Vaca Santa!
Boy did I just hit a jackpot...
Thanks to the Amazon.com marketplace I was able to pick up:
Encounters And Transformations: The Archaeology of Iberia in Transition (Monographs in Mediterranean Archaeology) for $15; which new runs $130.
The jackpot is not really in regards to acquiring a book that is normally out of my price range but what is in it. I have to admit I was expecting yet another book written from a Judeo-Centric view that Iberia wasn't squat or worth studying until the period of Phoenician orientalization onward (and that even that was fueled in turn by Assyria ).
Thank the Gods, I was wrong! Holy cow there are some amazing essays in there!!! The one that has taken me straight to Elysium so far has been: "A Thorny Problem: Was There Contact Between the Peoples of the Sea and Tartessos" by Dr. Manuel Bendala Galan. I mean, I've seen scattered, terse, matter of fact remarks before about Mycenaean interaction with Iberia well before the Phoenicians ever arrived on scene but never in such detail by a Spanish archaeologist, in a university funded compilation!!
I can not wait to read all the essays as I have no doubt I will arrive at the end with a completely illuminated view of the Iberian Bronze age and what that meant moving into the 1st Millennium BC.
Like one of the essays I skimmed over that went into depth about the connections between central Italian & Southern/Western Iberian archaeological data from the 3rd & 2nd Millenniums BC... Oh and the essay on Iberians in Sardinia...
The only thing that irks me is being reminded by this amazing publication of essays that there is incredible information out there trapped behind big dollar signs...
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