THE 2022 EXCAVATIONS AT THE SAMNITE AND ROMAN SETTLEMENT AT SANTA MARIA DELLA STRADA, MATRICE (PROVINCIA DI CAMPOBASSO, REGIONE MOLISE)

The 2022 excavation (5–16 September) in the vicinity of the church of Santa Maria della Strada (Matrice, Campobasso), led by the British School at Rome, the Ashmolean Museum and King's College London, was the second season in a new phase of targeted excavations following earlier work between 1980 and 1984 commenced by the Universities of Sheffield and Aberdeen (Lloyd and Rathbone, 1984). Following the discovery of the site during the construction of a new road, at the invitation of the Soprintendenza an excavation was conducted, directed by John Lloyd, which revealed a multiphase settlement. The earliest phase was identified through evidence of occupation in the Late Bronze Age, after which a small farmstead in the Samnite period was constructed (Lloyd, 1991b: 184). Roman control over the area, following the Social War, led to the restructuring and enlargement of the farm into a villa which was located on a key route of transhumance on the western edge of the Biferno valley.The new phase of research, the main purpose of which is the publication of the site, aims to refine the site's overall chronology as well as assess whether the previous excavations had fully identified the extent of the settlement. A campaign of geophysical prospection in 2017 revealed a further extension to the west which was subsequently excavated in 2018 (Kay, Roberts and Rathbone, 2019). The short 2022 season focused on three key areas identified within the villa through small-scale targeted excavation: the first trench extended a sondage opened in the 1980s where a deposit of late antique material was recovered, providing crucial evidence for the later occupation of the site; a second trench was opened in an area of production identified by the earlier excavations, and aimed to test theories as to the usage of the facility; the third trench, similar to the 2018 excavation, focused upon a potential internal area of the Samnite structure.