Skalvians in the context of "Balts"

The Balts or Baltic peoples (Lithuanian: baltai, Latvian: balti) are a group of peoples inhabiting the eastern coast of the Baltic Sea who speak Baltic languages. Among the Baltic peoples are modern-day Lithuanians (including Samogitians) and Latvians (including Latgalians) — all East Balts — as well as the Old Prussians, Curonians, Sudovians, Skalvians, Yotvingians and Galindians — the Western Balts — whose languages and cultures are now extinct, but made a large influence on the living branches, especially on literary Lithuanian language.

The Balts are descended from a group of Proto-Indo-European tribes who settled the area between the lower Vistula and southeast shore of the Baltic Sea and upper Daugava and Dnieper rivers, and which over time became differentiated into West and East Balts. In the fifth century CE, parts of the eastern Baltic coast began to be settled by the ancestors of the Western Balts, whereas the East Balts lived in modern-day Belarus, Ukraine and Russia. In the first millennium CE, large migrations of the Balts occurred. By the 13th and 14th centuries, the East Balts shrank to the general area that the present-day Balts and Belarusians inhabit.

The Western Baltic culture (Lithuanian: Vakarų baltų kultūra; Polish: Kultura zachodniobałtyjska also known as krąg zachodniobałtyjski (West Baltic circle), Russian: Западнобалтская культура, romanized: Zapadnobaltskaya kul'tura) was the westernmost branch of the Balts, representing a distinct archaeological culture of the Bronze Age and Iron Age, along the southern coast of the Baltic Sea. It is a zone of several small archaeological cultures that were ethnically Baltic and had similar cultural features (e.g. similar monuments or some features of the funeral rite). They included tribes such as the Old Prussians, Galindians, Yotvingians (or Sudovians) and Skalvians, in addition to the little-known Pomeranian Balts or Western Balts proper, in the area now known as Pomerania.

Scalovia or Skalvia (Lithuanian: Skalva, German: Sclavonia, Schalauen, Polish: Skalowia, Latin: Sclavonia, Schlavonia) was the area of Prussia originally inhabited by the now extinct Baltic tribe of Skalvians or Scalovians which according to the Chronicon terrae Prussiae of Peter of Dusburg lived to the south of the Curonians, by the lower Nemunas river, in the times around 1240.

Jodocus Hondius mentions in 1641 that in "Sclavonia liegen Ragneta, Tilsa, Renum, Liccovia, Salavia, Labia, Tapia, Vintburg, Christader, Bayria, Cestia, Norbeitia, Bensdorff / Angenburg und Dringofordt" The centre of Scalovia was supposed to be Ragnit (Ragneta)(Raganita)(Rogneta) and in the west it bordered the Curonian Lagoon as far as the town of Russ and with Samogitia up north and with Nadrovia in the south.