The site of San Giovanni is situated at the eastern end of the coastal plain of the same name. The 2014 campaign aimed to continue the excavation of the pars rustica of the Villa delle Grotte.

This season’s results can be summarized as follows:
The large quantity of carpentry nails found in the area with the dolia defossa (Room III) indicates it was a roofed area rather than a courtyard. The dolia were probably reached via intermediate floors resting on the structure’s perimeter walls, paved in opus signinum with inserts of limestone tessera. A sixth dolium was located in the north-west corner of Room V. It lay on its side: perhaps it was being cleaned shortly before the fire broke out.

The building’s walls seemed to “abut” the terrain inside a large cut in the bedrock (serpentino) and the structure’s stability was thus derived from the effect of the counterthrust from the geological formation in the zone.

A series of important finds were made inside Room V:
-a smaller dolium;
-an iron element, found between the head of wall USM149 and dolium US188;
-an unusual concentration of black glaze askoi lying on the floor surface a few centimetres east of dolium US2254.

The building situated inside area 1 appeared to have only one construction phase.
There is little doubt that the structure was built sometime around 100 B.C., however the date of its destruction remains problematic. This event was previously thought to have occurred around about the mid 1st century A.D., but this no longer appears to be the case given that no materials post-dating the first half of the 1st century B.C. have been found.

In area 2-6 several striking structures suggest that part of the pars rustica was a high quality structure. This may have been an intermediate stage between the farm-wine cellar, datable to around 100 B.C., and the villa situated on the promontory, datable to no earlier than 50 B.C.

Area 5 was opened with the aim of identifying ancient metalworking structures possibly lying below layers formed by accumulations of metalworking waste and fragments of furnaces for the reduction of iron minerals created by intense activity to recover ancient iron slag (in the 1930s and 40s). As the mechanical excavation proceeded, it became increasingly clear that this activity had severely disturbed the entire stratigraphy in the area. An accumulation of metal waste finally emerged at a level characterised by large-scale emergence of salt water that made it impossible to continue the excavation.

This large complex can certainly be interpreted as the pars rustica of the Villa delle Grotte, situated on the adjacent promontory and excavated in the 1960s.

The work for the construction of the pars rustica also represented the end of the metalworking phase that has yet to be identified below the late Republican buildings.
In fact, the metalworking waste, which the builders must have found in large quantities on the site, was used as the make up for the opus signinum floors.