Following the discovery, study and preliminary publication of the ancient site in the locality of Mastromassaro, two excavation campaigns took place in 2020 and 2021. Work took place along the western side of the Spartivento valley, at an average height of 43 m a.s.l., an uncultivated terraced area, overlooked to the west by eroded clay hills.

The three adjacent trenches were opened leading to the discovery (sector A-2020), at the foot of the upper terrace, of a series of alluvial clay layers (probably the result of landslides that during the centuries occurred on the overlooking hills – particularly US 0 and 1)., From west to east, these layers covered a cobblestone surface (not mortared) on a north-south alignment, made up of small-medium cobbles and built in several phases (US 6, 31, 32, 34). The surface also underwent several maintenance interventions (US 3, 8, 33). The rectilinear western edge of the cobblestone surface was identified. It was probably the remains of a road, which ran from valley bottom and stream the north (in fact, it was visible in the section along the northern edge of the post-antique terrace), to an open-air storage structure housing pithoi and dolia of probable Hellenistic-Roman date. Indeed, just to the south there were at least 16 circular holes for housing large containers arranged 2 m apart in parallel rows on an east-west alignment. Other buildings associated with the warehouse were also present and these were investigated during the second excavation campaign (sectors B and C-2021). Along the rectilinear hump at the base of which ran the cobblestone road, the clay foundation layers were identified to the north (US 106, 107, 109, 110-sector B) and, to the south (US 203, 210, 211, 214, 217-sector C), the layers of collapse from the structures with polygonal facing and a pisé emplekton, which originally formed the slight ridge, thus suggesting that they perhaps belonged to a wide perimeter wall, according to a settlement type that is well-known in Aspromonte.

At the base of the slight ridge the ancient road led from the built-up area towards the open area occupied by terraces with parallel rows of pithoi and then dolia. The plan and function of the building has yet to be fully understood (a “fortified farm” similar to that of the early 5th century B.C. phase at Serro di Tavola on the Tyrrhenian side of the Aspromonte?). Its precise date has also to be identified, given the presence just to the north of fortified sites of early Hellenistic date on either side of the stream, as well as the substantial disappearance in the Palizzese, from c. 50 B.C. onwards at the latest, of the earlier network of Graeco-Italic farms and the contemporary creation of numerous new warehouses for amphora and dolia after the Hannibalic period, when the Palizzese became part of the ager _Romanus. As in this case, similar structures could even be built within pre-existing settlements.