The fourth campaign took place over four weeks in July 2016, and was primarily a study season, dedicated to the study of ceramic finds and of the faunal remains. In addition, three trial trenches in the wider area around the nuraghe were excavated. Botanical and selected faunal samples had furthermore been transferred to the University of Valencia and Brown University for respectively archaeobotanical and geochemical analysis.

The study of ceramics focused primarily on two large contexts, namely tower 7 and the associated Punic room in area D, and the domestic midden of area E. The former had been excavated in 2013 and 2014 (see reports) and the provisional date of the associated deposits was comprehensively confirmed by the formal identification of 1422 diagnostic fragments: while older finds of 6th to 4th century date are present, the bulk of the pottery can be dated to the 3rd and 2nd or indeed just the 2nd century BC. The evidence of the fine ware in particular (176 fragments) makes it clear that the assemblage cannot be dated beyond the end of the 2nd century BC. The domestic trash deposits had mostly been excavated in 2014 and 2015 (see reports) and the 2694 fragments examined ranged in date from the 7th to the 3rd century BC, again more or less as provisionally observed during excavation. It was particularly evident that the upper stratigraphic contexts were more mixed and younger, while from context 027 downwards all finds dated to the 7th and 6th centuries BC. These contexts also yielded notable numbers of Ionian cups, Etruscan bucchero and Etruscan-Corinthian wares.

The faunal analysis has examined all bones recovered in three years of excavation, i.e. 9,048 fragments from area D and 16,684 from area E. Of these, respectively 6,876 and 11,514 were undiagnostic, leaving 2,172 and 5,170 identifiable fragments. The resulting faunal assemblage is not only remarkably large but particularly worth noting is the contrast between the two areas, with the 7th-6th century remains of area E showing a prominence of cattle, while sheep and goat dominate the 3rd-2nd century deposits of area D.

Following up the surface and geophysics surveys of 2014 and 2015, three exploratory trenches of about 1.5×1.5 m were dug across the area previously surveyed in order to assess the stratigraphic integrity of the archaeological deposits. The trench sunk at the edge of the Su Padrigheddu area showed that deep ploughing in the 1970s has comprehensively destroyed the entire Iron Age site as documented by the surface finds collected at the time. The trench about 50m to the N was stratigraphically intact but archaeological non-informative. A third trench dug to the N of the nuraghe revealed a Punic-period drain and the top of a double-faced wall of possible Nuragic date at a depth of about 1.60m below the present field surface.
All in all, the study campaign made it possible to process most of the pottery and animal bone excavated in previous years. The new insights not only enable us to begin publishing part of the site in detail, but also help guiding the ongoing excavations in both areas D and E.