IBERIAN PENINSULA ----------------- EXTENT ATLANTIC IBERIA and MEDITERRANEAN SPAIN. Note that this is an exceptional supra-regional entry, in that it includes sections on sources and on introductory works, whereas supra-regional entries normally include only reference works. Similarly, the two regional entries do *not* include sections on sources, which is also unusual. The peninsula is larger than I want to treat as a unity in this database. Moreover, Andalucia or Murcia, on the one hand, and Galicia, on the other, can clearly profitably be treated separately, though the exact dividing-line that might be appropriate is questionable. Finally, simply by trying to separate existing materials into two regions, I found that the majority of books available in English do deal primarily with the Mediterranean side. There are many reasons to try to split the peninsula for this database. That said, most of those books *do* treat the whole peninsula, however unequally, and it would have been silly to repeat multiple listings in both entries. I've compromised by listing the broader works (mostly in English) here, and narrower works in the regional entries. There was little reason to split discussion of "sources", so it's all here, but the elementary historical material of "periodisation and terms" could be split, and was. It is common for writers in languages other than Portuguese to use "Spain" to refer to the whole peninsula. This reflects the Roman word for the peninsula, "Hispaniae"; it also reflects the relative obscurity of ancient Portugal, at least as best I can judge from the US. SOURCES The southern and eastern coasts yield PHOENICIAN and indigenous ("IBERIAN") epigraphy, beginning after about 700 BC. The peninsula is mentioned from the beginning of GREEK literature, and there is limited Greek epigraphy beginning after about 600 BC, mostly on the eastern coast. As usual in regions of Roman rule, there is a scattering of HEBREW epigraphy; there is also a very small number of EGYPTIAN inscriptions on imports. Epigraphic remains in LATIN begin before 200 BC, and there is a volume devoted to the peninsula in the , allegedly now in course of being updated. The epigraphic corpus confuses me; please see the bibliographies referred to below instead, or ***BCS REFERENCE HERE*** for Latin; the Phoenician corpus has apparently been edited by Maria Jose Fuentes Estanol. The peninsula is prominent through the entire history of Latin literature, but surviving local Latin literature does not begin until the first century AD, and remains rare until after AD 300. From then until the Muslim conquest local records are relatively copious, and include some chronicles. Literary sources are collected, and translated into modern Spanish, in . Nine volumes, edited by A. Schulten (throughout), P. Bosch Gimpera (I-IV), L. Pericot (IV-IX), and L. Rubio (VIII). (I have not seen volume VII.) Note that I appeared in an all-Latin edition and a separate Spanish edition; later volumes incorporate original languages and Spanish translations in the same edition. Barcelona: Libreria A. Bosch, 1922 to 1959. I won't list all the volume titles here, but most of them are edited by Adolfo Schulten, volumes VIII and IX by Roberto Grosse. The volumes are topically, largely chronologically, divided. This was a core region of the Roman empire, whose history has never been neglected altogether, though scholars further north have varied in their level of attention to it. There has been a phenomenal explosion of work in Spanish, Portuguese and Catalan (to a lesser extent in French) in the past three decades with political liberalisation. One of the distinctive aspects of this work is the predominance of multi- volume sets. Conference proceedings, festschrifts, and histories of regions, or of the peninsula as a whole, routinely run to five volumes if not twenty; I suspect that a Spanish historian who wrote a haiku would publish each word in a separate five hundred page tome just to follow standard procedure. Over the past fifteen years or so, a small but steady stream of books in English have appeared. Those books were nearly all written in Britain, presumably because most of the important twenty-volume sets cannot be consulted in any single region of North America. For similar reasons, there are many gaps in my ability to point you to non-English materials. Fortunately, you can turn from my pages not only to the bibliographies of the cited works, which are sometimes helpfully annotated, but to three substantial ongoing bibliographic resources of different kinds. ***SELECTIVE CATALAN BIBLIO. GET REF FROM NWU REFERENCE RM CATALOGUE.*** ***TITLE IS INDICE HISTORICO ESPANOL.*** ***Biblio in .*** ***MASSIVE SPANISH BIBLIO. GET REF FROM NWU.*** PERIODISATION AND TERMS For more detailed material, see the regional entries. Pre-Roman ? - 218 BC Republican 218 - 19 BC Early Empire (Altoimperial) 19 BC - AD 170 Late Empire (Bajoimperial) AD 170 - 409 Visigothic AD 409 - 711 INTRODUCTORY ***http://fyl.unizar.es/historia_antigua/*** When I first researched this entry and the regional entries associated with it, in 1997, I could find no book in any language that provided what I considered a good introductory treatment of the entire ancient history of the peninsula. That lack was remedied last year, at last: *+ . Edited by Raymond Carr. [Oxford]: Oxford University Press, [2000]. The relevant chapters are "Prehistoric and Roman Spain" by A. T. Fear (pp. 11-38), and "Visigothic Spain" by Roger Collins (pp. 39-62). These are clear and include pretty much everything I would want them to include at such lengths. In addition, the bibliography at the end of the book includes pretty much every book in English worth citing on the two topics. In every US library of any size that I've tried, I've found at least one long "Historia de Espana" type series dating to between 1975 and the present (usually to between 1975 and 1985), and each library seems to have a different one. These series invariably have from one to three volumes concerned with ancient history. Some have bibliographies or footnotes, but none have annotated bibliographies; some have illustrations and some lack them, but none have colour illustrations. I see little point in providing details of these histories: for real bibliographic guidance (and more current references) the books I name below are preferable, while for the longer accounts that the series provide, you should just go to the nearest library with pretensions to support research, and look for a shelf full of books with similar covers near the beginning of the Spanish