I thank the editors for this invitation to discuss this excellent paper by Corinna Riva and Ignasi Grau Mira. The paper includes a theoretical and methodological reflection on global archaeology and its consequences for archaeological interpretation, namely the negative effects it has had on the study of specific Iron Age Mediterranean cultures outside what is commonly understood as the classical world. The globalizing approach has tended to generalize, ignoring particularities. As an alternative, the authors propose the incorporation of microhistory into archaeological interpretation, using non-classical Mediterranean civilizations in particular.

I agree with the authors on the two main points of their proposal: the advantages of a microhistorical approach to investigate the past and the need to vindicate the study of non-classical Mediterranean cultures from a perspective that is not biased and is not conditioned by what we know of Graeco-Roman societies. Iron Age cultures of the western Mediterranean should be integrated in the study of the classical world, but not only as passive subjects. Their specificities should be taken into account and, as the authors propose, from a top-down perspective.

The non-classical Mediterranean has been largely neglected in, and even excluded from, Iron Age reference works. This the case of the Iberian peninsula in particular, in the far west Mediterranean. As an example, I would like to mention the well-known work of John Collis, The European Iron Age, first published in 1984. In this book, the south of France was timidly represented, and Europe seemed to end at the Pyrenees; nothing was said about the Iberian peninsula. In the Spanish edition of 1989 (Collis Reference Collis1989), a few chapters on this territory were added by Mª Angeles del Rincón to help Spanish bachelors feel that their past was also part of Europe. Fortunately, this has since long changed, as reflected by recent reference works on this period (e.g. Knapp and Van Dommelen Reference Knapp and Van Dommelen2014; Cowley et al. Reference Cowley, Fernández-Götz, Romankiewicz and Wendling2019).

The case study chosen by Riva and Grau Mira is precisely the Iberian culture that developed in the Mediterranean facade of the Iberian peninsula. It is very appropriate for their purpose and it happens to be one my areas of study. A closer look at this culture and how it has been approached allows us to see how research trends have changed in recent times and also the way ahead. Unfortunately, for other cultures of the western Mediterranean, the journey is even longer.

This area has suffered from major shortcomings when it comes to being studied from an emic perspective, particularly in early studies on Iberians, decades before the Big Data and global-archaeology approaches criticized by Riva and Grau Mira were introduced. Indeed, the formation of Iberian culture was for a long period explained according to the colonialist and ethnocentric paradigm that dominated the 19th century and part of the 20th. The formation of an urban society in this area was not conceivable without Greek colonial intervention for authors such as Bosch Gimpera, García y Bellido or Maluquer de Motes (see a synthesis in Belarte et al. Reference Belarte, Noguera, Ramon, Sanmartí, Kallala and Yazidi2021, 199–210). Also, the study of indigenous sites has largely been so conditioned by the influence of the classical world that even terminology was taken from Greek. In publications from the 1960s and 1970s we can find, for example, the use of the term acropolis to designate the highest part of the habitat or the term agora for a public space, both at the Iberian site of Puig de Sant Andreu (Ullastret, Girona) in the excavations conducted by Miquel Oliva (Reference Oliva1962), or the megaron-type floor plan used to designate a particular public building at Burriac (Cabrera de Mar, Barcelona) (Barberà and Pascual Reference Barberà and Pascual1973). Iberian sites and urban plans were viewed as mere imitations of Greek cities.

Another shortcoming of the Iberian culture in comparison with other Mediterranean Iron Age civilizations, also mentioned in Riva and Grau’s paper, is the lack of major financial support. Research on Iberian archaeology has for long been conducted almost exclusively by Spanish institutions and researchers, and has traditionally attracted little interest from other countries and their funding programmes. International projects on the Spanish Iron Age have mainly focused on the colonial world; an example is the research conducted by the German Archaeologic Institute at the Strait of Gibraltar area (e.g. Marzoli et al. Reference Marzoli, González, Suárez, Mielke, López, León, Thiemeyer and Torres2009; Marzoli and Suárez Reference Marzoli and Suárez2013; Marzoli et al. Reference Marzoli, Suárez, Torres, León, Renzi, Tomassetti, Pérez, Torres and López Castro2020). Important exceptions are the research projects of the University of Toulouse and Casa de Velázquez in Lower Aragon, collaborating with Aragonese institutions, which have focused primarily on autochthonous Iron Age sites (Marco Simón Reference Marco Simón2003; Moret, Benavente and Gorgues Reference Moret, Benavente and Gorgues2006; Moret et al. Reference Moret, Benavente, Melguizo, Marco Simón, Belarte, Benavente, Fatás, Diloli, Moret and Noguera2012; Melguizo et al. Reference Melguizo, Benavente, Marco Simón and Moret2021).

