This year work was continued on the trench MP 7000A, now renumbered MP 8000 and enlarged to the SE and SW. It soon became clear that MP 8000 was not a single building with rooms within, as had been supposed in 1999, but rather a number of phases involving an open area between walls, which appeared respectively in the NE and SW margins of the trench. The most interesting find was a substantial, well-built, polygonal terrace wall, still standing to over 1.5 m in places. Both the fill of the terrace itself and the debris from the collapse of the wall and terrace contained identical assemblages of architectural terracottas and black-gloss pottery, including votive items: these appear to be the debris from the demolition of a nearby sanctuary, perhaps part of a rebuilding of that sanctuary. The ‘sanctuary’ seems to have gone out of use before the appearance of Italian terra sigillata, and the function of the adjacent area was transformed: a garden soil was laid over the rubble of the terrace wall collapse and continued in use until the High Empire; a building to the south, partially uncovered, may prove to be contemporary with the garden and to have been served by it. The abandonment of the last phase of the sanctuary may, but need not, be contemporary with the Social War. The date of the laying of the garden (very end of the Republic/early Empire) seems to match that for renewed building activity elsewhere at the settlement nucleus on Monte Pallano.

Fields at four locations around Monte Pallano were re-walked with a view to excavation of some sites identified by survey between 1995 and 1998 and on the basis of previous survey and GPR work, three test pits were dug at Acquachiara.