| Native Name: | Unknown |
| Native Name Lang: | Iberian |
| Regions: | A section of the Albacete Province, the eastern part of the Region of Murcia and the southern part of the Valencian Community.[1] |
| Languages: | Iberian, Phoenician, Greek, Latin |
| Related Groups: | Bastuli, Bastetani, Oretani, Edetani, Ilercavones, Cessetani, Laietani, Lacetani, Indigetes, Ausetani, Sordones |
Contestani (Ancient Greek (Κοντεστανοί) is an ethnonym of Roman Spain of the imperial period. It appears chiefly in the Greco-Roman writers Pliny the Elder (Natural History (Pliny) iii.iii.19-20), 1st century, and Claudius Ptolemy (The Geography ii.5 on Hispania Tarraconensis), 2nd century. Pliny might be considered the more creditable, as he was for a time procurator of the official Hispania Tarraconensis, a province of the Roman Empire encompassing all the north and all the east of the Iberian Peninsula (the chief part of the future nation of Spain).[2]
A geographic ethnonym from ancient times, however, was not necessarily the name of a people. It might be a toponym. Perhaps the name of the supposed people came from the name of the place. In that case, anyone could live in the place and be counted as one of its people without the necessity to belong to an ingroup such as a tribe. L. A. Curchin did an etymological study of all the ancient names in Contestani and Edetani to the north of it. The implied distribution was multilingual and therefore multiethnic: 14% Iberian, 3% Punic, 35% Indo-European, including 19% Greek and 18% Latin, the rest uncertain.
An earlier literary fragment presents the same system. Livy, historian living in the Augustan period, writes in a fragment of Book 91 describing the revolt of the Iberian people under Quintus Sertorius against Rome under Sulla, calls Ilercavonia and Contestania both gentes, "peoples" (a well-known word in Spanish). Here he uses the toponyms ending in -ia for the ethnics, equating place and people.
The ethno/topo-nyms are made to fit into the grammatical contexts of the Greco-Latin sources just as though they were Latin words. They give the appearance of being Latin, and seem to contain segments of Latin. One is tempted to see contest in Contestania as though they were some sort of tribe that likes to contend. Similarly the Oretani might be mountain (Greek ore) men, and the Lacetani some sort of Lacedaemonian, while the Indigetes stand in place of the Indigenes (natives). -Tani looks like the -istan suffix as in Pakistan.
However, the word formation is all wrong. The Greeks and Romans did not form words in that way. In all the body of Greek and Latin words, these are the only instances of these words, nor does searching the Indo-European roots help. Moreover, there is nothing like them at all in the Iberian vocabulary. At a loss for any other explanation, the scholars fall back on the theory that the Roman soldiers invented these words to imitate the foreign language that they heard there. A famous modern example is the rendering of Reykjavík Iceland into rinkey-dink by the allied troops passing through. Llobregat says:[3]
We know nothing of the meaning of these geographical names that the Roman invader probably forged on indigenous gentiles. Recent research attempts to unravel the meaning of these terms, which often, as in the present case, have only very late literary documentation, at a time when the country was completely Romanized. ... but what is their significance? For the time being, it is unknown to us, ... There is only one way left open that allows us to identify these compartmentalizations in some way, ... a geographical analysis. ... In a word, to try to identify a homogeneous and reasonable territory that could serve as the basis for the concept of the ancient administrative division.The real name, if any, of the people was not known. Accordingly, Llobregat chose for the name of the people and the book, Contestania Iberica, meaning the Iberian territory that would become Contestania. Observing that the culture evolved into this role, he coined the term Contestanianization.
They lived in a region located in the southwest of Hispania Tarraconensis, east of the territory of the Bastetani, between the city of Urci, located NE of the Baetica and river Sucro, today known as Júcar.
Cartago Nova was within its territory. Other important towns were Setabi (Xàtiva), Lucenti or Lucentum (La Albufereta in Alicante), Alonis (Villajoyosa), Ilici (Elche), Menlaria, Valentia and Iaspis.
Iberian coins were minted at Setabi.[4]
Important Contestani archaeological sites include Tolmo de Minateda hill near Hellín and Bastida de les Alcusses, near Mogente.[5]