Villa Magna

Site D Summary 21-26 July

The third week of July proved fruitful yet again in Area D. We continue to be amazed at what our little (and I use that word loosely) trench has to offer. The rooms of the eastern portion of the building have been finished and cleaned with a fine tooth comb. The plough marks, clearly visible in the battuto layers of our eastern most rooms, have never been more visible, and they show us just how damaging modern farming can be to archaeology.

The drain, dug so skillfully by Meg, has continued to amaze and perplex us. We had originally believed that there was a medieval intrusion at the eastern edge of the exposed drain, but this story has changed many times. The glazed pottery found throughout the drain fill, once thought to be medieval, has now been put in the late antique period, which pleases us to no end. The place of the drain and its fill in the story of our building, however, remains a bit of a mystery. Only time will tell.

The southern extension of the trench, initially opened to find the southern extent of the road, has yielded some interesting finds and some questions of its own. Walls appearing in the southern end seem to indicate a new structure for us to understand. And our road? Well that remains a mystery…

We found one large and deep hole in the destruction layer. Its function, like so much else in our trench, remains a mystery. The only certainty that exists in our lives is how hard we have worked over the past month and the unpredictable joy that destruction can bring to our lives.

— Ryan Ricciardi· Jul 29, 16:40