Archaeological and Historical Studies

Archaeology of the Iberian Peninsula traces roughly a millennium of layered cultural change across what is now Spain and Portugal, from the emergence of Iron Age communities through the gradual transformation brought by Roman political and economic expansion. Researchers draw on excavated settlements, coinage, inscriptions, and ritual deposits to reconstruct how indigenous groups—Celtic-speaking peoples in the north and west, Phoenician-influenced societies along the Mediterranean coast—interacted, resisted, and adapted over time. A central open question is how deeply Romanization actually restructured everyday life versus merely adding a veneer of imperial culture onto persistent local traditions. Scholars are also working to disentangle the degree to which religious practices and urban forms were genuinely shared across these communities or were instead locally distinct responses to similar pressures.

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293,710

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245,653

Keywords

Iberian PeninsulaarchaeologyIron AgeRomanizationCeltic culturePhoenician influence