history section. The books in English all fall somewhere between genuinely introductory books - all are readable and some have pictures, but they're just too long - and genuine reference books - they all provide bibliographic guidance, but none is conscientious enough about it, for example, to mention all of the bibliographies named above. Nevertheless: Pre-Roman (including late prehistory): This book is almost entirely about the Mediterranean side, but is nevertheless one of the few accessible starting points for the Atlantic. . Maria Cruz Fernandez Castro. Oxford and Cambridge, Massachusetts: Blackwell, 1995. A volume in 'A History of Spain', John Lynch, general editor. A fairly systematic treatment, with considerable bibliography and guidance, of the peninsula's archaeology from about 2600 BC on, but very much skewed toward the south and east. The English is not perfect, and chapter titles are actively misleading, but this is a valuable starting point for those topics discussed, and much less speculative than previous works in English. Republican, and both Early and Late Empire: There are two good introductory treatments in English; they complement each other. . S. J. Keay. [?]: University of California Press, 1988. Probably also London: British Museum, 1988. Volume 2 in 'Exploring the Roman World', perhaps. Widely available and widely recommended. This is quite readable, copiously illustrated, and well provided with maps. Keay focuses on archaeology (mainly, but not entirely, the old-fashioned archaeology of monuments and artworks), and emphasises the peninsula as an entity in its own right. The bibliography is not well annotated. . J. S. Richardson. Oxford and Cambridge, Massachusetts: Blackwell, 1996. A volume in 'A History of Spain', John Lynch, general editor. This is readable, but assumes a very elementary knowledge of Roman history; there are few maps and no illustrations. Richardson treats the peninsula in relation to the Roman world, largely but *not* entirely through political/military history. The detailed evaluative bibliography focuses mainly on that topic, and irritatingly omits most recent work not in English (including most archaeology), leaving that to footnotes only. Early Empire: A further complement to Keay and Richardson. . Leonard A. Curchin. London and New York: Routledge, [1991]. Curchin's treatment of the Republican period is chronological and not distinctive. However, his discussion of the (early) Empire is richer than either of the others'. It is topically organised, focuses on social history, and provides access (mainly by footnotes; the bibliography has no annotations) to many studies relying on epigraphy and archaeology. Late Empire: . Javier Arce. Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1982. Widely recommended; note that there exists also a 1986 edition. The 1982 edition is a short but useful and well written treatment and relatively easy to find in the US. The 1986 edition is allegedly in print here but I have not been able to find a copy in libraries. Both Keay and Richardson treat this period relatively briefly, while Curchin hardly touches on it, so this book is a valuable help. Visigothic period: Most recent work in English on this period is by Roger Collins. Fortunately he is prolific. He has begun a full treatment of it, due to appear in the series 'A History of Spain' edited by John Lynch whose preceding volumes are mentioned above. In the meantime, we have in English a half-book by him; in Spanish, there are two standard works, one of which I've been able to see. . New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995. Roger Collins. A significant revision of the first edition (1983). On its first appearance, this book was apparently considered quite revisionist, which suits its often acid tone. Collins is now thought quite mainstream. The book is uneven, thanks partly to the nature of the sources and partly to Collins's own interests, but it is the best starting point. The extensive bibliographic essay is fully updated for the second edition. . Luis A. Garcia Moreno. Madrid: Ediciones Catedra, 1989. Apparently a volume in 'Historia- Mayor'. Apparently succeeds a 1985 edition. This standard work treats politics, in particular, much more substantially than does Collins, and also has a good deal on social history. (Of 378 pages, 100 deal with social history, 48 with government, and 37 with religion; the rest are narrative.) Archaeology is fluidly integrated with other sources, but there's enough jargon that one can see what prompted some of Collins's acidity. There is no bibliographic guidance. The other standard work is said to be by Jose Orlendis. I haven't even found consistent citations, let alone the book. Perhaps Orlendis has written several books with similar titles but dissimilar value. Consider also spending some time with the start of Peter Linehan's (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993). This is not a history but a, um, meditation on how the peninsula's past (from about 550 to 1200) has been seen from then to now. For the topics he selects, Linehan deals usefully with the primary sources, if you need a practical reason to consult this wonderful book. RESEARCH According to Colin Wells, a respected historian of the Roman Empire, in the , a book by Jose Maria Blazquez and Arcadio del Castillo is much the best starting point. However, the reference is not clear enough and I have found the book neither in libraries nor in other bibliographies. If you wish to seek it, please see the list of unseen books. Otherwise, follow the leads in the books listed above, seek the local resources listed in the regional pages and the list of unseen books, and try what little else I can offer: a mailing list devoted to archaeology of Spain, and a bibliography devoted to the Visigothic period. ARQUEOHISPANIA. [[[***]]] [[[***Ferreiro***]]]. NOTE This entry in the database contains references to Web sites. Please note that the entire database, which is huge and difficult to do, is on an *extremely* slow update schedule. While I may correct changed addresses and the like when notified of them, and will certainly do so when/if those addresses' owners ask me to, I will *not* be actively checking links, and *will* have other things on my plate. Following first posting to Usenet newsgroup soc.history.ancient, this will not be reposted until full update or in response to someone's request. Created c. December 8, 1997, but not typed until August 23, 1999. Next due for full update December 8, 2002. Reviewed by [anyone?]. URL: [An FTP location would be good to have.]