Five of the inscriptions occur on stelae that have been interpreted as Late Bronze Age carved warrior gear from the Urnfield culture.

Three of the 95 stelae and some graffiti, belong to the core area: Alcalá del Río (Untermann J.53.1), Villamanrique de la Condesa (J.52.1) and Puente Genil (J.51.1).

Strabo mentions that: "The Turdetanians are ranked as the wisest of the Iberians; and they make use of an alphabet, and possess records of their ancient history, poems, and laws written in verse that are six thousand years old, as they assert.

"[15] It is not known when Tartessian ceased to be spoken, but Strabo (writing c. 7 BC) records that "The Turdetanians ... and particularly those that live about the Baetis, have completely changed over to the Roman mode of life; with most of the populace not even remembering their own language any more.

However, the almost unanimous opinion of scholars in the field of Palaeohispanic studies is that, despite the author’s indisputable academic standing, this is a case of a false decipherment based on texts that have not been sufficiently refined, his acceptance of a wide range of unjustified variations, and on purely chance similarities that cannot be reduced to a system; these deficiencies give rise to translations lacking in parallels in the recorded epigraphic usage.

Untermann's numbering system (per MLH IV) or location name in newer transcriptions, is cited in brackets, e.g. (J.19.1) or (Mesas do Castelinho).

The text is complete if it is assumed that the damaged portion contains a common, if poorly-understood, Tartessian phrase-form bᵃare naŕkᵉe[n—].

[31] The formula contains two groups of Tartessian stems that appear to inflect as verbs: naŕkᵉe, naŕkᵉen, naŕkᵉeii, naŕkᵉenii, naŕkᵉentᶤi, naŕkᵉenai and bᵃare, bᵃaren, bᵃareii, bᵃarentᶤi from comparison with other inscriptions.

Herdade da Abobada (Almodôvar) (J.12.1): Segmentation: iŕual kᵘusiel naŕkᵉen tᶤimubᵃa tᵉero bᵃare-[?]ᵃa.

In the texts above, there are repetition of bᵃare-, naŕkᵉe-, tᶤile-, bᵒoii-, -tᵉero-, kᵃaltᵉe-, lok-, -ᵒonii, whereas bᵒoii tᵉero-bᵃare repeats three times, with assumably rero as a corruption of tᵉero in Mesas do Castelinho transcription.