In the ancient Roman town of Liternum, today lying within the territory of Giugliano in Campania, at circa 100.00 m south of the forum and on the same alignment, a trench revealed a surviving patch of the colony’s urban fabric.

This was constituted by a series of structures, in which a room was recognisable, probably used as a workshop, with an opus signinum floor with marble inserts and a small channel along its south side, delimited by a wall with both sides faced in opus signinum. Adjacent was another room, roughly paved with fragments of amphora and imbrices, characterised by the presence of a round well filled with material dating the obliteration to the 3rd century A.D. Occupation of the surrounding area, also seemed to date to this period as it produced coins of the same date. The construction of a successive room can be dated to a later occupation phase. Built of small irregular tufa blocks, it was on a higher level on top of a substantial fill of homogeneous material mainly comprising tufa chippings. This overlay earlier building phases: of the earliest phase, dating to the colony’s foundation, only the foundations survived of a corner in tufa blocks, inside which was an opus signinum floor with marble inserts. The stratigraphy dated the structure, of which no trace of standing walls remained and which may have been deliberately demolished, to the 1st century A.D.

The area investigated was situated in one of the southern quarters of the colony, probably used in a late period as the artisans’ area. This was attested by finds of numerous fragments of semi-worked bone, waste from iron working, fragments and strips of lead.