The MARQ has edited online Contestania ibérica' (Iberian Contestania)the masterpiece of Enrique Llobregaton the occasion of the tenth anniversary of its death. The aim is to make available both the scientific community as well as the general public this publication in digital format, which can be downloaded free of charge. of the website from MARQ. The book is a reference work on the Iberian archaeology and a consultation tool to address any aspect of the old communities alicantinas.
The plenary session of the Alicante City Council will meet tomorrow at extraordinary session, to award the title of Favourite Son of Alicante to this archaeologist. Llobregat is one of the most eminent representatives of Alicante's archaeology and the Valencian Community. He is a reputed Iberianist and a great connoisseur of the history of these lands in its numerous facets, from the Neolithic to the Middle Ages. It was a prolific researcher and his work becomes essential reading by those who want to get to know the past of the province of Alicante.
The figure of Llobregat is linked to the Museum, of which he was director from 1966 onwards. The Institute of Alicante Studies, today Gil-Albert Institute, published his doctoral thesis, which he defended at the University of Valencia. Contestania ibérica' marks a turning point in the archaeological studies in the field of Iberian Peninsula. It serves not only as the basis for an extensive repertoire of Llobregat publications, but also as a model for successive generations of researchers to the present day about this culture to which it has made a decisive contribution to define and characterise.
In this work, the archaeologist from Alicante is very critical in some of his hypotheses. He puts forward novel proposals about Iberian settlements, their necropolis, religion and sanctuaries, ceramics, numismatics, sculpture and writing. Contestania ibérica' (Iberian Contestania) continues to be one of the most important reference work on the Iberian archaeology. Many of the issues raised by Llobregat are still valid, while others that were considered to have been resolved a few decades ago have recently been discussed again.
Contestania ibérica' represents the first attempt to address in a more detailed way the in a comprehensive and exhaustive manner the so-called Iberian culture. One of Llobregat's main achievements was the definition of the Contestania, which basically occupied the space of the current province of Alicante until river JúcarThe most important of these regions is estimated to be covered by the eastern Albacete and large part of the province of Murcia. In this study, Llobregat carried out a rigorous compilation and synthesis of all the available information which, until then, had been widely dispersed.
