The primary objective of the 2009 excavations, located at the north-eastern part of the Butrint’s roman colonial quarter in the Vrina Plain was to complete the examination of the mausoleum and the adjacent structures. There were, however, other additional objectives such as to elucidate the relationship with the villa complex known from geophysics and the previous trial trenching that lie to the south.
The excavation indicated that the mausoleum was a major building constructed of finely mortared masonry on a massive rammed stone and mortar plinth, and appears to have comprised a barrel vaulted structure with a colonnaded portico adorned with four plastered tile columns.
The mausoleum’s foundation (contexts 38, 139) cuts through the long walls of an older building, which was a rectangular structure, part of the small villa and dated by associated pottery to the mid/late 2nd century AD.
A construction date of the mausoleum after the mid-2nd century, perhaps as late as the early 3rd century, is suggested from pottery evidence, such as ARS 182 and 14 amphorae types and particularly a fine Campanian Dressel of types 2-4, found in the deposit (Context 51) of the portico.
Some tile fragments found in the mausoleum seems to originate from the nearby bath, which perhaps at this time was no longer in use.
The mausoleum remained in use until the 6th century. The interior was filled with tombs: first, with elaborate grave structures including several sarcophagi; second, with a series of lesser interments inserted between the original graves. Grave goods, from the few graves that survived robbing during the Middle Ages, included an iron buckle (grave 8) and a bronze earring (found under the skull of grave 11). Burials then spread outside the walls of the mausoleum in a small funerary ‘garden’. One such tomb (grave 10) contained the skeletons of three separate individuals buried in east-west direction.
Later in the 6th century, a number of activities not associated with the mausoleum took place nearby. These included the construction of a kiln (contexts 131, 132), which was subsequently buried by the collapse of the bath-house as the area fell into general disuse.
The mausoleum was comprehensively demolished at some point around the 12th or early 13th century, an activity connected with thick deposits of dumped rubbish that seems to belong to a medieval site, whose function remains yet unknown.