An on-site inspection was undertaken, before work began on the construction of three buildings, on a site a few hundred metres north-east of the so-called Villa di Faonte, on the slope between via delle Vigne Nuove and via della Buffalotta. What came to light were plough marks and a hydraulic system. Trenches were opened within a 170 × 75m area. The material present in the layers of fill dates to the mid 2nd to 1st centuries B.C. ( in particular to the period 100 – 50B.C.), whilst the upper levels date to the end of the 1st to the beginning of the 2nd centuries A.D. The hydraulic system, positioned on the western pert of the hill, was used for the collection of surface-water. It is composed of a collection tank (with a surface area of c. 40 sq.m), linked, via a 17m long cuniculum (not straight), to an underground cistern. This was sub-elliptical in shape and deformed by erosion. The cistern was connected to the surface by a well. This had a residual depth of 1.6m and the bottom of the cistern was at c. 4.5m below ground level. Whilst the collection tank and the well were dug into a layer of tufa, the cuniculum and cistern were dug into the underlying clay.
The system was effaced by a deposit of probable alluvial origin, which is not datable, but is attested by a layer of clay which covers the walls of the cuniculum and the cistern. At a later date the system was reactivated. The terminus ante quem for this operation is provided by the layers of fill, rich in pottery and fragments of tufa, which between the last quarter of the 1st century B.C. and the beginning of the 1st century A.D. cover the tank. Before its final abandonment there is a partial recovery of the system which seems to date to between the second half of the 1st century and the beginning of the 2nd centuries A.D. (Luca Giovannetti-Giacomo DeCola)