Season Team

• AIAC_2982 - San Martino - 2013
  In the 2013 season, work was focused on the area of the site with remains interpreted as belonging to a Roman-period and late antique villa. Stratigraphic excavations were continued in the interior of the room with an internal semicircular structure, the object of excavations also in previous field seasons (2007-2011). The paving stones of the floor within the semicircular structure were removed, and excavation below the paving confirmed the existence of habitation levels within the larger room during the imperial period, in the time before the late antique phase documented in previous excavations within the same room. Of particular interest is a thick stratigraphic level characterized by the presence of many roof tile fragments and large concentrations of carbonized wood. This level, presumably related to the collapse of the roof, provides evidence of devastation of the room, probably in the fourth or fifth century AD. Also investigated in 2013 was the feature, immediately to the west of the room, composed of a line of very large rocks with an east-west orientation, possibly to be interpreted as a wall (USM 8). This feature, given its relative elevation and also the stratigraphic evidence, was no longer functional when the nearby room was in use. Removal of the two easternmost of the large rocks revealed a cut below the rocks that contained a fill composed of frequent fist-sized stones mixed with soil. Artifacts found in the fill seem to date within the span of time from the late republican to the early imperial period.
• AIAC_2982 - San Martino - 2015
  In the 2015 excavation season, work was continued in the area of the site with remains interpreted as belonging to a Roman-period and late antique villa. Excavation of late antique strata pre-dating the sixth century AD was carried out in the room previously uncovered in eastern part of the site. In particular, the level of destruction and roof collapse dateable to the fifth century AD was investigated. In the complex of structures in the western part of the site, the remaining areas of the late antique stratum featuring the burnt and collapsed roof of the portico—probably contemporary with the roof collapse in the eastern part of the site—were excavated to sterile soil. This work uncovered a series of circular depressions into the sterile soil that provide evidence of buried dolia or storage jars that were removed in the final phase of use of the portico. In addition, some of the depressions had subsequently been reused as trash pits and filled with mosaic tesserae and broken pottery. Artifacts from this area are currently under study to provide further data concerning the chronology of the roof and its collapse.