This season excavations took place in the South Quarter and the West Quarter.
South Quarter
Trench 02.12 is positioned in the courtyard of building II that in the imperial period occupied part of the road built over the earlier via di Porta. Excavation here revealed the sidewalk of the Hellenistic-Roman phase, obliterated by a sequence of alluvial events. This structure was paved with flysch gravels and bordered by a cordon of sandstone and conglomerate parallelepiped blocks.

In trench 02.13, the aim was to check the layout of the mid-late imperial construction phases which, generally, respect the original limits of the Hellenistic insulae. The trench was opened in the north-western area of building II, of mid-imperial date, overlying the Hellenistic insula A.III, in correspondence with wall US 020150. It was seen that two other walls abutted this opus mixtum wall at right angles forming a room that dated to the mid-imperial period, showing the continuity of occupation in this sector of the city.

Trench 02.15 was opened in building III dating to the mid-late imperial period and overlying Hellenistic insula A.III. The excavations undertaken in 1982 by W. Johannowsky had exposed part of a room relating to a domestic context, dating to the Hellenistic-Roman phase, situated in the north-eastern sector of the original insula. The excavations identified the alluvial levels obliterating the structures, the opus signinum floors, unfortunately badly preserved, which however provided the definite floor levels for this phase.

Western Quarter

To investigate the urban layout of the zone east of the insula of the ‘House of the Frescoes’, geophysical surveys were carried out by the Federico II Naples University.
Among the other anomalies, the magnetometer surveys revealed a linear trend that developed in a semicircle from north to south. The alignment of this trend seemed coherent with part of the outcrop of natural bedrock, just to the south, distinguished by regular cuts attributable to a road.

In trench 11000, placed in correspondence with the curving anomaly, the excavation revealed part of a road, of which the west side was preserved, constituted by parallelepiped sandstone blocks, and a few remains of the gravel/stoney paving, badly disturbed by a series of alluvial events. This structure seems to date to between the mid and late imperial period.
The cleaning of the outcropping bedrock (Trench 12000), just to the south, confirmed the presence of a rock-cut road, with a lateral drainage channel that was also cut into the sandstone bedrock and sloped north-south.