In addition to Phoenician, Greek, and Latin, at least four writing systems were used between the fifth century BCE and the first century CE to write the indigenous languages of the Iberian peninsula (the so-called Palaeohispanic languages): Tartessian, Iberian, Celtiberian, and Lusitanian. In total over three thousand inscriptions are preserved in what is certainly the largest corpus of epigraphic expression in the western Mediterranean world, with the exception of the Italian peninsula. The aim of this volume is to present the most recent cutting-edge scholarship on these epigraphies and on the languages that they transmit. Utilizing a multidisciplinary approach which draws on the expertise of leading specialists in the field, it brings together a broad range of perspectives on the linguistic, philological, epigraphic, numismatic, historical, and archaeological aspects of the surviving inscriptions, and provides invaluable new insights into the social, economic, and cultural history of Hispania and the ancient western Mediterranean. The study of these languages is essential to our understanding of colonial Phoenician and Greek literacy, which lies at the root of their growth, as well as of the diffusion of Roman literacy, which played an important role in the final expansion of the so called Palaeohispanic languages.

The Celtic languages and groups called Keltoi (i.e. ‘Celts’) emerge into our written records at the pre-Roman Iron Age. The impetus for this book is to explore from the perspectives of three disciplines—archaeology, genetics, and linguistics—the background in later European prehistory to these developments. There is a traditional scenario, according to which, Celtic speech and the associated group identity came in to being during the Early Iron Age in the north Alpine zone and then rapidly spread across central and western Europe. This idea of ‘Celtogenesis’ remains deeply entrenched in scholarly and popular thought. But it has become increasingly difficult to reconcile with recent discoveries pointing towards origins in the deeper past. It should no longer be taken for granted that Atlantic Europe during the 2nd and 3rd millennia BC were pre-Celtic or even pre-Indo-European. The explorations in Celtic from the West 3 are drawn together in this spirit, continuing two earlier volumes in the influential series.