European Kingdoms

Early Iberia (Indo-Europeans)

Iberian Tribes Aquitani Tribes Celtic Tribes (Intro) Celtic Tribes Post-Roman States of Iberia Rome

Iberia is the largely sun-drenched south-western peninsula of Europe. It comprises the modern countries of Portugal and Spain, plus the principality of Andorra and Britain's crown colony of Gibraltar. The peninsula has experienced a history of great art and culture, but also of conquest and re-conquest, and centuries of struggle.

The history of the Celts during the Iberian Iron Age - not to be confused with the term 'Celtiberian', which is the name given to one very powerful tribal confederation - is closely interwoven with that of the Romans. The Iberian Celts gave them far more trouble than the rest of the Celts in Europe, around two centuries of incessant warfare. Some of those Celts also formed a key component of the Castro culture which dominated northern Iberia during the first millennium BC. The contemporary Tartessian culture dominated the south, and the Talaiotic covered the Balearics.

The history and the cultural contribution of the Celts in Iberia - and non-Celticised Indo-European groups before that right back to the Bell Beaker culture - have only been properly discovered and evaluated during the last century (and largely towards the end of that period). Part of the problem was that, until recently, both modern Portugal and Spain suffered from having autocratic and dictatorial regimes.

In the twenty-first century AD, discoveries and theories are almost a daily occurrence, including substantiation of the legendary claim that a degree of the Celtic population of parts of early Britain and Ireland did not originate from Central Europe but from Iberia (and this is especially true of southern Gaelic tribes).

The West Indo-European ancestors of the Celts and Italics are more likely to have been Q-Italic-speaking groups, possibly of the Bell Beaker culture which was largely spread through West Indo-European migration. By the third century BC most of the still-recognisable groups of this nature were dominant in the west of Iberia, largely in the mountains of western Spain and down to the Portuguese coast.

(Information by Peter Kessler, Edward Dawson, and Trish Wilson, with additional information from The Ancient Celts, Barry Cunliffe, from Celtic from the West - Chapter 9, John Koch, from Los Celtiberos, Alberto J Lorrio, from Lo que sabemos de la lucha de lenguas en la Peninisula Ibérica, Llorente Antonio Tovar, from Consideraciones sobre geografia e historia de la España Antigua, Llorente Antonio Tovar, and from External Links: E-Keltoi (digital magazine provided by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Center for Celtic Studies), using the following articles: The Celts in Portugal, Teresa Judice Gamito, and The Celts in Iberia - An Overview, Alberto J Lorrio & Gonzalo Ruiz Zapatero, and Ethnology of the Iberian Peninsula c.200 BC, Fraga da Silva Luis, and The Works of Julius Caesar: Gallic Wars.)

c.2800 - 2000 BC

A shift to drier conditions has been taking place since about 3300 BC. Pollen core samples from across Eastern Europe - notably across the Pontic-Caspian steppe between the Don and the Irtysh (in Kazakhstan) - show that forests sharply decline and Artemisia (an arid herb indicator) increases.

As a result the steppe has been growing and the steppe people have kept on increasing their herds, feeding them by moving them more often, and their new wagons help them to do this almost constantly.

Shown here is a selection of highly distinctive bell-shaped pots which were created by the Bell Beaker folk between around 2900-1800 BC in Europe and the British Isles

This has resulted in a flood of migration into Central Europe and northern Italy, part of the Yamnaya horizon. It is these West Indo-Europeans who now pick up the influence of the originally-Iberian Bell Beaker horizon.

They do so enthusiastically, turning it into a true Bell Beaker culture, and they continue their migration westwards into France while others of their number remain in northern Italy as the proto-Italics. As Bell Beaker is also introduced into northern Italy, it must be through these proto-Italic people.

c.2500 BC

The earliest known evidence of inhabitation on the Balearic Islands dates to around this period or the subsequent two centuries. The arrivals hail either from the Iberian peninsula or southern France and can be associated with Bell Beaker horizon. This is the Chalcolithic period on the islands, its copper age.

c.2200 - 1800 BC

Bell Beaker culture gradually fades in mainland Europe as it is replaced by successor cultures (largely the Unetice in Central Europe, the Atlantic Bronze Age in the west (from about 1300 BC), the Terramare culture in Italy, the Argaric culture in Iberia, the Wessex culture in Britain, and the Armorican Tumulus culture).

