ABSTRACT
One of the major questions regards the distribution of the urban settlements. Part of the solution to this question is located in the geography and pre-Roman urban network. Chapter 2, ‘The origins of urbanisation on the Iberian Peninsula,’ will take a step back into the prehistory of the Iberian Peninsula before the start of the Roman conquest in 218 bce. This chapter will introduce the geography of the region and its impact on the early settlement patterns. Thereafter, the different settlement types within the urban landscape of the third century bce will be examined. The pre-Roman settlement types will be looked at according to their geographical locations: the coastal zones, where we find the continuation of the early Phoenician and Greek colonies; the river basins of the Guadalquivir and Ebro, which acted as corridors connecting the inner Meseta plain with the coastal region; and, lastly, the proto-urbanisation of the oppida (towns) of the Meseta Central and the castros (hill forts) of the north-west will be taken into account. As a next step, the early patterns of Roman urbanism will be considered. This period of two hundred years will be divided into three broad periods: pre-Caesarean, Caesarean–Augustan and Imperial colonisation and municipalisation.
