A key site on the northern shore of the Strait of Gibraltar, the Silla del Papa was occupied throughout the first millennium BC. In constant contact with the populations of the African coast, this fortified enclave was successively influenced by the Phoenicians, Carthaginians and Romans. It developed a particularly original form of high-rise urban planning. Its inhabitants abandoned it at the beginning of the reign of Augustus to build a new city, more in keeping with the canons of Roman urban planning and on the edge of the Atlantic coast (Baelo Claudia).
The site probably already bore the name that the High-Imperial municipality would keep: “Bailo”, according to the bilingual legend (Punic and Latin) on its coins. Today it lies 4 km from the coast, at the highest point of a small mountain range, the Sierra de la Plata (457 m), which closes off the bay of Bolonia to the west. The site has three advantages that could not but attract the people who frequented the strait: formidable natural defences formed by almost vertical rocky outcrops, an abundance of water from a spring at the foot of these rocky outcrops, and finally, a commanding position offering extensive views in all directions: Tangier to the south, Djebel Moussa and Ceuta to the east, and Cape Trafalgar and the Bay of Cadiz to the west. As will be seen in this paper, this oppidum was home to a mixed community, with indigenous and Semitic components first, and possibly Italic later. As a result of an international and inter-university research project, several sectors of the habitat, two necropolises and a Visigothic church have been excavated at the Silla del Papa in recent years.

Archaeological research in Pintia (Padilla de Duero – Pesquera de Duero, Valladolid) can be considered to have begun in 1979, after the discovery and first intervention in the necropolis of Las Ruedas, and has continued uninterruptedly since then until the present day.
Forty years of archaeological research into the habitat, the necropolis, the potteries and the defensive systems of the city have made it possible to construct, with due caution, a Vaccean identity that until recently had been diluted in the paradigm of Celtiberianisation. While this concept has just been superseded, “Vaccean archaeology” finds in Pintia one of its most solid bulwarks.

Over the last decade, the Ullastret branch of the Museu d’Arqueologia de Catalunya has developed a project of intervention and study of the defensive complex of the complex formed by the Iberian settlements of Puig de Sant Andreu and Illa d’en Reixac (Ullastret).
Within the framework of this project, notable progress has been made in the delimitation of the defensive structures of the walls, although the most outstanding feature is the discovery, by means of geophysical prospecting techniques, of a monumental moat excavated in the rock that protected the western slope of Puig de Sant Andreu.

The enclave known as “Cabezo Pequeño del Estaño” has recently joined the scientific debate on the Phoenician presence in the Iberian Peninsula. The site, despite having suffered partial destruction due to the exploitation of a quarry, still has one of the best examples of oriental defensive architecture in our country, with a wall of casemates that is more than 2 metres high. During the excavations, several sectors of the wall, a block of dwellings, a warehouse and, in 2018, a complete silver metallurgy workshop were excavated.

The site of Libisosa (Lezuza, Albacete) contains remains from the Late Bronze Age to the Late Medieval period, with its Iberian oppidum and Roman colony phases standing out. The Ibero-Roman phase represents a mine for research, an inexhaustible source of quantitative and qualitative material information, due to its peculiar preservation conditions. The Libisosa project is based on the pillars of scientific research and training, but understanding archaeology as an engine of perennial, social and economic development, as well as cultural.

We have been carrying out excavations at the archaeological site of La Draga since 1991. Its location on the eastern shore of Banyoles Lake has meant that the soils of occupation are partly covered by groundwater, favouring an anoxic environment and the preservation of remains of wood and organic matter.
The site would correspond to an ancient Neolithic peasant settlement that was established in the area between 5,300 and 4,900 BC. Throughout this period, two distinct construction phases have been documented based on their chronology, the materials used and the functionality of the structures.