This season’s research on the Monte Sirai plateau, directed by Piero Bartoloni, assisted by Michele Guirguis, investigated the necropolis and a number of rooms on the acropolis.

Excavation continued in the southern sector of Insula C, where work in rooms C64 and C66 was completed. Inside room C64, the makeup lying below the beaten floor surface from the main occupation phase (2nd century B.C.) was removed. In room C66, the levels below the living space abandoned towards the end of the 2nd century B.C. were investigated. A number of quarrying cuts and fills in clefts in the bedrock, related to the earliest phases. The first construction took place on the site at the end of the 7th century B.C., while the construction of the buildings actually visible dates to the first half of the 3rd century B.C.

The excavations also looked at two rooms in the so-called Casa Amadasi. The humus and surface stones were removed in rooms C18 and C19. In room C20, the layers of collapse (US 84, US 20) covering the beaten earth floor were removed. A pile of pottery and animal bones (US 23) was found on the floor surface (US 124). There was also a central posthole (US -127, US 126). The excavation also revealed traces of the small trenches dug during the 1960s (US -86; US 121).

Excavation on the necropolis continued in the “Area del Posteggio”, in the northern periphery. The first burial was the inhumation of an adult male (T. 338). A plate and jug with an everted rim were placed by the feet. At a short distance from this burial, there was a large rectangular grave (T. 337) containing two skeletons. Both depositions were badly disturbed. Fragments of bone and pottery from a varied assemblage of vessel forms were found between the cover slabs. The skeletons confirmed the chronology for this sector, whose use spanned the period between the late archaic period and the 5th century B.C.