Pure hybridism: Late Iron Age sculpture in southern Iberia

Abstract

The concept of hybridism has its origins in the natural sciences and was important in nineteenth-century debates about race. Nowadays it is especially relevant to various disciplines of the social sciences in connection with issues such as globalization, transnational dynamics, postcolonial diasporas and multiculturalism. ‘Hybridism’ has been recently introduced into archaeological literature, only to risk becoming an overly simple explanation of changes in material culture if deprived of its theoretical background. If material culture is hybrid by definition, what are the advantages of using the word ‘hybrid’ to describe it? In this paper I test the value of hybridism as a useful concept in approaching local reinterpretations of exogenous objects and the influence of Roman colonialism in local contexts, using as a case study Late Iron Age sculptures (third to first centuries bc) from the south and the east of the Iberian Peninsula.