Publications: Hispania

The first booklet published within AELAW network has just seen the light of day. The aim of these dissemination books is to provide an updated introduction to fragmentary languages of ancient Europe and their epigraphic record to all kind of audiences. The first one assesses the most known Hispano-Celtic language and the inscriptions written on it: Celtiberian.

Written in Spanish by F. Beltrán and C. Jordán (Universidad de Zaragoza), it is made of 44 pages filled with novel ad hoc maps, high-definition pictures and tables complementing the text, which has been written with clear dissemination intentions but also with scientific accuracy.

After an introduction containing historiographical aspects, the main body of the booklet is devoted to language, writing and epigraphy. The chapter “Language” offers the reader a precise definition of Celtiberian (with useful tables of Celtiberian declension) and its position among other Indo-European and Celtic languages; in the second one, “Writing”, the authors explain the adaptation of Iberian Levantine writing system to Celtiberian language, its variants and the phenomena derived from it, and also the adaptation of Latin alphabet to Celtiberian language.

A third chapter focuses on the structure of the onomastic formulae found in inscriptions, being one of the best-attested information in Celtiberian epigraphy. Finally, the fourth chapter deals with the epigraphic habit of Celtiberian peoples, born from the contact with Iberians and Romans, and also with the most Celtiberian representative epigraphic genres: tesserae hospitals and bronze tabulae. This chapter is complemented by a useful and up-to-date sylloge of Celtiberian inscriptions, the commentary of two important epigraphs (the Ibiza slab and the so-called “Bronce Res”) and a bibliographic guidance for those interested in deepen their knowledge in Celtiberian.

This paper offers a panoramic vision of language contact in the Iberian Peninsula before and during Latinisation. An explanation of the difficulties that this topic rises to epigraphists and linguists and some methodological reflection are followed by a catalogue of bilingual inscriptions of Hispania, as well as those that, even if not bilingual, suggest some kind of bilingualism during their execution.

Review of an important group of roman inscriptions preserved in the museums of Palencia, Valladolid and Burgos (Spain), that shows different hispano-celtic theonyms.

This paper presents an interesting group of inscriptions made on pottery, unearthed during the archaeological excavations carried out in the site called La Cabañeta (El Burgo de Ebro, Zaragoza), from 1997 to 2009. Included are fourteen Iberian documents written in Paleohispanic script, twenty-two in Latin, two in Greek, eight signs and four difficult to identify marks, all of them dated between the second half of the II century B.C. and the destruction of the settlement in the decade of the 70s of the I century B.C.

This paper presents a group of inscriptions made on pottery, recovered in various archaeological excavations carried out in Valentia (Valencia, Spain), in the last decades. It includes sixteen Latin documents, three Greeks, one Iberian and five signs, all of them dated between the last quarter of the second century B.C. and destructión of the city during the Sertorian Wars.

This work is a grammatical compendium of the Celtiberian language, incorporating the data available through 2003. The more relevant phonological and morphological phenomena are reviewed. These demonstrate that Celtiberian is an Indo-European and Celtic language. Abundant epigraphic material is also presented in support of the arguments presented here.

Review and assessment from the historical, paleo-epigraphic and linguistic point of view of the documents considered, to the present, celtiberian tesserae.

The aim of this paper is the study of Celtiberian inscriptions engraved in Latin alphabet in the context of the palaeohispanic epigraphy, in order to assess their value as sources for the latinization of the Iberian Peninsula in the Republican period.

This paper aims to summarize the state of the research on the legends of Iberian coins. The legends mainly identify place names, personal names, value marks and issue marks. These elements can appear isolated, accompanied by morphemes or in multiple composition or combination between them.

