• CELTIC STUDIES in Salamanca

A Point of Reference for Celtic Studies and the Study of Pre-Roman Languages and Cultures of Ancient Hispania

The importance of the Spanish Celts within the field of Celtic Studies cannot be overstated. The discovery of significant ancient Celtic inscriptions in Spain, together with the remarkable advances made in recent decades in the study of the peoples, history, archaeology, and languages of the Iberian Peninsula in Antiquity, have made the Iberian dimension of Celtic Studies unavoidable.

Perhaps the first name that comes to mind when linking Salamanca with this field is that of Antonio Tovar, former Rector of the University and a highly productive scholar in this and other areas. A congress on toponymy held in 1954 and the supervision of several doctoral theses—among them those of M. Palomar Lapesa, J. Rubio Alija, and Mª Lourdes Albertos Firmat—followed in the scholarly tradition of earlier Spanish authorities such as M. Gómez Moreno, R. Menéndez Pidal, and Luis (Koldo) Mitxelena

• In 1974, inspired by the discovery of the first Botorrita Bronze, the then Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters, the prehistorian Francisco Jordá, joined forces with two other professors from Salamanca, Luis Mitxelena and Javier de Hoz, to organise the first Colloquium on Palaeo-Hispanic Languages and Cultures, thereby inaugurating a highly productive and influential series of meetings. They were supported externally by scholars such as E. Hamp, K. H. Schmidt, J. Corominas, A. Tovar (then in Tübingen), J. Untermann, and F. Rodríguez Adrados. Twenty-five years later, in 1999, Salamanca again hosted the VIII Colloquium, organised by Professor Villar with the assistance of Pilar Fernández, Juan Luis García Alonso, Blanca M. Prósper, and Mª Dolores González.

  To date, fifteen Colloquia on Palaeo-Hispanic Languages and Cultures have been held. The proceedings of half of these meetings (seven volumes) have been published in Salamanca: Salamanca 1974 (Salamanca, 1976), Tübingen 1976 (Salamanca, 1979), Lisbon 1980 (Salamanca, 1985), Cologne 1989 (Salamanca, 1993), Coimbra 1994 (Salamanca, 1995), Zaragoza 1997 (Salamanca, 1999), and Salamanca 1999