The fortified settlement of Cerro de la Mesa, based on the control of a crucial ford in the middle Tagus valley, played an important role in the economic and cultural development of its territory during the first millennium BC. Excavations have documented different structures such as walls, bastions, pits, roads and ceremonial and domestic spaces, in a complex superimposition of occupation phases from the 7th to the 1st century BC. The application of new non-destructive technologies, such as geophysical prospecting and aerial imaging, have made it possible to understand the complex urban fabric of this settlement, limiting excavation needs and making it possible to plan the different actions aimed at enhancing the value of this important site

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 archaeological campaigns carried out at the “moat enclosure” of El Casetón de la Era (Villalba de Los Alcores, Valladolid) have revealed the main features of these sites from the beginning of the Copper Age in the centre of the Spanish Northern Subplateau. The research provides relevant data on the work involved in the construction of this device, on the addition of the moats to a previous settlement and on the agricultural economy of its occupants. The “moat enclosures”, which involve a notable cooperative effort, are associated in the middle Douro valley with the first truly stable settlement and the consolidation of agricultural life.