The Roman Forum at Butrint has been the subject of a number of separate investigations in past years, by the Institute of Archaeology, the Butrint Foundation and more recently by the University of Notre Dame. In 2011, an American-run team of international participants opened two fresh trenches in woodland to the rear of the Gymnasium with the intention of locating the eastern extent of the Forum. Apart from the discovery of this side of the forum, the excavations did also reveal a deep sequence of deposits, which provided significant information about the urban history of Butrint over a period of 2000 years. As it does to the west, the pavement of the Forum survives remarkably intact on its east side, with large limestone slabs still in place over much of the surface. It now seems that the pavement extended over a huge (for such a small city) area measuring 20×70m. Previous environmental and tectonic studies by the Butrint Foundation have already established that the effects of an earthquake in the 4th century AD caused buildings around the Forum to collapse and the pavement itself to become inundated and abandoned, thus sealing it in its fine condition.
The unearthing of missing slabs in 2011, however, allowed a window of excavation beneath the floor, and produced a collection of ceramics – including Corinthian amphorae – and other artefacts that date from the 5th and 4th centuries BC.
Above the filled-in pavement, attempts were made to re-occupy the site, seen in the identification of 5th- and 6th-century buildings, a well and, progressively later, graves. Later still, a substantial house (dated by Venetian coin and ceramic evidence to the late 14th or 15th century) stood over the Forum. Built from fragments of re-used Roman masonry, its earth-bonded walls and collapsed roof showed its destruction by fire in the 16th century. Remains found of wheat, barley, legumes, peas and olives give a clear insight into the available diet of the late medieval period.