The most important discovery made during this season’s excavations in the castle of Rontana (Brisighella, RA) was that of two walls, bonded with strong mortar and over one metre wide. They were associated with a late 6th/early 7th century A.D. context, dated by the presence of a Hayes 105 plate, on a site where thus far only post 9th century A.D. finds or residual materials from an extensive proto-historic presence datable to the 8th century B.C., have come to light. The walls were cut by the early medieval cemetery that was certainly linked to the parish church of S. Maria di Rontana, in use until the 13th century. The later fortifications, those associated with the castrum mentioned in written sources (known from 960 A.D.), were formed by a timber palisade traces of which were found on all sides explored so far, close to the edges of the plateau on which the valley’s early medieval population lived. New defensive structures were also found in the trench opened on the castle’s eastern slope, part of a curtain wall built between the late 13th and early 15th centuries and already identified along the entire southern slope of Monte Rontana. The wall was built in roughly worked chalk blocks bonded with crumbly mortar, perhaps also chalk based. The identification of this stretch of wall clarifies the exposition of the undefended residential zone found below this side, already defines as a ‘borgo’, linked to the settlement’s main nucleus. Excavations here uncovered another nucleus of dwellings separate from the others by a beaten earth road, also identified on the north side, revealing the proto-urban organisation of this type of castle, in particular from the 14th century onwards. Other rooms were found in a row of buildings situated on the opposite side from the road, whose function remains to be clarified. A trench was also opened in the production quarter, close to a bread oven, identified during past campaigns. In this zone, the structures were built on a thick chalky mortar surface.

The removal of this surface revealed two earlier phases, one linked to production activities (a glass kiln) datable to the 13th century, and one, certainly earlier but not datable with precision, on which the stone buttresses of the 14th century fortifications rested. This was initially identified as a ditch, considering the vertical cut of the two walls and the width of the space between them, filled with an artificial deposit. The excavation of the rest of the deposit was begun in order to check whether it was a rock-cut dwelling instead, like those identified in 2015-2016 in the rest of the plateau, and buried following the reorganisation of the castle’s late medieval defences.