This season’s excavation continued the work of the previous campaign and therefore involved the section of the forum’s north portico uncovered in 2014. Two new rooms facing onto the portico were uncovered and it was seen that the line of the colonnade was interrupted in correspondence with a large ditch running east-west. Earlier excavations had also uncovered a new area of the forum’s limestone paving and a base next to the cut of this ditch. The base was built before the limestone paving, dated to the Augustan period, was laid.

Thereafter a deep cut went through the stylobate of the colonnade, in fact none of its elements were found in situ. Based on the excavation data from this campaign, this robbing can be dated to between the 6th and early 7th centuries A.D. The demolition was radical and cut the foundation courses of the portico. The removal of the late antique phase revealed, on the west side, the portico’s foundations of large yellow tufa blocks arranged in four courses.
The cleaning of the south edge of the robber trench revealed a structure in yellow tufa blocks, visible in the section below the forum’s limestone paving. To the east of this structure there was a wall built of small tufa blocks with a neat regular face, running E-W.

The occupation level associated with this structure was removed in antiquity by the interventions relating to the construction of the northern part of the portico. In fact, a substantial foundation was identified beneath the portico’s foundations, which a preliminary examination of the pottery dates to the 3rd century B.C.

The removal of the levels relating to the Hellenistic plateau uncovered an occupation layer in which there were several regular pits containing charcoal residue, traces of anthropic activity that the pottery dates to the early archaic period.

A trench was also opened in the NE corner of room III on the north side of the forum, where the paving had subsided in antiquity. The removal of the material filling the cavity caused by the subsidence exposed the structure’s foundations, which as seen in other sectors of the forum, made use of pre-existing structures of yellow tufa blocks, datable to the Samnite phase and first phase of the forum. Several blocks presented quarry marks that have already been identified in other structures relating to the Samnite forum.