This was the second season of excavations in the locality of Ronchetrin at Gazzo Veronese. A 60 × 4 m trench was opened with the aim of gaining further data about the line, construction techniques and dating of the Roman road that ran from Hostilia to Verona (commonly known as the “via Claudia Augusta Padana”), first excavated in 2014. A comparison between the two sets of excavation data showed that the road in this territory characterised by a valley, did not run in a straight line, but was formed by segments that were slightly out of axis with each other, in order to follow the lower parts of the hills that emerged from the landscape. The upper parts of these hills, drier and safer, were probably reserved for settlements or agriculture, while the road was built in these marginal sectors, that were however dry. The road ran on an embankment built with sands from the natural substrata, its summit covered with cobbles. The materials came from the excavation of the only lateral ditch, opened on the side next to the rise, and therefore varyingly situated to the east or west of the road according to the position of the higher parts of the terrain. There was no need for a ditch on the other side of the road, towards the valley as the latter was swamped or furrowed by seasonal watercourses.

A funerary area with cremation burials was exposed in the sands in direct contact with the side of the road ditch. This season, 2 earth graves, 9 “a cassetta” tombs built of imbrices (one of which had three imbrices bearing the stamp Veciliai Liberalis), a burial in a cut amphora, and one possibly in a wooden box, were excavated. In 2014, a tomb made of tile and one made of cut amphora were identified, together with a fragmented stone funerary monument, found a few hundred metres to the north.

The tombs were in varying states of preservation depending on their depth in relation to the surface of the mound, which rose in height towards the north and east. The tombs situated further north were destroyed down to the base; those to the south were better-preserved, also because they were partially covered by the peat that formed in the area when the road system went out of use: the covering tiles were still in place on two. Agricultural activity had also badly damaged the ground surface of the necropolis and the excavation did not find any grave markers.

The tombs were positioned in untidy rows parallel to the ditch, following the line of the mound and on different orientations. No ossuaries were found in the graves: in most cases, the earth from the pyre was placed outside the tomb, but small concentrations of burnt bone, charcoal and ash were found inside, perhaps originally held in sacks made of perishable material. All of the earth from the pyres was collected from each grave for osteological analysis of the burnt bone and paleobotanical/archeozoological analyses of the vegetal/animal remains.

The grave goods, mainly olpai, pouring vessels, balsamaria (some deformed by heat), lamps, and coins were well-preserved and date to between the late 1st and the early 2nd centuries A.D. Chemical analyses are being carried out to define the vessel contents.