Excavations at Villa Magna 2007, FOLD&R:96
At the Casale our 2006 interpretation of the northeastern room as a cella vinaria for the production and storage of wine during fermentation was confirmed by the investigation of all of the available area of the room. Excavations revealed a series of dolia within the cella. Although both the opus spicatum floor and the dolia themselves were almost totally robbed out, the cuts in the clay layer below them showed the positions of 28 of these containers, laid out in four parallel lines. To the south of the cella vinaria lies a second room, II, defined by a wall which runs in a semi-circle around the south side. Beyond it, a second, parallel wall creates an ambulatory, room III. The interpretation of room II as a coenatio derives not only from comparison with similar structures in luxury villas but also from the celebrated letters written by Marcus Aurelius to Fronto, in which he mentions his dinner in the torcular (Fronto, 4, 6).
To the west lies a wide stair which consituted the entrance to the building. It was composed of a sequence of landings paved in a simple white mosaic separated by flights of three stairs completely revetted in luna marble. The walls were veneered in the same marble, separated by strips of pavonazetto.
Later occupation is indicated by almost 200 postholes and pits: those that can be dated are XIIth century. This material allows us to suggest that the village represented by the postholes was one of the casalia mentioned on the contemporary documents from the monastery of S. Pietro di Villamagna.
Excavations in the area of the church revealed a bell tower, a bell-casting pit, over 200 burials and structures relating to the monastery itself. To the east of the church, a new site, D, revealed a well-paved Roman road running east-west, along which was built a building with a grid plan, destroyed by fire at some point in the late empire. Both the road and the ruins of the building were cut by a ditch running north-south across the trench. To its west piled rubble may indicate the creation of a palisade. The ditch is dated by pottery and coins to roughly the middle of the fifth century.
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