Summary

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Trench pictures

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Summary

The 1970 version of CA24 was made up of a trench 40 metres long and ca. 7 metres wide for most of its length.  This included the previously excavated CA24, CA25, and CA31 (all CAST '69) and a section of the southern extension of CA1 (MB1).

Excavation of this area revealed three different types of strata or productive areas.

1) Black Earth Area.  This deposit centred on grid squares C-D, 2-3.  It underlay a group of large stones and produced pottery (bucchero, orange and black impasto) without tiles.  The earth in the area was blackened and contained many small bits of charcoal and bones suggesting a refuse heap.  No tiles or architectural terracottas.

2) The "Fossa" (?)  This area ran the length of the trench and consisted of a trench cut into the galestra and even into the bedrock in places (see sections, pages 264-267).  This ditch seems to have continued along the western edge of the Tesaro building complex as it compares rather well in form and size with that found in CA28 (see EN 1).  The ditch in CA24 was productive of architectural terracottas, sherds, and bronze, as well as tiles.  The "fill" of the trench which produced these finds consisted of two layers distinguished from each other only by concentration of stones- the layer on the east consisting of a tightly packed

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stone fill while the western section contained only scattered stones.  howevere, there seems to have been no distinction in the objects found on the two layers.

3) Orange plaster "pavement".  Along the eastern edge of the trench in squares B6-B17 (at least) runs a flat, level stratum of orange plaster underlaid by a layer of blackened earth with, at the southern end, "post holes" sunk below it.  This pavement ran parallel to and at the side of the fossa, thus seeming to have some connection with it.  Excavation of the area directly above and at the sides of the pavement yielded many misfired pots and/or tiles, fragments of slag, and, most interesting, one half of a terracotta mold for a lateral sima head.  Excavation within the pavement itself and underneath produced tiles, sherds, fragments of both iron and bronze, and bones, but no architectural terracotta fragments with decoration.  This evidence suggests that perhaps the pavement level may have served as the floor of some kind of ceramic enterprize erected at the time of the building's construction and presumably extending eastward under the agger.