Archaeologists from the University of Barcelona say excavations outside Valls, in Catalonia's Tarragona province, have identified the remains of Kissa, an Iberian city long associated with the opening stages of the Second Punic War. The site, at Vilar de Valls, had been a mystery for years despite its importance in ancient accounts of Rome's conflict with Carthage.

The team says the evidence includes Punic coins, ballista projectiles and a broad area of destruction consistent with a major battle. According to the report, those finds were recovered inside collapsed houses, where archaeologists also used historical sources to compare what they saw on the ground with references to a place called Kissa. Jaume Noguera, who directs the excavation, said that combination of archaeological material and historical reading was enough to identify the site.

The scale of the settlement is part of what makes the discovery notable. The excavations suggest that Kissa covered about eight hectares and may have supported roughly 5,000 inhabitants. The site also appears to have had three neighborhoods, a defensive wall and an important drainage system, including a sewer network in one of the streets. For the team, that makes the city look less like a scattered outpost and more like a substantial urban center.

The defensive ditch is another major clue. Researchers estimate that it may have been about 14 metres wide, five metres deep and around 400 metres long. Noguera said it could be comparable to the ditch at Ullastret, which is considered the largest in Catalonia. The team says the trench implies the presence of a wall and a fortified layout designed to withstand attack.

The historical significance goes beyond architecture. The source says Kissa was the scene of the first clash between Rome and Carthage in 218 B.C., during the Second Punic War, and that the city was partly destroyed when Hannibal Barca moved through the region. Ancient writers including Polybius and Livy are cited in the report as describing a battle near a place called Kissa. That makes the excavation important not just as a local discovery but as a possible anchor point for a much larger historical narrative.

The project itself is not new. The University of Barcelona's GRACPE research group first worked at the site in 2014, under a project tied to cooperation between the university and the town council of Valls and funded through a broader Catalan research programme. The excavation team says the quality and quantity of the finds could make the site an international reference point.

The report remains careful about what is and is not proven. It presents the identification of Kissa as a conclusion drawn from the excavated material, the destruction layer and historical comparison, rather than as a claim based on a single object. That cautious approach is fitting for a site whose exact location had been uncertain for centuries.

Even if more digging is needed to firm up the identification, the evidence described in the report is already enough to change the historical picture of the area. A confirmed Kissa would place a named settlement and a major wartime episode onto a site that has long lacked certainty in the record. That is why the team is treating the discovery as a research milestone rather than a finished story: the archaeology points in one direction, but additional excavation can still sharpen the dating, the scale of the destruction and the city’s exact role in the war.