In November 2007, during the laying of a sewer pipe in via Astura where it meets Piazza Tarquinia (Municipio IX), a dump came to light that was rich in archaeological material of Roman date.

The stratigraphy appeared to be constituted by a deposit of soil with a fairly homogeneous sandy matrix, found immediately below the road-bed at 40.65 m a.s.l. This layer was over 1.70 m deep and contained a large quantity of fragments pertaining to architectural decoration (plaster and stucco, sectilia and marble slabs, mosaic tesserae ), pottery and glass, tools and metal objects (roof and window/door frame nails, door bolts and a fragment of a lock plate), all datable to between the early and mid Imperial period. There was no building rubble in the layer except for a lump of pozzolana mortar, a few cubilia and tufa and travertine chips.

There were numerous fragments of stucco cornices and high quality polychrome plaster of the II and IV style and of slabs and sectilia in marbles of differing provenance, homogeneous both from a chronological and qualitative point of view. This material can be attributed to the decoration of one or more residential structures of middle to high range, the location of which is uncertain but was perhaps centred around the area of the ancient via Latina (stretches of basolato have been found on several occasions in the area between Porta Latina, via Populonia, via Vetulonia, via Cilicia and via Latina: Rea 2005). In this regard it is worth citing the find, in 1920, in the area between via Cerveteri, via Albalonga and piazza Re di Roma of a series of walls in opus mixtum belonging to a residential building and dating to between the late Republican and early Imperial period (Gatti 1920). Furthermore, during recent work for the renewal of the gas network (October 2006 – SSBAR Archive, Techne s.r.l.) a number of walls came to light in via Etruria, at a depth of 1.10 m, which may have been part of the same private building.

The pottery finds date to a phase between the second half of the 1st and the first half of the 2nd century A.D. All the major classes of pottery documented in Rome for this period were present (Italian sigillata, thin walled ware, African cooking wares), with a slight predominance of vessels used for the preparation and conservation of food.

The dump can be interpreted as an intentional levelling of a natural depression, probably during the urban redevelopment of the area. Similar levelling is documented in the area of piazza Celimentana (I Municipio; Dante 1993) and Villino Fassi, at Corso d’Italia (II Municipio; Piranomonte 2007), both interventions dating to within the 1st century A.D. and undertaken using rubble from the demolition of nearby buildings. However, in the case of via Astura the layer contained only materials of everyday use and the remains of architectural decoration, whilst there was an almost total absence of construction material, as if this was evidence not of the total demolition of a residential complex but only the removal and substitution of the decorative scheme.
The later pottery found within the layer, mainly amphora type containers, dates the creation of the dump to just after the beginning of the 3rd century A.D.