The 2017 campaign investigated several rooms, situated in Area II, that were part of the complex of the Curiae veteres in its Neronian phase, and, in Area IV, a room in the building with courtyard of the Severan period (“Baths of Elagobalus”). The excavations uncovered evidence relating to situations and activities from various periods (proto-historic to the Augustan). The geological horizon was reached almost everywhere (formation of the Fosso del Torrino, 430.000-400.000 B.C.), cut by interventions in the full historical period and/or thrown into the great dumps of soil used to periodically reconfigure the sanctuary’s spaces, and from a very early period, the hill’s northern slopes.

The continuation of work in rooms 10 and 12 of the Severan building led to the discovery of new elements relating to the hut settlement (postholes, baked clay, small terraces, hearths), which make it possible to date the occupation of this area of the Palatine to the Early Iron Age (Laziale IIA phase). In the area of the Curiae, the excavations confirmed the logic regulating the interventions within the sanctuary from the first half of the 6th century B.C. onwards: a systematic cut in natural for the construction of the stone walls. This led to the elimination of, at least in the excavated sectors, the earliest stratigraphies (proto-historic and Orientalizing). The walls built in cappellaccio stone and associated occupation levels rested directly on the silty-clay bank of the paleo-Tiber.

Three finds are worthy of mention: a tree stump whose roots penetrated the geological stratigraphy: the tree was part of a lucus, almost certainly cut down when the sanctuary’s western enclosure was built (first half of the 6th century B.C.); a clay quarry, probably used in the Regia period for the standing walls; the Augustan fill of an archaic well whose nine metres in depth produced a vast quantity of objects, in particular jugs with painted inscriptions on the necks referring to important gentes of the late Republic, but also bone artefacts, astragals, coins and loom weights. As in other similar cases (the wells excavated by Giacomo Boni in the forum), this was a ritual to atone for the abandonment of a fundamental element in the life of the sacred area.

In 2017, the research was extended to a new sector at the eastern foot of the NE slope of the Palatine (Area V), which continues towards the preceding areas II and III. This first campaign was spent preparing the area for the opening of excavations.