In addition to Phoenician, Greek, and Latin, at least four writing systems were used between the fifth century BCE and the first century CE to write the indigenous languages of the Iberian peninsula (the so-called Palaeohispanic languages): Tartessian, Iberian, Celtiberian, and Lusitanian. In total over three thousand inscriptions are preserved in what is certainly the largest corpus of epigraphic expression in the western Mediterranean world, with the exception of the Italian peninsula.

The aim of this volume is to present the most recent cutting-edge scholarship on these epigraphies and on the languages that they transmit. Utilizing a multidisciplinary approach which draws on the expertise of leading specialists in the field, it brings together a broad range of perspectives on the linguistic, philological, epigraphic, numismatic, historical, and archaeological aspects of the surviving inscriptions, and provides invaluable new insights into the social, economic, and cultural history of Hispania and the ancient western Mediterranean. The study of these languages is essential to our understanding of colonial Phoenician and Greek literacy, which lies at the root of their growth, as well as of the diffusion of Roman literacy, which played an important role in the final expansion of the so called Palaeohispanic languages.

Alejandro G. Sinner is Assistant Professor of Roman Art and Archaeology in the Department of Greek and Roman Studies at the University of Victoria. His research covers the social and cultural history of Roman Spain and the western provinces, and his publications include three books and over a dozen articles in peer reviewed journals exploring Iberian numismatics, pre-Roman languages in the Iberian peninsula, pre-Roman and Roman domestic and religious spaces, and the construction of identities and the processes of cultural change in colonial contexts. Since 2006 he has been digging at the ancient site of Ilduro (Cabrera de Mar, Catalonia) in northeastern Spain, where he is currently directing a research project and leading an international archaeological field school. Javier Velaza is Professor of Latin Philology and the Dean of the Faculty of Philology at the University of Barcelona. His research focuses on pre-Roman languages in the Iberian peninsula, Roman epigraphy, and the history of textual transmission, and his academic publications include twelve books and over 200 articles in scientific journals. He is one of the main editors of the second edition of the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum II and is also currently the principal researcher of the LITTERA ('Laboratorio para la investigación y tratamiento de textos epigráficos romanos y antiguos') research group, as well as a member of the HESPERIA project (Banco de Datos Lingüísticos de la Península Ibérica).