HISTORY · OPEN COLLECTION

Iberians

Bronze Age communities and their selective exchanges with the Mediterranean preceded the diverse Iberian societies of eastern and southern Iberia. Their towns, languages and aristocracies were not one unified kingdom.

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Before you begin · Iberias

Before the Iberians: villages and Mediterranean contacts

Iberian societies arose from peninsular communities with a long history, transformed by their relations within and outside the Mediterranean.

For about 7,000 years
Farming villages
In the Villena area, farming, livestock and pottery transform the daily relationship with the territory.
III–II millennia BCE
Bronze Age settlements
Settlements such as Cabezo Redondo articulate production, exchange and wealth differences before the Iberian horizon.
8th–6th centuries BCE
The formation of Iberian cultures
Local communities and Mediterranean contacts contribute, at different rhythms, to new forms of urban life.

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Prehistoric origins

Long before Iberian sculptures, the communities of the eastern peninsula had learned to cultivate, raise animals and make pottery. In the Villena area, the Neolithic began about seven thousand years ago. Villages, fields and paths were shaping a inhabited landscape that would change many times before receiving names known to ancient authors.

The earliest cultures

During the Bronze Age, settlements grew on high ground, workshops and exchange networks developed. Cabezo Redondo, in Alicante, brought together dwellings, craft activities and wealth at a crossroads with water and salt. These settlements show organised societies and prestige differences prior to the formation of Iberian cultures.

How this history is formed

Between the 8th and 6th centuries BCE, contacts with Phoenicians and Greeks combined with local changes. New urban centres, aristocracies and forms of writing, trade and ritual developed. The result was a diverse set of Iberian societies: sharing some objects and customs did not mean belonging to a single kingdom.

From the past to the museum you are about to explore

The museum’s pieces allow tracing these relations in ceramics, sculpture, writing and funerary assemblages.

Interpreting these traces. Cabezo Redondo offers a regional antecedent; its inhabitants cannot automatically be identified as Iberians nor explain all of Iberia by themselves.

Sources for further exploration

Explore the earliest cultures

Many Iberias

6TH–1ST CENTURIES BCE · PREVIOUS CONNECTIONS AND ROMAN EPILOGUE

The entrance brings together the initial atlas and the museum’s background. The 54 catalogue stops are then organised into seven areas: context, culture, architecture, figures, treasures, beliefs and four historical doors.

The documentation provided is used as a critical starting source. The museum separates direct evidence, probable reconstruction and literary tradition, and preserves the necessary chronological and cultural cautions.

Eastern and southeastern Iberian peninsula, with focus on the Villena corridor and Mediterranean networks

From those Bronze Age communities and their selective dialogue with the Mediterranean arose, between the 6th and 1st centuries BCE, multiple Iberian societies with their own languages, cities and aristocracies.

The Villena Treasure is prior to the Iberian world and should not be presented as an Iberian work; it explains a regional substratum, not a demonstrated ethnic continuity.

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01 · COLLECTION

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Consult the maps and initial context sheets to situate this museum in time and territory; then choose the areas that interest you most.

01 · INITIAL ATLAS · DIVISIONS AND REGIONS

Iberian Map

Explore where the different Iberian peoples lived and how their cities changed.

Iberians

Farming villages

Bronze Age settlements

The formation of Iberian cultures

Prehistoric origins

The earliest cultures

How this history is formed

From the past to the museum you are about to explore

Many Iberias

Eastern and southeastern Iberian peninsula, with focus on the Villena corridor and Mediterranean networks

The museum, section by section

Museum Access

Origins and context

Culture, music and words

Architecture and places

People and their stories

Treasures and evidence

Beliefs and curiosities

Connected cultures

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