Completed by Bell Beaker folk, Stonehenge was probably abandoned in the seventeenth century BC as an anachronism which was no longer part of the lives of the people

Its progression westwards and subsequent dissipation can be seen as a wave-front effect, sweeping all before it but not able to maintain such a dramatic dominance behind that wave-front. The Argaric continues that trend by gradually absorbing the remnants of the Chalcolithic Los Millares civilisation on its southern flank.

c.1500 BC

Weakening for the past century and-a-half, Iberia's Argaric culture abruptly terminates here, while the Levantine Bronze enters its 'late' stage. Perhaps not coincidentally this is at the same time as Babylonia in the Near East experiences a short dark age and a second wave of Indo-European elements arrives in Iberia from the north, possibly also destabilised by a shift in climate.

Bronze technology had been championed in early Bronze Age Iberia by the Los Millares civilisation of the Mediterranean south coast, but this was swallowed up by the Bell Beaker-inspired Argaric culture around 1800 BC (click or tap on map to view full sized)

The new influx inspired changes in pottery styles in Cogotas I culture. The Argaric people disperse across south-eastern Post-Argaric Iberia, away from the now-abandoned cities and well away from the territory of the soon-to-emerge Atlantic Bronze Age.

c.1300 BC

The predominantly Chalcolithic Vila Nova de Sao Pedro (VNSP) vanishes relatively abruptly at the same time as the Atlantic Bronze Age emerges. Possibly its disappearance also relates directly to the silting of the canal which connects the main city of Zambujal to the sea.

At the same time the Post-Argaric definitively begins in Iberia and the Motillas ends, both on the opposite side of the peninsula, while the Western Bronze absorbs the former VNSP territory. The latter's people enter a tribal culture which becomes the Turduli Oppidani, with the Celtici soon occupying the eastern half of VNSP territory.

The Chalcolithic settlement site of Vila Nova de Séo Pedro has been the subject of renewed fieldwork since 2017 which has seen the removal of six tons of shrubs to reveal a complex of stone features which have not previously been documented

c.1200 BC

A very early Phoenician presence in Iberia is confirmed through archaeology. They set up a trading post on the Tagus, the southern edge of what will later be the city of Lisbon in Portugal. In time trade is conducted with the coastal tribes around them including, after about 1000 BC, the Oestrimni.

1104 BC

This is the traditional date of founding for Gadir, which puts it at the very beginning of the appearance of Phoenician culture in the Near East. No archaeological evidence for occupation at this date can be found but, as with the North African colony of Utica, this is probably because these posts are temporary at first, and are not permanently occupied until the ninth century BC. Archaeological finds of a similar age also highlight the presence of a colony at Almuñecar and Tarshish.

This map showing Late Bronze Age cultures in Europe displays the widespread expansion of the Urnfield culture and many of its splinter groups, although not the smaller groups who reached Britain, Iberia, and perhaps Scandinavia too (click or tap on map to view full sized)

c.1000 BC

While Latins and other Italic tribes continue to migrate into Italy, West Indo-European Urnfield tribes also arrive in Iberia, probably in two waves, the first traditionally being placed around 900 BC. The older Cogotas I culture is ended by this, and the new arrivals create their own Cogotas II culture on its ruins.

More recently, however, there has been a tendency to identify the early arrivals as Indo-European or proto-Celtic tribes rather than actual Celts, and argue for a process of infiltration over an extended period, from around 1000 to 300 BC, rather than invasions.

The first arrivals appear to establish themselves in Catalonia, having probably entered via the eastern passages of the Pyrenees. Later groups (more readily identifiable as Celtic) venture west through the Pyrenees to occupy the northern coast of the peninsula, and south beyond the Ebro and Duero basins as far as the Tagus valley.

It could be the strong Iberian presence in the east which prevents these proto-Celts from continuing down the Mediterranean coast to enter the Levantine Bronze or Post-Argaric regions.

By around 3000 BC the Indo-Europeans had begun their mass migration away from the Pontic-Caspian steppe, with the bulk of them heading westwards towards the heartland of Europe (click or tap on map to view full sized)

c.955 BC

The First Temple of Jerusalem is completed, apparently by craftsmen from the Phoenician city of Sidon under King Hiram of Tyre. The Old Testament records that King Solomon of Israel enters into a matrimonial alliance with Sidon, while also imposing taxes on Iberian exiles. Presumably these are Israelites who have joined the Phoenician colonies in Iberia (such as Gadir).

