In September 2007, we finished our third campaign of excavations in the House of Sallust in Pompeii (VI 2, 4; fig.1). Our intention is to complete an exhaustive monograph on the Domus, begun in 1969-1971 with funds from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and continued in the last three years as part of the project “I primi secoli di Pompei” directed by Professors Filippo Coarelli of the University of Perugia and Fabrizio Pesando of the University of Napoli-Orientale. All the data (photos, reports, dig notes) recorded in the earlier excavations have now been transferred to a computer, and the more recent studies have been included in this data base, presently being analysed and studied at the University of Perugia and the American Academy in Rome.

Sounding 51 was opened in courtyard 26 in the SE corner of the complex, in an irregular area necessitated by the uneven allignment of the perimeter walls. The excavation was filled with dumped materials, modern toward the top and with fragments of ancient materials, including a number of pieces of painted wall plaster, mainly of the Third Style, in the lower levels.

Sounding 52 was located between the left ala (17) and the atrium in a 2 × 2 m square at the base of the blocked doorway to oecus 22, in an attempted to fix the dating for the closure of this entrance. As in the rest of the atrium, the sterile stratum on which the whole house was built appeared directly below the rudus of the destroyed pavement, with a narrow builders’ trench directly in front of the blocked doorway. All the thresholds were cleaned, as well as the doorways which lacked them, and in the process Sounding 53, located in the opening between room 2 and cubiculum 16, showed that this doorway belonged to a later phase, since the razed party wall continued directly under the surface between the two rooms.

The final sounding (54) was made in the west half of room 18, next to the small stair from the left ala; here, too, the sterile yellow stratum of leucitic lava appeared directly below the rudus of the pavement, but in this case at a level almost a meter higher (39.78 m asl) than in the central part of the house. This change in levels corroborates our previous conclusion that the main part of the house was built after the original surface had been cut down to provide a regular space on which to build.