Religion in contact, Iberian peninsula

Abstract In the Iberian peninsula there were two major linguistic zones: one inhabited by peoples who did not speak Indo‐European languages, known as “Iberians,” along the coast from lower Andalusia to Languedoc (with earlier Mediterranean influences), and the interior inhabited by the Hispano‐Celts. While the Orientalizing period is defined by the “princely graves,” from the fourth century bce onward there is a shift to the sanctuaries, where a new collective image of society is expressed through bronze figurines, stone sculpture, or pottery vessels. With the selective adoption of Italo‐Hellenistic conventions, a process of monumentalization is attested in the second and first centuries bce , and the names of local deities or rituals emerge in the epigraphy of the Celtic interior.