Method and methods

Abstract

After defining the use of the term ‘Palaeohispanic’ and providing an overview of the epigraphic and linguistic geography of the Iberian peninsula in antiquity and the advances in their study over the years, a series of key questions in historical philology, specifically as concerns Palaeohispanic languages and epigraphy, are introduced: script and text decipherment; the complexity of philology as the science that is concerned with the encounter between texts, cultures, and societies; their historical nature, which requires their chronology to be studied; and the problems of language contact and the relationships between language and ethnicity. Finally, the chapter discusses the confrontation between Palaeohispanic languages and scripts and Latin culture, the transformations that it gave rise to, and the death of the former.