The Archaeology of the Iberians

The Iberians inhabited southern and eastern Spain between the Greek and Phoenician colonisation, beginning in the eighth century BC, and the Roman conquest. This was a period of significant changes in native Spanish societies, and the emergence of urbanism and the adoption of ideological symbols and technological innovations from the colonists created an important and unique Iron Age culture. Arturo Ruiz and Manuel Molinos offer the first synthesis of the period for more than thirty years, and cover a number of topics: ways in which material culture can help to explain cultural change, ethnicity, and ethnic conflict, and the decline of the Iberian world following the Punic Wars and Roman colonization. The result is a sophisticated, theoretically informed case study of cultural change within a specific complex society.