Géza Alföldy's reconstruction of the cultural and ethnic affinities of the indigenous population of northeast Dalmatia around the time of the Roman conquest early in the 1st century AD., drawing mostly on the evidence of personal names, linked the Middle Drina area (Skelani) with the historical Scordisci, a powerful Celtic group whose conflict with the Romans dominated events in the central Balkans from the mid 2nd century BC to the early 1st century AD. After the conquest this group formed the civitas of the Dindari (listed by Pliny the Elder within Dalmatia), whom a fragmentary inscription appears to locate in the Skelani area.