The Greeks in Iberia and Their Connections with the Na tive Population
Domínguez Monedero A.H.
Greek activity on the Pyrenean Peninsula in the archaic period was different from the Italo-Sicilian and Pontic variants. In the 7th с. ВС the Greeks (from Samos, Aegina, and West-Ionian islands) joined the Phoenicians and the Etruscans in the economic and commercial development of the South and the East of the peninsula and, using their experience, established mutually beneficial relations with the Tartessians, Iberians and other peoples, less numerous but quite successful in mining raw material and bringing it to emporia. This kind of contacts, organized on the principle of «capillary system», led the Greeks to the idea of creating on the Pyrenean Peninsula not colonial poleis (as they did in the Central Mediterranean), but a dense network of emporia, both on the seashore and on rivers, purely Greek and mixed, situated on the ways already used before, with stable roles of leading (Emporion, Huelva), regional and local ones, which could often be native centers with Greek blocks. Centers of this kind were the most numerous among those created by the Greeks in the archaic period. Such reconstruction of the system of contacts between the Greeks and the native population of the Pyrenean Peninsula is possible thanks to discoveries of modern archaeology and their interpretations in the light of the written tradition.