During the 2010 field season, excavations of the Roman period villa at San Felice continued work initiated in the 2009 field season. This included: expanding excavations along the western edge of the structure to better define this side of the building; continuing excavation of an early second century AD midden within a central peristyle in an effort to carefully remove all artifacts and ecofacts and to fully define this architectural feature; and excavating beneath a beaten earth floor surface datable to the latter half of the 1st century AD to the northeast of the peristyle to better understand the earlier occupational history of this part of the villa.

The excavation all of these areas included the systematic collection of artifacts and faunal remains by sieving with a 5mm mesh screen, as well as the collection of at least 12 litres of soil from each archaeological context for flotation in order to collect archaeobotanical remains, principally seeds. Excavations along the western edge of the building revealed an approximately 3.8 × 4.0 m N-S x E-W room dating to Phase 1 (latter half of the first century BC to early first century AD), paved with painted a painted concrete floor, with a doorway at the center of its western wall and the remains of a stone step along its eastern wall. If the structure is symmetrical, this room may be the mid-point of the western side of the structure, if the doorway was the primary entranceway on this side of the building.

Excavations of the midden were slow and painstaking. The midden was covered by a wall collapse comprised of over 1000 kg of tile and stone, and, based excavations in 2009 during which part of this same midden was excavated to the north and east of our 2010 trench, is approximately 1.25 m deep. The midden produced several hundred bones and bone fragments, 7 loom weights, over 1500 sherds of pottery, primarily cookware, including examples of clibani, but with some fine tablewares as well, including ITS and Regional Red Slip (a term coined by Philip Kenrick who has studied the pottery from the nearby excavation of a Roman cemetery at Vagnari). The midden appears to be associated with food preparation, including bread baking and butchery, and provides evidence for textile production at the site. The midden must have been created when the central peristyle, which appears to have been used for water collection, possibly from a neighboring spring, went out of use, which may also mark a change in the villa’ s function from a primarily residential unit to a structure more closely associated with animal husbandry. Excavations to the northeast of the peristyle revealed that the surrounding corridor was initially paved with river cobbles set into a beaten earth floor. Unfortunately, excavations of the foundation of this floor failed to produce any artifacts or charcoal, so we are still not able to precisely date the first phase of occupation at the site. The archaeobotanical remains are currently under analysis.