The 2017 excavations on the site of San Giovanni, situated at the eastern end of the coastal plain of the same name, aimed to continue the investigation of the rural villa begun in 2012. The Roman villa is thought to have belonged to the latifundium of the gens Valeria. The building had two floors and a wine cellar with six large dolia in which the wine was fermented. The villa also had a room for the storage of cider in amphorae.

It was immediately clear that the villa’s structures were in a very good state of preservation: it was built in the late 2nd century B.C., mainly in unbaked clay, and destroyed in the 1st century A.D. by a fire which, “baking” the structures guaranteed their survival.
During the previous campaigns, only one construction phase was identified for the building located in area 1. Based on this season’s results it can be suggested that a first construction phase, datable to between the late 2nd century and the early 1st century B.C., was probably followed by the blocking or alteration of some rooms, in a period that is difficult to date as the structures were in unbaked clay and the changes occurred very soon after the original construction.

There is little doubt about the construction date, somewhere round about the year 100 B.C. (based on the ceramics and inscriptions on tiles and opus doliare). The date of the villa’s destruction caused by a disastrous fire seems to date to within the 1st century A.D., given the absence of materials datable to the 2nd century A.D. However, only the full study of the finds from the last two campaigns will provide indications that are more precise.
The Roman villa was constructed a few generations before the large villa delle Grotte, situated on the adjacent promontory and excavated in the 1960’s. That villa was built in the Augustan period, and probably used this one as its pars rustica, and for the storage of foodstuffs.
The construction of the building at S. Giovanni also represents the end of the metallurgical phase in the bay of Portoferraio, yet to be identified below the late Republican levels. The waste products, which the builders must have found in abundance on the site, were in fact used as make-ups for the coccio pesto and opus signinum floors.

With the discovery of burials on top of the villa collapse and evidence for the robbing of the villa structures this season’s excavations also confirmed that following the building’s destruction there was a later occupation phase, only previously suggested by a few scarce remains. This occupation may date to the late antique period when similar phenomena are attested at the villa delle Linguelle and villa delle Grotte on Elba.