Caballo y sociedad en la Hispania céltica: del poder aristocrático a la comunidad política

Abstract

Valuing the functional and ideological implications of horses throughout the Iron Age the sociopolitical evolution into the communities of the inner part of the Iberian Peninsula is analyzed, with special attention to its basis of power. Thus the warlike aristocracies of the fifth and fourth centuries B.C., who make the horse an exclusive good prestige and status regulator, derive to urban equestrian elite from the third to the first centuries B.C., who use cavalry and other associate images as an expression of new political and citizen values. Finally the role of horses as units of wealth and payment during the Roman conquest of Celtiberia and Lusitania is reviewed.