ABSTRACT
The presentation of this group of papers at the EuroTAG conference in Southampton in 1992 marked only the second occasion on which Iberian archaeology had received such attention at the annual meetings of the Theoretical Archaeology Group. At that time, it was twenty years since I had first visited Spain as a zealous young Ph.D. student. This began my involvement in research and fieldwork on the prehistoric archaeological record of that country. The Spain (and indeed Portugal) which exists now is a very different place archaeologically, politically, economically and culturally from what it was in the early 1970s. The chapters in this volume gave me the opportunity to reflect on those changes, and to examine the external context within which Iberian archaeology exists. I use the word ‘external’ in two senses, first, in relation to the local context of archaeology within Spanish and Portuguese society, and second, to refer to the nature and effects of interaction between local archaeology and that practised within the international community. The main emphasis in this chapter is on the second of these meanings. How has Iberian archaeology changed in response to this interaction? Has it really been ‘interaction’, rather than a one-way process of intellectual colonization? Why is a knowledge of contemporary Iberian archaeology important, both empirically and theoretically? During the course of this commentary on the chapters, I shall try to answer these questions. If the balance of my comments leans too much towards Spain rather than Portugal, then this reflects my own cultural and archaeological experiences.
