This year, two short campaigns took place on the site of Poggio di Spaccasasso. The excavations were carried out by Siena University’s Laboratory of Prehistoric Archaeology and the Interuniversity Research Centre for the Study and Promotion of Prehistoric Cultures Technologies and Landscapes (CRISP). Two sectors were investigated in the western extension of the plateau. In the north-western sector, the area was cleared and the humus and excavated soil (spoil heap) from recent excavations removed. This exposed a dark, almost black, loose soil containing medium to large crushed limestone and quarrying tools in gabbro and quartz–rich sandstone. This level can be interpreted as quarry detritus relating to the phase when the Neolithic quarrying activity was abandoned.

In the south-western sector, there was a horizon of loose soil containing minute to medium-large gravel, corresponding with the Neolithic abandonment phase of the quarry, in the quadrants positioned on the same axis as the entrance to the mine shaft. Below this was a layer of light grey dusts and minute and very minute gravel resulting from the demolition of the embedded rock using fire, which also caused the abundant medium to large limestone conchoidal chips present in the same deposit. It seems possible to associate this level with the later phases of Neolithic cinnabar quarrying. To date this deposit had only been partially investigated at the bottom of the quarry’s east face.

Part of a small pit was identified at the edge of an old excavation trench. It contained a few very small pottery fragments and human bones. The pit, which had almost entirely been removed by the trench, relates to the funerary phase of the site.