During this season’s campaign, the team from Milan University directed by Prof. Giorgio Bejor continued work in area E, the large sector between the theatre and Su Coloru headland, now in its 25th year of excavations. The area is formed by three distinct sectors, extending from the east to west coasts of the Nuoro peninsula: the insula surrounding the Central Baths, the quarter situated along the coastal strip facing onto the south bay, and the large domus next to the House of the Tetrastyle Atrium, known as the “Casa del Direttore Tronchetti”. While the fieldwork took place, the washing, cataloguing and preliminary study of the finds continued.

In the central insula of the peninsula work concentrated on room Ta, the so-called apodyterium of the Central Baths, investigated during the restoration of the mosaic floor that still occupies most of the room. The excavations provided important results regarding the reconstruction of the building phases of the bath complex, showing that this room post-dated the original construction of the complex. A preliminary study of the finds from the foundation fills suggests the walls were built no earlier than the end of the 2nd- early 3rd century A.D., confirming the dating provided by the style of the mosaic floor. The identification of the foundation trench of the adjacent frigidarium (room Tb) at an earlier stratigraphic level, places the construction of this room in an earlier phase, perhaps almost a century before.

Along the coastal strip, extending from the theatre to the Su Coloru headland, attention focused on two objectives: completing the planning of the walls in sector A, and deepening the excavations in some areas where the stratigraphy was intact on order to investigate the earlier construction phases. A trench opened in the eastern part of trench Aa revealed several walls razed by the floor and walls that are visible today. These structures belong to a phase preceding that known to date, which a preliminary study of the pottery finds from the fill dates to the early 2nd century A.D.

In 2013, the planning of the standing walls in the “Casa del Direttore Tronchetti” had already shown the presence of at least three different occupation phases. Trenches dug this season inside rooms D and U, situated in the north-west corner of the house, exposed new floor levels belonging to the earliest occupation phase of the domus, which seems to have maintained the same alignment for the main walls. The finds from the abandonment fill of the earliest phase, including figured wall plaster and stucco, date to the first half of the 3rd century A.D.