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The Cessetani occupied the coastal territory around modern Tarragona — what Rome would formalize as Tarraco — and began striking bronze coinage during the Second Punic War, when Iberian tribes found themselves suddenly relevant to two competing Mediterranean superpowers. Roman forces under Gnaeus and Publius Scipio used the northeastern Iberian coast as their primary landing and supply corridor from 218 BC onward, and indigenous minting activity in the region almost certainly accelerated under that pressure, whether to facilitate provisioning, pay allied troops, or simply assert local economic presence amid the chaos.

ACIP 1109 is among the more frequently cited references for Cessetani bronze, though the precise chronology of individual emissions within this tribe's output remains debated.