In September 2015, the University of Milan’s department of Cultural and Environmental Heritage, in collaboration with the Lazio Museum Centre and the Archaeological Superintendency for Lazio and South Etruria continued its excavations at Sperlonga (LT). This season work was again centred on the eastern part of the villa, in the area in front of the previous year’s excavations where ovens were found, the aim being to gain an understanding of the spatial organisation. A series of new rooms were uncovered, with several occupation phases and evidence of restructuring. Various floor levels were identified in the sequence of mortar make-ups and opus signinum surfaces.

The removal of the fill revealed the masonry-built front of oven II, constructed following the collapse of an earlier oven, and two perpendicular walls belonging to a phase pre-dating the latter indicating a different division of the spaces before they were occupied by the ovens, which obliterated them. After the construction of oven II, the room in front of oven I was divided into three new rooms, characterised by several occupation phases. Later, floors were laid, which were in turn obliterated by a sequence of collapse, deposit and levelling. These rooms were probably abandoned at the same time as the oven went out of use, as there was a fragment of stamped ARS among the materials found in the abandonment layers, of the same date as one found in the fill of oven II, datable to between the late 4th and first half of the 5th centuries A.D.