Originally Posted by
Trarco
Sorry, I cannot share passages because I am writting with a mobile phone and I won't be at home until next week (where I have my computer).
The scholary consensus use traditional sources whose historiographical orgin dates back the XIX/early XX centuries. This is why I use terms as "stereotype". Now modern historiography is refuting this "scholary consensus". The English studies you have quoted aren't focused on the Iberian Peninsula and it seems they aren't using the Spanish updated bibliography. For example, Max Boot's quote says that Lusitanians used curved swords (falcata) and that Viriathus was a serphed. Sorry but it shows a limited knoweldege of the ancient Iberian Peninsula. His Spanish sources are the traditional ones that defend stereotypes. The falcatas were very rare in Lusitania (it's mainly a weapon from the Iberian Bastetania and Contestania/ SE of the Iberian Peninsula). Instead, the typical swords used in Lusitania were Alcacer do Sal-type and Arcobriga-type whose blades were straight. Also, Viriathus was not a sherped. That is clearly a Roman interpretation strongly influenced by Stoic philosophy. An anthropological-historian exercice can show that these Lusitanian "shepherds" were actually aristocratic lords of cattle. Something that is also attested in the Vettonian archaeology (Warfare, redistribution and society in western Iberia. Eduardo Sánchez-Moreno in Warfare, Violence and Slavery in Prehistory. Proceedings of a Prehistoric Society conference at Sheffield University, 2005).
As you can see Boot is using obsolete sources when he speaks about the western Iberian Peninsula. The guerrilla tactic is just one of the stereotypes he's using.
About Timothy P. Wickham-Crowley's publication. It dates back to 1992. At that year, the anti-guerrilla historiographical bibliography wasn't "consolidated". In fact it's when these ideas were appearing for the first time. Anyway, what are his primary sources? IMO this is not a valid argument.
About the quotes of your previous post:
-Sara E. Phang: She is not speaking about a Pre-Roman context but uses the term "Celtiberian guerrilla". This concept has been excellently refuted by Quesada (Los Celtíberos y la guerra: tácticas, cuerpos, efectivos y bajas. Un análisis a partir de la campaña del 153, Fernando Quesada Sanz, in Segeda y su contexto histórico. Entre Catón y Nobilior. F. Burillo, Zaragoza, 2006).
This study uses both written sources and archaeological data to show that Celtiberians didn't use guerrilla tactics. What is true is that Celtiberian armies did have skirmishers to support the line infantry like in the case of Roman and Carthaginian armies. However that cannot be understood as guerrilla tactics. Just one example (you can find a lot of them in the above quoted paper also available on Internet): written sources used the term "iusta legio" to name the Celtiberian line infantry that was part of a Celtiberian army recruited by Carthaginians. This army also had "levis armatura" (the minority of the army and skirmishers). (Livy 28, 1, 5).
-Francisco Queiroga: when he speaks about a Pre-Roman context, he writes about a Cantabrian context. That is the same northern-Vaccei context that I have mentioned several times. So, nothing to add here for my part.
-Daniel Varga:
1-This author is comparing two different areas that must be studied separately. His opinion shows a poor knoweldege about the ethnogenesis of the western Iberian Peninsula: Viriathus acted to the south of the river Tagus and the Brutus's campaign happened to the north of the river Tagus. These areas were not inhabited by the same Lusitanian peoples. The Viriathus' lands were inhabited by Lusitanian groups that must be understood as a supra-ethnic category formed by different substrates (Tartessian, Atlantic, Indo-European and even Punic). To the north of the river Tagus the Lusitanian groups were much more related with the Callaeci (Proto-Celtic/Atlantic substrate).
2- The part that says that the Lusitanian bands of the north of the river Tagus were "influenced by Viriathus" is really ambiguous. You can understand with the following meaning "they used the Viriathus's tactics" but what it actually means is that these bands were inspired by Viriathus or that they occupied the power vacuum after the Viriathus's death. So, these bands (similar to the ones that fought against Caesar) cannot be understood as the same (southern) Lusitanians that fought in the Viriathus' War whose area of influence wasn't in the north of the river Tagus but in the Baeturia and northern Baetica.
3- So, the robbers of the north of the river Tagus aren't the same peoples that formed the Viriathus's pluriethnic army. As you can see this doesn't prove the guerrilla tactic among the southern Lusitanians who fought in the Lusitanian War. BTW, in this campaign Callaeci fought against Brutus in order to support northern Lusitanians. They gathered 60.000 warriors and lost 50.000. Obviously the number is exaggerated but the number of warriors and losses reveal a pitched battle. Only in a pitched battle the losses could be so high (Oros. V, 5, 12; Livy. per. 56; Flor. I, 33, 12).
I don't agree with you about Viriathus's using guerrilla tactics. First of all he didn't use small bands but a huge army. He could divide it in order to take advantage of their mobility but after that all the warriors were gathered to fight. You could say that the ambushes would be guerrilla tactics but once the ambush was made, it became a pitched battle like Hannibal did in Italy and like Celtiberians did against Nobilior. This is not guerrilla tactics but an ambush on a large scale that is followed by a pitched battle. (Un heroe para Hispania. Viriato. Fernando Quesada Sanz, 2011).
You still ignore Appian, Iber. 65. Why when sources clearly speak about Iberian armies fighting in pitched battles (in this case Viriathus) are not valid? That is a stubborn way to think.
BTW, the sources that qualify my evaluation of the Daniel Varga's passage:
Lusitania. Historia y etnologia. Luciano Pérez Vilatela, Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia, 2000. Specially pp. 218-227.
Imperialism and multipolarity in the Far West: Beyond the Lusitanians (237-146BC), Eduardo Sánchez Moreno in War, Warlords, and Interstate Relations in the Ancient Mediterranean.
It is true that Quesada is my main source to defend the fact that guerilla tactics weren't the rule in the Iberian Peninsula and specially among Iberians (non-indoeuropean eastern peoples), Celtiberians and Viriathus/southern Lusitanians. But there are more authors who follow this idea (and they are more expert than the authors you have quoted). In regard with this matter my quotes have a better quality because these authors are really specialised in military matters.
Some suggestions:
Las panoplias numantinas y romanas. Alberto J. Lorrio Alvarado and Fernando Quesada Sanz in Numancia eterna. 2150 aniversario: la memoria de un simbolo. Junta de Castilla y Leon. Consejeria de cultura y turismo, 2017.
Los antagonistas en las guerras numantinas: Mitos, concepción y practica de la guerra y efectivos. Fenando Quesada Sanz in Schulten y el descubrimiento de Nvmantia, 2017.
El armamento de influencia La Tène en la península ibérica (siglos V-I a.C.) Gustavo Garcia Jimenez. Universitat de Girona, 2011.