Levelling undertaken by the Acquedotto Pugliese for the construction of a cistern has damaged the complex stratigraphy of the site which runs from the Neolithic to the late antique period.
Trenches have revealed the presence of a Neolithic village and a large Roman villa.
Large column bases and thresholds have been recovered from the Roman villa. A preliminary hypothesis sites the pars rustica in the area of the plateau that slopes away to the north, a theory which seems to be confirmed by the discovery, in situ, of two large dolia that had been mended in antiquity. Further evidence of productive activities (millstones, locally produced flat-bottomed anforette) suggest that the villa’s economy was based on the production and processing of cereals, grapes and oil.
The finds indicate occupation from the late Hellenistic to the late antique period. A large room with an apse, part of the residential quarters, belongs to this last phase.
Below the villa structures lay a Neolithic village which extended across the entire plateau, arranged in nuclei of huts with open spaces in between. The lowest levels in the huts constituted a layer of cobbles within which post-holes and baked-clay for the internal pavement were conserved. The finds indicate that occupation of the village began in the early Neolithic period. The presence of impressed pottery with everted rims and fragments of ‘Diana’ type pottery attests that occupation continued until the Enolithic period. Evidence for Bronze Age occupation is provided by ‘Appennine’ type material datable to the mid Bronze Age. (Maria Luisa Nava)