Villa Magna

Area D, 23-29th June 2008

This week we finished taking out the ditch (5004) that runs N-S in our trench. Under the fill of the ditch, we found the continuation of the E-W wall (5086) that marks the N border of the corridor (amb. 9) of our structure. We expected to find a piece of the N wall of the rooms 10-13 in the ditch, but the ditch, which curves toward the N at the edge of the trench, seems to have cut through this wall. On the S side of the W part of the destruction (5005), we cleaned the remnants of our topsoil layer off of the road, and we can see clearly the mix of the street preparation (small stones) and the paving stones. The level of the street changes dramatically in the SW corner of the trench, and we have guessed that this might be due to an earthquake. (Our excavator, Franco, tells us that this area is prone to seismic activity.) While not all parties agree on the cause, the street clearly shows evidence of some form of land shift.

Within the structure, we excavated two rooms (5 and 6) down to the beaten earth floor. Within the floors of both rooms there are several cuts. Room 5 has several cuts that seem to be post holes, which perhaps line up with postholes found in the destruction/ditch (5005/5004) as well as postholes found in the destruction of the portico. Perhaps these suggest that we have a large, late structure built into the destruction of the building. A central cut in room 5 was constructed with mortar and cement-like material, which suggests a basin of some variety. The SW corner of room 6 had a dolium cut filled with bits of marble and wall destruction (why is there marble on walls of a work zone?) as well as parts of the dolium. The NW corner of the room was covered with a burned layer that contained large fragments of worked marble as well as nearly intact pottery and part of a grinder. The rest of this corner is waiting to be excavated in July. In the third room of this series (7), we cleared off the last of the destruction layer and came down onto a heavily burned stratum that we will start excavating in July. This room too seems to contain cuts in the corner, and we are suggesting that this structure functioned as a workshop/storage area in the 4th-5th centuries. The destruction layer was removed from the portico, and we found many pieces of intact pottery that suggest the building was destroyed in the 5th century (400-450).

In July, we hope to continue excavating the E rooms of our structure, but we also intend to open the W side of the trench again in order to understand better the structure and its relationship to the rest of the villa.

— Ryan Ricciardi· Jun 27, 08:56