Designs, keys and symbols
The issues of the Citerior show a notable typological uniformity, while those of the Ulterior offer much greater diversity. Like any other region of the time, the main themes used were heads, human figures, and animal representations, including deities and motifs copied from Greek, Punic, and Roman repertoires (Baldwin 1916; Lacroix 1975; Howgego 2002; Caccamo 2007; de Callataÿ 2016; Iossif et alii 2018). In the catalog descriptions, the names of deities have been used whenever possible, although it is difficult to determine the interpretatio they received in each location. When the context allowed, the names of homologous representations adopted in different cultural spheres were respected, such as Heracles for Emporion, Melkart for Gadir, or Hercules for Carteia, identifications that become more complicated when the cultural affiliation of the workshops is ambiguous.
Determining when secodnary or complementary elements of the types should be described as part of the main motif, and when they should be presented as symbols, is often a delicate issue. The general judgement followed establishes that if objects have a well-known link with the figure they accompany, they are described alongside it. This association can be established by their proximity in the composition or because they are elements that, conventionally, identify deities or mythical characters. Typical examples of this are Heracles' club or Mercury's caduceus. In some cases, coins include more than one symbol. The order of symbol description always follows the same pattern, proceeding clockwise; it begins on the left side of the coin and moves to the right, describing what is seen above, in front, and below. The pieces that offer the most variety and combinations in this sense are the Iberian imitation of Masaliotan divisors.
Occasionally, there are formal and compositional elements directly linked to the legends, whose description has been added as complementary information alongside the main design. Issues such as their distribution in lines (e.g., legend in two lines), their position (e.g., external legend), the shape of the layout (e.g., curved legend), or their associated elements (e.g., legend over a line), have been incorporated as part of the design in the description of the types.
The extensive iconographic repertoire of Iberian coins is a revealing testimony of the beliefs of numerous Iberian communities and also forms a unique set for the time due to its geographical scope. The designs of the northern mints show great uniformity, with a notable prominence of designs featuring the male head and the horseman, which reflect the beliefs of the local warrior elites. In contrast, the southern workshops adopted a highly varied iconography, often linked to the agricultural exploitation of the territory in the context of intense relations with Romans and Italics.
The iconographic aspects in Numisdata should also receive a standardized treatment that would allow for their rigorous organization and facilitate approaches from diverse perspectives, requirements in line with their relevance as a historical source of information. The design section currently consists of a total of 1360 records used interchangeably for the description of the motifs represented on the obverses and reverses of the coins. The four fields of the type record used to describe the designs and symbols of obverse and reverse obtain their values from the design section. Thus, the concept "star," for example, is a unique record in the system used interchangeably in any of these fields. This section includes entries that are used for only one type and others, such as "male head" or "horseman with spear" which are used by dozens of types. Many of these are very similar variations on the same theme, differing only by secondary or complementary elements (beard, hairstyles, adornments, rider attributes...). These descriptive texts have been formalized to achieve the highest possible level of standardization, but inevitably, many of them are very similar and differ only in detail. This can make it difficult to search for some of the most common descriptions since, in a dropdown menu with predictive text, typing "male head" results in an excessively extensive and confusing list of variants. Additionally, it can be challenging to filter a part of them, such as the "bearded" representations. These descriptions do not provide an intelligible index and do not easily allow more complex searches by combining criteria or concepts.
To address these limitations, MIB includes a thesaurus that allows indexing each of the design records used to describe the types. The iconographic thesaurus enhances search capabilities and provides an exhaustive and systematic index of concepts, organized hierarchically with general groupings that are also useful for searches. For this system to function, each record in the design section must be indexed with the corresponding terms from the iconographic thesaurus. Additionally, since the structure of this thesaurus is hierarchical, terms that function as groupers, such as "gods," "animals," "clothing," or "tools," can be used. The project manages a large amount of content, and thus one of the main objectives was to make indexing and searches exhaustive, powerful, and user-friendly, both for researchers and any users interested in ancient numismatics of the Iberian Peninsula. In this medium-scale project, it has been feasible to manually carry out this indexing work. However, the evolution of the model undoubtedly involves resorting to natural language processing (NLP), a technique that allows for automated retrieval of the semantics of all these texts used to describe the types (Klinger et alii 2018).
Styles and the Key Field
Numerous designs show common representations of heads, figures, or animals that share the same elements, but whose engraving styles differ significantly. The same themes generally present different engraving solutions depending on the mint, as seen, for example, with the various denarius series (Gozalbes and Torregrosa 2014: 303, fig. 17). Sometimes, these style changes are even notable between successive series of the same mint, which, despite maintaining the same elements, reveal over time the intervention of different engravers. The Bilbilis units with the "bi" symbol are a clear example of this situation.
Such stylistic nuances usually do not have a place in catalog descriptions, which typically limit themselves to presenting figures, elements, positions, and orientations (male head to the right or horseman with spear to the right). The MIB catalog distinguishes numerous types and variants solely based on stylistic criteria; these entries share identical descriptions and do not provide information about the formal view followed to individualize them. In the absence of specific indications, the uniqueness of these types can only be deduced from the images, which may lead to errors in cataloging. To offer a clear definition of each type, a field called "key" has been added to the type record, where their defining characteristics are concisely indicated, often related to style. On the public website, this information serves as an introduction to the type and accompanies the catalog number, providing the criteria that allow to distinguishing from similar ones. When the uniqueness of the type is not due to a matter of style, the field highlights the epigraphic peculiarities or secondary design elements that are differentiators.
Symbols
The issues of the MIB catalog include iconographic and epigraphic symbols, a distinction that does not affect the description of a type in a printed work but does impact the approach to the digital data model. In the Numisdata architecture, the configuration of the design and legend sections is different since the latter is configured to represent any glyph of the Paleohispanic signaries. It could have been established that the obverse and reverse symbol fields would register symbols or epigraphy indiscriminately. Although some arguments suggested such a solution, it was ultimately decided that when isolated epigraphic characters appeared, they should be recorded as part of the legends, since many cases also make their character uncertain. There is no doubt that they often served as symbols, identifying people or emissions, as was the case with isolated signs used in the emissions of Kese. However, cases like this are also an epigraphic testimony, and thus this information receives uniform treatment, a configuration that simplifies search criteria and facilitates the creation of indexes.