The 2012 excavations uncovered further evidence regarding the so-called Edificio dei dolii and the phases preceding it (in particular Phase II). In fact, there was increasing evidence of the Peucetan occupation in the area prior to the construction of the building in around 480/470 B.C. This was attested by the discovery of two inhumation burials in earth graves covered by stone slabs (tombs V and VI), a short distance from those excavated in previous years. Both were datable to between the end of the 6th century and the first decades of the 5th century B.C. An enchytrismòs burial (tomb VII) was also found, generically datable to the 6th century B.C. Further occupation evidence was documented in room E (fills in pits and cuts in the bedrock), subsequently obliterated by the walls of the room.

As regards Phase III, (construction of the building with the dolia beginning in 480/470), it was seen that room E (5.60 × 6.10 m) certainly formed part of this structure. USM 4 constituted the room’s east wall, as it did for rooms C and D. The new room uncovered in 2012 (room F, 5.20 × 4.50) may have been a structure apart and was separated from room E by a narrow ambitus (0.80 m) – whose occupation level could in fact date to a slightly earlier phase at the end of the 6th century B.C.

Wall trench

The 2012 campaign partially modified the situation documented last year. In fact, the external facing of wall US 1011 (2.60 m wide), abutting the ditch, was exposed. This facing was composed of large stone blocks wedged in a dry-stone build. The inner facing was not exposed and seemed altered and damaged by a rectangular structure, surrounded by a tile collapse that it was not possible to investigate as it continued beyond the south wall of the trench. Only the extension of the trench will clarify the dating and function of this building and its stratigraphic relationship with the curtain wall. For the moment, based on the pottery found in the layers of collapse the structure seems to have been abandoned during the first half of the 4th century B.C.

The trench inside the ditch identified in 2011 was completed. The ditch, together with wall US 1011, was an integral part of the settlement’s fortifications. The trench (3.00 × 2.20 m) was put in by the eastern edge of the excavation area. Inside it, alternating layers of more or less coarse gravels and sands were identified, sometimes distinguished by very compact clay or silty sediments, which had been deposited in successive phases inside the ditch.

While the upper layers in the ditch produced material belonging to all ceramic classes, including banded ware and mixed style, the deeper layers, 1015 and 1017, only contained monochrome and bi-chrome matt painted ware. The total lack of banded ware could date these layers to earlier than the first half of the 6th century B.C., the period in which the first banded ware pottery appeared.