Although no archaeological evidence has been found to support such a presence of Israelites in this period, a community here could provide the very earliest basis for the later existence of the Sephardi Jews.

c.700 BC

At the end of the Atlantic Bronze Age the second 'wave' of Celtic migration into Iberia begins This is confusingly named, as it consists of 'first wave' Celts but also takes into account the proto-Celtic Urnfield migrations of around the beginning of the millennium which had supplied Iberia with its earliest Celtiberian influx.

The Pyrenees (as seen here from the national park on the French side of the border) has presented a considerable obstacle to many migrating groups and campaigning armies, but there are paths across it, as the proto-Celtic Urnfield people and their Hallstatt culture successors found

This is remarkably close in time to the Celtic migrations into Italy, around a century later. Overpopulation in what is now southern Germany must be pretty bad at this time. Some elements of the Celtic populations in Iberia later migrate to Ireland, where in part at least they form a population known to the natives as the Erainn.

Not so much a sudden influx of Celts, the migration into Iberia is more a general progression of Hallstatt culture tribes arriving at the Pyrenees and forcing their way across. They venture west to occupy the northern coast of the peninsula, and south beyond the Ebro and Duero basins as far as the Tagus valley. These Hallstatt Celts generally remain undisturbed by the later La Tène culture Celts until Iberia is conquered by Rome.

6th century BC

The Bebryces belong to the Hallstatt culture, along with the Boii, Cotini, Harii, Helisii, Helveconae, Manimi, Naharvali, Osi, and at least some elements of the later Lugii. The Bebryces are to be found around what is now central Germany or in Bohemia.

They and other Celts - the ancestors of the Autrigones - begin an expansion around this time which sees them migrate south-westwards, towards what is now southern France, the Pyrenees, and into Iberia. As they are primarily cattle herders, they take their herds with them, greatly supplementing their diet with milk, fatty cheese, and beef.

South-western Iberia in the middle of the first millennium BC contained a rich, technologically-advanced civilisation in the form of the Tartessian culture (click or tap on map to view full sized)

Once in Iberia, they settle around the headwaters of the Duero, Tagus, Guadiana, and Turia rivers, all along what is now the western Spanish border with Portugal. Fragments of the tribe are probably left along their route as groups drop out of the migration, largely being absorbed by other Celts.

One group is large enough to survive in its own right, with its name intact, and it is this group which, in the first century BC, can be found living in the southern Narbonensis as the Berybraces. At around the same time, Greeks are beginning to interact with the Tartessians and Balearic Islands at the expense of Phoenician trading contacts.

c.540 BC

The threat from the Greeks recedes when Carthage, in alliance with Etruscan cities, backs the Phoenicians of Corsica and succeeds in excluding the Greeks from contact with colonies such as Gadir in southern Iberia.

Almost at the same time (in 539 BC), all of Phoenicia is submerged within the Persian empire. As a result, many Phoenicians emigrate to the colonies, especially Carthage, which quickly rises to become a major power.

The surviving ruins of the Phoenician city of Gadir are few in number although some signs of them can be found, but did these pillars provide a name for the nearby 'Pillars of Heracles' (the modern Straits of Gibraltar) thanks to Hercules himself supposedly completing one of his labours here?

Carthage exerts some controls in Iberia, but not in the way the later Roman invaders will do so. In the third century BC, Rome faces off against Carthage in the Punic Wars to decide who will dominate the Mediterranean, with Rome the victor despite copious numbers of Iberian Mercenaries being employed as some of Carthage's hardiest warriors (see feature link).

4th century BC

In this century, the latter stages of the La Tène migration into Iberia sees several tribes or splinters of Celtic tribes arriving to swell the eventual Celtiberian mix in eastern-central Spain.

Some, like the Olcades, Turmodigi, and Uraci, dominate local Iberian tribes in the form of a new ruling elite, while others settle alongside such tribes and eventually pick up secondhand Iberian influences. However, Celtic Iberia is now gradually being forced to give way to Roman Conquest in Iberia.

This artist's impression depicts a selection of Carpetani warriors in various designs of armour and costume, some bearing influences which are Carthaginian or Roman