The seventh season of excavation of the baths at Carsulae took place in a six-week program from June 11 to July 22, 2012 under the direction of Prof. Jane K. Whitehead of Valdosta State University (Georgia, USA). Our ultimate excavation goal for the 2012 and 2013 seasons is to prepare for the preservation and reconstruction of the bath structure, which will begin in the summer of 2014.

Our excavation of 2012 opened quadrants on all sides of the bath structure as well as within it. We seem to have identified certain areas that Ciotti did not dig which may give us fresh historical information from secure, undisturbed contexts. On the south side, we uncovered a previously unknown wall running SW (Wall L). It turns a corner and forms a room, the northern side of which we had previously explored. It defines a very small room, which was nonetheless heated.

In the SE corner, where Ciotti shows that Wall K ends, we found a continuation. The new wall extension defines another room to its north: this, too, was heated by a hypocaust and paved with mosaics, as we see from the pattern of the pilae that remain and fragments of mosaic against the balk.

The ground level in the N side of the site is about 3 m. higher than that on the south, due largely to the regular runoff and fall from the cliff above. Excavation here required terracing of the soil, cutting one meter back for every meter down, in order to preserve the stability of the slope.

On the north side we exposed most of the southern face of the long northern wall (Wall O). Ciotti’s plan was tentative, as if he had found some breaks in that southern face. We can now identify those breaks as arches that spring from about a meter above the level of the floor and cut through the wall.

Against the NW face of this platform rests another newly-discovered wall (Wall P), which runs from the north wall of the baths northward toward the cliff. A fragment of it was detected in a trench cut to hold reinforcing bars between the upright supports of the roof. Since that wall is heading in the direction of a cistern at the top of the cliff, it may be that it, and perhaps the platform as well, have something to do with the supply of water.

This season we also opened areas within the bath structure that had seemed the most delicate: here an apparent refuse heap of brick and rock. We had been timid about digging into it because it appeared to be holding the higher level of pilae of the hypocaust floor in place. Once the fall had been removed, however, we discovered that it had hidden a mosaic floor.

This floor must hold the central motif of the mosaics of the main room; this is evident from the fact that it rests in the center of a frame consisting of alternating stripes of red and white. A section of the border on the western side had emerged already in 2007, but three of the corners of the frame appeared this season (indicate) to confirm the composition of the design.