Investigations undertaken in the locality of Grovis revealed the continuation of a terracotta pavement, the remains of which had come to light during the 2005 excavation. The pavement was made up of parallelepiped or wedge shaped pieces cut from tiles, as attested by the fragment with the stamp M [—-] within a rectangular cartouche datable to the 1st century A.D. However, it was not possible to establish the extension of the room in which the floor lay as its entire northern edge was destroyed by agricultural activity. Nevertheless, artefacts dating to the 6th-7th century A.D. found in relationship to the pavement, place the floor’s use within this time frame, indicating an early medieval re-occupation of the Roman structures.

Evidence of the early medieval restructuring of earlier collapses was also found in levels in the southern sector. Both to the north and south, in the contact layers between the cobble dumps used for modern land reclamation and the terracotta pavement, there was a prevalence of African amphora fragments, identifiable as spatheia, and eastern amphorae datable to between the 5th-7th century A.D. Other finds of the same chronology were a fragment of Nuppenglaser, a glass drinking vessel typical of the 4th-5th century, the point of a 6th century A.D. Keay LXII amphora and an “avaro” type arrowhead datable to the beginning of the 7th century A.D. There was an interesting association between the arrowhead, of which there are only about fifteen examples in the entire region, and a probable lamella from an iron breastplate, comparable to finds from the Lombard cemeteries at Castel Trosino and Rifnik in Slovenia. (MiBAC)