In this article, I defend that some bo sign variants are in fact voiceless variants of the ta sign. In addition to the improvement of the dual system internal coherence, this change modifies the reading of almost a hundred Iberian inscriptions. The chronology of the dual inscriptions seems to indicate that the dual system may be the original North-Oriental (Levantine) Iberian writing system. This system was created at the end of de 5th century BC in some point at the coast of the north of Catalonia and the south of Languedoc-Roussillon, having being spread out towards the south along the coast. The exact reason of its substitution in favour of the non-dual system among the Iberians at the beginning of de 2nd century BC is not well known, but it seems to be a direct consequence of the Roman conquest of the Iberian territory. Besides, the use of a dual system in Celtiberian is proved by the presence of dualities in some Celtiberian texts. This fact modifies the chronology of the introduction of writing among the Celtiberians.

This paper presents the hypothesis that identifies three texts as Iberian non-dual abecedaries on the basis of a statistical irregularity. They consist of one considerable long segment, but almost all of the signs are different. The texts identified as abecedaries are a rock inscription from L’Esquirol and the two texts from the spindle whorl from Can Rodon. Two of the texts begin with the same sequence, kutukiŕbitatiko, a fact that also identifies other texts that begin with the same sequence as non-dual abecedaries: these are an unpublished text on rock in Latour de Carol and probably a short text on a dolium from Val de Alegre. The sequence kutu can also be reconstructed at the Ger abecedary and at the new dual one from Latour de Carol making plausible the hypothesis that the familiar element kutur / kutun was related to it and therefore the meaning of the kutu root was originally in the semantic field of writing.

The aim of this paper is to analyze the question of the indigenous language of Catalunya, taking into account the hypothesis of Iberian language as a vehicular language recently proposed by J. de Hoz.

The work tries to be an approach to the presence of writing in the religious contexts of Iberian world. Though in many cases it is problematic to decide whether an Iberian inscription is religious or not and though our capacity of understanding the texts is still very limited, it is possible to identify contexts, supports and formularies that indicate the votive character of some inscriptions. Taking on account these evidences, we try to elaborate an ensemble vision of the Iberian votive epigraphy, its varieties and its evolution along the time.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the use of writing as a mechanism of self-representation and as an expression of power in the Iberian world. In the present state of knowledge, Iberian epigraphy during the 5th to 3rd centuries BC was by and large restricted to colonial and eminently practical uses, such as seals, markers of quality control, and the like. One has to await the arrival and spread of Roman epigraphic models during the later 2nd and 1st centuries BC to witness the development of funerary, honorific, and architectural epigraphy through which local elites represented themselves while still using the indigenous language. Also analyzed are the forms Iberian epigraphy took in the context of different urban communities, especially Ampurias, Tarragona and Sagunto, in which (despite the limitations on our knowledge of the language which hinder understanding of the texts) one can detect evidence of the co-existence in the same public spaces of the Iberian, Roman and even Greek (in the case of Ampurias) written cultures.

In this paper, we intend to provide an overview of Paleohispanistics. To this end we will begin by defining our research topic. Then we will handle a number of relevant questions, namely the discussions on the following Palaeohispanic languages: Southeastern language, Lusitanian, Celtiberian, Iberian and Vascon language.

This paper presents an Iberian graffito datable back to the early 1st century BC and retrieved at the archaeological works developed at the baths of La Cabañeta (El Burgo de Ebro, Zaragoza), a Roman site from the Republican period. New information about Iberian writing and language is given in this document, as well as an unprecedented personal name and a likely verbal form. It also shows the continuance of dual writing system graphic forms in later texts written in non-dual writing system.

Review of the polemic about the role of Roman influence in the development of Iberian epigraphy on stone in north-eastern Hispania during the 2nd and 1st cent. BCE. Two models are suggested: one in the Mediterranean harbours of Emporion, Tarraco and Saguntum, three cities with a strong Roman presence or influence, where the principal concentrations of Iberian epigraphs are located along with other Latin —and Greek— inscriptions, and Roman epigraphic types arise in a monumental context; and another one in the rest of the Iberian north-eastern regions where stelae predominate as local response to the Roman inspired monumentalisation of the coastal cities. The emergence of Iberian inscriptions on stone is explained as a consequence of the process of romanization and the diffusion, in this context, of the incipient Roman epigraphic culture.