Rispain Camp, near Whithorn, suggest that a large fortified farmstead was occupied between 100 BC and 200 AD, indicating that the people living in the area at that time were engaged in agriculture.

More recently, the name "Novantae" has been used by a group of Conservative councillors who left the party in protest to the party's opposition to a Galloway National Park.

The only historical reference to the Novantae is from the Geography of Ptolemy in c. 150, where he gives their homeland and primary towns. They are found in no other source. Unfortunaley, Ptolemy's Geography is full of errors, as he misunderstood many of the informations, he used for constructing it.

Ptolemy's geography of Scotland is erraneous, as he noted "Clota Estuary", by name the Firth of Clyde, explicitly as a bay of the northern coast, east of Novantarum Cheronesus. This way, he created a hybrid of the Firth of Clyde and the inner section of Moray Firth. The easternmost point of his Scotland (31°20' E, 60°15' E) is east of the meridian of the mouth of "Albis potamos", river Elbe (31° E, 56°15' N). The Orcades, Orkney Islands, are north of this eastern point, and between it and the northern end of Cimbrian chersones, Jutland, he placed the "three Saxon islands". Segontium (Σεγαντίων λίμην, Segantiorum limēn), in reality on the south of Menai Strait, was placed by Ptolemy between "Ituna estuary" (18°30' E, 58°55' N, Solway Firth) and "Moricambē estuary" (17°30' E, 58°20' N, Morecambe Bay) in the north, two other estuaries and the town of "Deva of the 20th Legion" (Chester), in the south; so he placed it somewhere near Blackpool.

Novantarum promontory (21° E, 61°40' N, that is 1°30' E, 2°45'N north of Ituna estuary) is his northernmost point of the Albion Island in almost correct difference of latitude of Dunnet Head to the delta of River Rhone. Nevertheless it may represent the Rhins of Galloway, as Ptolemy turned Scotland by 90°, clockwise. In his geography, the Νοουάνται (Novantae) were the northernmost tribe of Albion Island, the Σελγοοῦαι (Selgovae) lived south of them, and east of those he placed the Δαμνόνιοι (Damnonii).

Ptolemy says that the towns of the Novantae were Locopibium and Rerigonium. As there were no towns as such in the area at that time, he was likely referring to native strong points such as duns or royal courts.