Celtiberians

It is adventurous to write about how daily life developed around a time of which written vestiges are scarce and most of the references come from a conquering people such as Rome which, even respecting religions and customs, immediately acculturated the conquered peoples. The existence of the Celts in the Iberian Peninsula is attested by linguistic evidence, ancient sources (Greco-Latin historians and geographers), and archaeological studies of their sites. The Celtiberian tribes occupied the most depopulated area in Europe today (excluding Lapland) and settled in the western area of the Iberian mountain range in what is now part of the confluence of the communities of Aragon, Castilla la Mancha, and Castilla y León. The southern part of La Rioja and a small part of the Valencian Community are also included in Celtiberia. They inhabited these lands from approximately the 13th century BC until the Romanization of Hispania during the 2nd and 1st centuries BC.

There are several hypotheses to explain the appearance of Celtic culture. One assumes the arrival of human groups that would bring the cultural elements of villages and necropolises, the invasionist thesis. Another argues that these elements correspond to a culture of complex formation, which would explain the diverse origin of its components as a result of a process of receiving another culture and adapting to it, with the loss of its own culture (acculturation). The analysis of the objects of the necropolises and villages of the initial phase of the Celtiberian culture reveals the existence of contributions from diverse origins and varied cultural traditions. Relatively recently, a third way was offered, exposing the theory that the origin of Celtic culture was precisely in the Iberian Peninsula. Based on DNA studies and linguistic studies, it affirms that the Celtic substrate found in the Peninsula in the 7th century BC spread from the Iberian territory to the rest of Europe, thus configuring the known European Celtic world.

Of all the Celtic cultures on the peninsula, the Celtiberians are the best known and played the most decisive historical and cultural role. They had an eminently lunar calendar (Coligny calendar) and their own language, whose translation is the most advanced since it is an Indo-European language and easily comparable to others better known (such as Celtic, Welsh, Germanic, etc.). More than 800 inscriptions have been discovered, mostly on bronze, and the most famous text of those that have survived is included in the so-called Botorrita Bronzes, four plates of which three are written in Celtiberian and a fourth in Latin that are related to a judicial process.

They are mentioned recurrently in Greco-Roman sources as a bellicose people, always predisposed to war, and had a society of an aristocratic type, structured around the ideal of “heroic” life of a warrior elite. The population was organized based on kinship relationships, around groups of people with a common ancestor. Other customs refer us to the important role of Celtiberian women in society, since they were in charge of fieldwork, men received the dowry of their wives, daughters received inheritance, and married their brothers, in addition, they were depositaries of collective memory and could take initiatives like warring alongside men.

There existed an elite that occupied a prominent position (auctoritas) due to their warrior ability (virtus), their wealth (pecunia), and their nobility (nobilitas); but above all, because they relied on a clientelar relationship to which they were bound by practices such as devotio and hospitium.

Devotio was a special form of military clientela existing in pre-Roman society. It involved dual relationships:

• On one hand, clients or devoti devoted their lives to their king or chief, whom they had the obligation to protect in combat in exchange for their protection, maintenance, and a higher social status.
• On the other hand, there was the divine aspect. The clients devoted their lives to a deity so that it would deign to accept them in combat in exchange for the salvation of their leader; therefore, they had to protect him with their weapons and their bodies even at the cost of their lives.

Hospitium was the name the Romans gave to a Celtiberian social institution derived from the obligation to offer hospitality to foreigners, who not only had to be received in a friendly manner, but also such reception bestowed prestige upon the host, so that there was competition to accommodate foreigners.

These hospitality agreements were a very common custom among the peoples of Celtiberia and in the Iberian Peninsula, an indigenous element that survived Roman organization (and that has transcended to our days as a symbol of sealing an agreement through a handshake). They were sacred and inviolable, and the relationship they represented became a legal commitment between an individual and a city or between communities, and thus the binding value of the tésera was confirmed, a material symbol that could even be transmitted through generations. The téseras were used as a password, honorary distinction, pledge of a pact, seal of friendship, distribution of lands, contract, recognized rights, rights or benefits, and permits for passage or grazing. The beginning of the Roman conquest of Hispania generalized them, usually in bronze support and written in Celtiberian language or Iberian alphabet. This written legacy, along with the aforementioned Botorrita bronzes (a series of bronze plates from the 1st century BC found in Contrebia Belaisca -Cabezo de las Minas, near present-day Botorrita, in the vicinity of Zaragoza-), is one of the main documentary sources for the study of Celtiberian way of life, customs, city names, and rituals.

The “stellar necklace” At the beginning of the 20th century, the Marquis of Cerralbo, Enrique de Aguilera y Gamboa, in one of his archaeological campaigns, discovered in a grave of the Celtiberian necropolis of Aguilar de Anguita (Guadalajara) the so-called Clares necklace (5th century BC). In the first interpretation made by the Marquis, he considered that it was part of the burial trousseau of a priestess of the Sun cult, he interpreted the symbolic elements that make it up: the horns of the Moon (cult of fertile powers), the solar wheel (circle that has no beginning or end), the swans (symbol of flight to the Afterlife), all intimately related to the same theme: death, the journey to the Afterlife and the rebirth again, spiritual aspects that indicate the Celtiberians’ belief in the immortality of souls.

Ernesto Cardoso

Season 1, chapter 21	Castro celtíbero de “El Ceremeño”
Rwecording date	September 21, 2019
Duration	1:49 minutes
Date of issue	November 1, 2019
Location	Cetiberia
Municipality	Herrería, Guadalajara. España
Imageand sound	Ernesto Cardoso
Edition	Ernesto Cardoso
Opusculum	Ernesto Cardoso
Music	Monplaisir
Song	Estampe Galactus Barbere