The excavation of the Messapian residential complex was completed. It comprised two wings forming an L-shape, the east wing having three rooms was the residential part of the complex, the north wing was used for production activities as attested by a large amount of waste produced by metal working, and probably also for housing animals. The family tomb, with associated ossuary, was inserted into the corner formed by the two wings, in a privileged position. The complex was built on top of a layer of sandy fill contained by an imposing conglomeration of carparo and limestone blocks. This terracing also functioned as drainage and levelling of the slight hill slope.

The complex was accessed via a lane, made up of gravel and broken pottery, which divided into two, the first branch leading to the residential wing and the other to the production wing. The residential part was entered through a small open-air courtyard leading to a vestibule followed by a small portico closed by shutters. The vestibule and portico were covered with a single sloped roof, found collapsed in front of the threshold, in the portico. The rooms were trapezoidal in plan. It was possible to enter the living quarters from the small courtyard. The walls had a footing of carparo and leccese stone blocks, the standing structures were in mud brick and timber posts. The flat tile roof rested on a wooden frame and central post. A corner of the carparo wall formed a plinth with small slabs of leccese stone, which may suggest the inner face of the walls had some sort of facing. Two semicircles of small stones at the foot of the north wall supported containers. In the north-eastern corner the impasto cooking stands were found in front of an outcrop of smoothed rock, on which live coals were probably placed. Along the south wall, there was a hollow in the crushed tufa and carparo beaten floor, the housing for a piece of furniture. Fragments of table ware pottery were also found. This room may have also been used for entertaining guests.

From the portico it was possible to enter another room with a beaten tufa floor and flat tile roof, open towards the private part of the house. Among the finds loom weights and sheep astragalus bones which would seem to suggest the female and infant spheres. This room was used for family activities.

The productive wing had three rooms roofed with perishable materials: a service room with a beaten floor of crushed carparo; a large room circa 15 m long and over 5 m wide, without a beaten floor surface but completely free of stones, perhaps a stable for horses; a smaller room in a bad state of preservation. The production wing was completed by a room with a tile roof which may have been a “shop”, that is, where those wishing to buy local products were received.

At present the complex has been dated to between the second half of the 4th and the 3rd century B.C.

In the levels below the Messapian building, seven post holes and a terracotta wall tile belonging to a Iapigian hut came to light. The hut, oval in plan and circa 12 m long, was datable to between the end of the 8th and beginning of the 7th century B.C. Its beaten tufa floor directly overlay the bedrock. Where there were slight hollows in the rock the floor rested on a thin fill. An outcrop had been used as a base for the western end of the hut. The remains of stone footings for the internal walls of the hut were uncovered. A hearth came to light in a shallow hollow on the south side of the hut wall. A few fragments of proto-Corinthian pottery were recovered.

At the far eastern end of the productive wing of the Messapian house the foundations for a watch tower with a double terrace came to light. Dry-stone built it comprised a small room with a threshold at the entrance, covered by a pseudo-vault and a terrace presumably situated at a height of circa 3 m. This structure was surrounded, to the south and east, by a curvilinear make up incorporating a carparo block, which may be interpreted as the base for the stairway leading to the terrace. The building was completed to the north-east by a solid square tower, circa 2 × 2 m, with foundations of limestone boulders. It was probably 5 m high. Therefore, part of the productive wing was voluntarily sacrificed to the construction of the tower, which rested on the eastern end and abutted the north wall of the residential wing. The archaeological material collected in the building’s foundation trench included fragments of 3rd century B.C. local pottery. Situated at circa 5 m inside the earlier Messapian curtain wall, demolished following the Roman conquest in 266 B.C., the tower was built to partially replace the fortification guaranteeing the visual control of the water source at the Fontanelle and of the Oliveto plain to the north. The construction of such a building, unthinkable under the Roman dominion, must have occurred after the battle of Cannae (218 a.C.), when the Sallentini sided with Hannibal (cf. LIVY XXII, 61, 12 regarding the Uzentini; LIVY XXV, 1, 1 on the other defections in the Salento in 213 B.C.). This hypothesis appears to be confirmed by the fact that the site was abandoned a few years later. In fact, the excavation of Fondo Fontanella has produced no pottery of 2nd century B.C. date. The end of the Second Punic War, in 209 B.C., thus seems to have sealed the fate of Soleto, by then Soletum desertum.