Fortunately, Iberian archaeology is currently the subject of numerous research projects, and knowledge about Iron Age societies has increased enormously from the 1980s to the present, especially thanks to territorial survey work and to extensive open-air excavations, which have made it possible to identify different categories of settlement. As Riva and Grau Mira point out, Iberian culture is not a uniform bloc, but rather there is considerable variety in the territories that compose it. If we can currently speak of diversity within Iberian culture, it is precisely thanks to the multiplication of research projects and to a change in the approach that emphasizes local particularities.

The comparison between the northern Iberians (present-day Catalonia) and the area covered in this article, the south-east (present-day Alicante and Murcia) is a clear example of this diversity. The differences, however, are not limited to those pointed out by Riva and Grau, i.e. a different territorial organization, where the hierarchical structure is clearly marked in the north. They are even greater when we refer to the ritual and funerary world. In the middle Iberian period (4th–3rd centuries B.C.), in the area of present-day Catalonia, necropolises are scarce and seem to be exclusively associated with the elites inhabiting the main nuclei (Sanmartí, Plana and Martín Reference Sanmartí, Plana, Martín, Belarte, Garcia and Sanmartí2015, 121–23). This does not seem to be due to a gap in the research but to actual different behaviour in both areas. I am not going into more detail on this subject, but it would not be possible to apply to the northern area a kinship and social study based on the necropolis in the same terms as the one carried out in the south-east in this article. Again, the importance and necessity of micro-level approaches to social research seems evident.

However, it is easy to fall into the trap of generalization. In Riva and Grau Mira’s article, the word ‘Iberia’ is used to designate Iberian culture. Many others have used it in this sense, including myself; however, the term is not without ambiguity, as it can refer both to this culture (which covers only the Mediterranean coast during a specific period of time) and to the Iberian peninsula as a whole and throughout its history. There is diversity within this culture, but the differences with other peoples of the peninsula of Celtic origin are even greater. We should reflect on this and decide whether it is not more appropriate to speak of ‘Iberian culture’ or of ‘the Iberians’ than of ‘Iberia’.

So far, I have focused on Iberian culture, following the example of the article we are discussing here. However, there are other forgotten civilizations in the non-classic Mediterranean. Before concluding this reflection, I would like to bring up another neglected area, this time in the southern Mediterranean: the north of Africa, especially the Numidians. In this area, and until the beginning of the 21st century, ancient civilizations have only received attention for two reasons: either in relation to Carthage and its expansion across the Mediterranean, or during the Roman Empire, in the latter case using the Roman conquest as a legitimizer of the colonial conquest of Africa, through establishing a direct link between Roman and French colonization (Kallala Reference Kallala2002). North African ancient towns were excavated ignoring the archaeological remains of occupations after the Roman Empire (and not leaving any record of the late-empire or medieval phases) and not digging beneath the Roman pavements. In recent decades, there have been important changes in this sense, and the autochthonous Iron Age cultures of the Maghreb have begun to be known thanks to several international cooperation projects, mainly in Tunisia. The excavation of pre-Roman occupations has recently been conducted in major sites such as Althiburos (Kallala and Sanmartí Reference Kallala and Sanmartí2011; Kallala, Sanmartí and Belarte Reference Kallala, Sanmartí and Belarte2016; Reference Kallala, Sanmartí and Belarte2018; Sanmartí et al. Reference Sanmartí, Kallala, Belarte, Ramon, Cantero, López, Portillo, Valenzuela, Sterry and Mattingly2020), Thugga (Khanoussi, Ritter and von Rummel Reference Khanoussi, Ritter and von Rummel2005), Zama Reggia (Ferjaoui et al. Reference Ferjaoui, Ben Nejma, Ibiri, Khalfalli, Msellem, Sebai, Baratte, Brouquier-Reddé and Rocca2017) and Simitthus (Khanoussi and von Rummel Reference Khanoussi and von Rummel2012), though in some cases fieldwork has been very limited and the results remain largely unpublished. In any case, these works are providing us knowledge on the origins, formation and main characteristics of Numidian Iberian culture for the first time, and are revealing the existence of an urban and complex society long before the Roman conquest, which was not necessarily under Punic influence. This is also happening in other regions of Africa (see Sterry and Mattingly Reference Sterry and Mattingly2020). However, there is still a long way to go before the level of knowledge about the Numidians, Mauritanians or other African civilizations is on a par with that of the other cultures of the Mediterranean arc.

I end my contribution with these last reflections on post-colonial archaeology, not before thanking once again both the editors of Archaeological dialogues and the authors for the opportunity to comment on this paper.