Investigation of the south-eastern sector of the forum area continued, outside and inside the large terraced structure that interrupts the series of workshops facing onto this side of the square.

The terracing, built of large polygonal blocks set more or less horizontally, extended for at least 20 m and its minimum height, based on the position of several blocks in the collapse in front, was at least five courses above the foundation offset (that is 2.50-3.00 m with respect to the floor of the portico in front of the workshops. The collapse of the central part of the substructure was probably caused by the thrust from the terrain behind, which also caused the leaning position of some of the blocks that are still in situ, visible in the structure’s lower part.

The series of walls that had been partially uncovered in the upper levels of the terracing were exposed further, clarifying the stratigraphic relationships and construction techniques. The walls were mainly dry-stone constructions, built with irregular stone ships, and the use of elements cut from brick/tile fragments (mainly tile).
The walls’ construction technique and positioning, transversely and longitudinally to form a sort of internal ‘grid’, functioned to contrast the geo-pedological characteristics of the area and provide necessary drainage of a zone – one of the two sides of the Piano di Cività, on which the forum lies – naturally subject to phenomena of colluviation.

The Republican chronology of the structure was confirmed by the materials found to date within the layers of fill, which can be attributed to the 3rd century B.C., or at the latest to the 2nd century B.C., but no later. Of note, the large quantity of fragmented terracotta votives and architectural elements found throughout the terracing area.

Craft-working structures were uncovered during previous seasons (surfaces in terracotta cubic tesserae linked to a small channel) and others were identified this year at lower levels, certainly earlier in date and probably relating to the colony’s early phases. Evidence for production activities was provided by numerous fragments of crucible waste, lumps of clay and fragments of brick/tile kiln wasters, large areas of terrain reddened by exposure to heat and the moulds for anatomical ex-voto. One of these bore the inscription M(arcus) Lapio(s) Q(uinti) s(ervos), which gives us the figure of a potter who is at the same time the dedicator, working at Alba in the mid Republican period.
The excavation was deepened in correspondence with the threshold of adjacent taberna III.

This trench revealed a similar stratigraphic sequence to that already recorded by the in situ column of the portico in front, therefore clarifying the contemporary relationship: portico and taberna both date to the late Republican period, later than the adjacent terraced building, whose original ground floor level was substantially lower.
Therefore, this season’s excavations have provided new evidence about the layout of the Latin colony and its forum. In addition to containing the hillside, the imposing wall of polygonal masonry delimited, in a period pre-dating the construction of the tabernae, a sector facing the forum and separating it from the latter. Thus, the terracing was a functional part of the urban structuring of the city’s central area, linked both to the line of a road above, via della Medusa, and to the creation of the sewer system that was intercepted below the basalt paving of this road. This system collected water from the hillside, which probably drained into the large north-south main sewer at the centre of the valley.