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A selection of recent data referring to Pb+Pb collisions at the SPS CERN energy of 158 GeV per nucleon is presented which might describe the state of highly excited strongly interacting matter both above and below the deconfinement to hadronization (phase) transition predicted by lattice QCD. A tentative picture emerges in which a partonic state is indeed formed in central Pb+Pb collisions which hadronizes at about T = 185 MeV, and expands its volume more than tenfold, cooling to about 120 MeV before hadronic collisions cease. We suggest further that all SPS collisions, from central S+S onward, reach that partonic phase, the maximum energy density increasing with more massive collision systems.
Hadronic yields and yield ratios observed in Pb+Pb collisions at the SPS energy of 158 GeV per nucleon are known to resemble a thermal equilibrium population at T=180 +/- 10 MeV, also observed in elementary e+ + e- to hadron data at LEP. We argue that this is the universal consequence of the QCD parton to hadron phase transition populating the maximum entropy state. This state is shown to survive the hadronic rescattering and expansion phase, freezing in right after hadronization due to the very rapid longitudinal and transverse expansion that is inferred from Bose-Einstein pion correlation analysis of central Pb+Pb collisions.