Exchanges with other cultures
In ancient Iberia, peoples and cultures coexisted: Iberians, Greeks, Phoenicians, Etruscans, Tartessians, Punics and Celts. In the 6th century BC, the hub of influences changed from the south (Tartessos) to the east (Iberians).
Iberian trade is credited from its origins. Commercial leads from the 5th century BC in Ampurias and Pech Maho evidence their participation in these transactions. They also needed the tin and amber of the northern countries, or the Greek vessels of the Mediterranean. As well as metals, cereals from El Ampurdán, salted fish from the Cádiz coast and amphoras from Iberian workshops, which probably contained wine. They had aristocratic relations with the interior and with the north, as evidenced by the silver goblets, dating from the 3rd century BC, which appeared in Aubignan (Les Landes, France).
The Phoenicians were the first interlocutors of the Iberians, installed from the 8th century BC. In small communities on the Andalusian coast and Cádiz. They exchanged peninsular silver with them for innovative techniques such as pottery on the wheel, iron, bronze, ivory and gold or writing and oriental shapes and iconography. At the same time, relations with the Euboean Greeks began, stabilising their exchanges with the Phocaeans, the last colonising Greeks from 600 BC. All this influences gave rise to the formation of the known Iberian culture.
Communication with the coast is evident. Phoenician settlements near the coast are known. From the 5th century BC, the town of La Picola in Santa Pola, with a typical Greek urban configuration, proves the dimension of the Vinalopó circuits and their exit to the sea. The Greek-Iberian writing or the influences of Greek conceptions and models in the Iberian sculpture workshops are more than notorious aspects of these exchanges.
On peninsular ground, they kept exchanges and influences with the Celtic or Celtiberian peoples, who developed original crafts, their own iron weapons and everyday life objects such as fibulae with zoomorphic iconography. The Vinalopó territory was occupied by the contestanos, with a culture similar to that of their neighbours, but with their own characteristics, such as the use of Greek-Iberian writing and the symbolic style of their ceramic decorations from the end of the second century BC.
The neighbouring Iberian peoples and ethnic groups were Los Edetanos, to the north, the Bastetanos, to the south and the Oretanos to the west, along with others more distant, such as the Turdetanos, Ilergetes, etc. The undetailed vision of the Contestania by Roman authors such as Plinio or Ptolemy differs from the one we have today, extending it beyond the limits of the Segura, Júcar and Vinalopó rivers, until it reaches part of the current provinces of Murcia and Albacete.