Maps: Javier de Hoz y Daniel Romero
The maps which appear here are designed to provide a general overview of the geographical distribution of the main features of Palaeohispanic epigraphy and languages.
Map 1, General Map of Pre-Latin Inscriptions, indicates all the places in which inscriptions in a language other than Latin have appeared, both those in Palaeohispanic languages and in Greek and Phoenician. As can be seen in the identification of the signs used, besides the obvious groups defined by language and script—which with regards to the Iberian language implies three different groups—a small number of inscriptions with particular problems have been identified: a) the Salacia mint, whose (probably non-Iberian southern) script still cannot be classified with any certainty, b) inscriptions in the Southern script whose language does not seem to be Iberian, and c) inscriptions on headstones in the southwest, often called Tartessian. The criterion used to distinguish the latter from non-Iberian southern inscriptions is, above all, redundancy; in other words, spellings such as kaa, taa, etc., although non-Iberian inscriptions in the southern script that appear in the same area are probably in the same language and different from those classified in the same way in Andalusia, but at the moment there are no data available to be able to be more precise. The letters and numbers which identify the inscriptions coincide as far as possible with the numeration used in MLH.
Map 2, Iberian Isoglosses indicates places where there are inscriptions with linguistic features characteristic of the Iberian language, personal names formed with elements of the Iberian onomastic repertoire, some particularly frequent and clearly segmented suffixes and, in southern Iberian inscriptions, the S56 sign in an end position which behaves like a suffix. If the generally accepted transcription is correct, it would cease to be a southern feature and would have to be reconsidered, taking into consideration all words in North-eastern Iberian and Greco-Roman that end in –r.
The following maps combine the dating of the inscriptions and their typological classification. Below these maps an explanation can be found of the conventional signs which indicate the type of inscription. Of course, these maps do not include all known inscriptions because many are not datable with any degree of certainty.
Map 3, Inscriptions Before the 4th Century BC, indicates the places in which there are Phoenician and Greek inscriptions dating from this period; some (although not many) strictly speaking Palaeohispanic inscriptions; and the group of south-western inscriptions, only datable as a group and hardly ever in the case of specific inscriptions, meaning it is not beyond the realms of possibility that some of them might date from the 4th century BCE, although it does not seem as if the culture to which they belonged lasted long in that century.
Map 4, Inscriptions From the 4th and 3rd Centuries BC, shows the progressive increase in Palaeohispanic inscriptions, with the exception of those of the southwest, which disappear.
Map 5, Palaeohispanic Inscriptions After the 3rd Century BC and Latin Inscriptions Dating from the Republic, demonstrates the enormous expansion of Palaeohispanic epigraphy, the appearance of two new groups within this: that of inscriptions in the Celtiberian language, both in the script adapted from North-Eastern Iberian and in the Latin alphabet, and the occasional inscription in the Lusitanian language and the Latin alphabet that belong to the imperial period. The map also includes pre-Augustan Latin inscriptions taken from B. Díaz Ariño’s book, Epigrafía latina republicana de Hispania, Barcelona 2008.