The Tariotes were a subtribe of the Dalmatae, ancient settlers of a part of the eastern Adriatic coast, in modern-day Croatia. This tribe is mentioned in the Classical literature by Pliny the Elder alone.
Their territory began after Liburnian Scardona (Skradin), spreading in small region directly to the south of Liburnia, and border ran roughly through the middle of the peninsula which Roman sources called Hyllus. This westernmost promontory of the ancient Dalmatian coast lies between Morinje Bay (near Šibenik) in the north-west and Kaštela Bay in the south-east, sheltered in its hinterland by the hills.
Numerous hillforts and their tumuli were found in the Hyllus Peninsula, and most of it were more intensely settled from the end of the second to the middle of the first millennium BC, while evidences point to the settlement of the peninsula during the Late Bronze Age and the older Iron Age. From north to the south of the peninsula large fortified settlements (modern: Grad, Domazeti, Kosmač, Drid and Oriovščak) dominate over a short length, surrounded with a series of smaller hillforts located on more prominent elevations, fortified with dry-stone ramparts, all visually connected. They were raised in relation to overland and maritime communications, which they entirely controlled, and they enabled control over individual pastures, same as the neighboring Liburnian hillforts did.
Economy
The economy of the Tariotes and other, similar Dalmatae tribal communities on the coast was primary based on livestock husbandry, which associates them with the hillfort lifestyle which would last even after the Roman domination in Dalmatia commenced. With the arrival of the Romans to the province of Dalmatia, historical circumstances, and thus the role of hillforts, changed. They were no longer defensive strongholds from attacks by hostile local tribes, nor sites of resistance to the Roman army. Rome now intervened in the disputes between the tribes and these hillforts lost their military role, but retained their economical role, in the first place to safegurd livestock.
In the old Tariote territory, the hillfort centres would not continue to exist through Antiquity, which was the case among the Liburnians. In Liburnia, centres such as Nedinium (Nadin), Asseria (Podgrađe, near Benkovac), Iader (Zadar) continued to exist in Roman times, and the Liburnians retained their ethnic distinctiveness under Rome, while the same did not occur on the neighbouring Hyllus Peninsula. However, during the 1st century AD individual Tariote hillforts lived on, and numerous Roman materials were found in them, generally vessels that indicate intense trade between newly arrived Romans settled in Pretorium (Grebaštica), Marina and Tragurium (Trogir) and the indigenous Tariotes. Even though hillforts experienced new architectural interventions during the 1st centuries BC and AD, already during the 2nd century AD they had primarily economic significance, while life gradually became oriented toward Pretorium and other Roman centres. The hillforts would be used as shelters for the livestock; some of them serve this function even today.