The excavation, within the ancient settlement in contrada San Nicola, resumed in 2016 in an municipal area, close to private land where investigations of Soprintendenza conducted in 1997 and 2005 uncovered wall structures and mosaics related to late antique and Islamic dwellings. Recent explorations revealed the remains of a domus, datable to the 4th-5th centuries, of which at least four rooms have been identified so far, affected by several remodels in the Byzantine and Islamic periods. The oldest structures appear to be characterized by greater construction accuracy: among them an opus vittatum wall made of limestone blocks and rows of bricks bound by lime mortar. The western face was covered with plaster; on the eastern face is leaning a plaster-covered rubble pier, the function of which is still to be clarified. To the east are the rooms of the domus (A, B, C) bounded by partitions built with different techniques. Some of them were covered with painted plaster found in collapse inside room C. Rooms B and C have monochrome mosaic floors in white tiles.
For the re-functionalization of room A in the Byzantine-age, valuable architectural elements from earlier phases were reused. In the central area, two reused white marble gutters delimit a space paved in earthenware, probably an outdoor work area. Pertaining to the same Byzantine phase is the coarse system of steps that connected rooms A and B.
Above that arrangement is a floor made of mortar with rows of bricks and reused gray sandstone blocks, attributable to a later phase. Probably designed for an outdoor space, this type of flooring does not seem to find stringent comparisons at the moment. The Islamic phase is testified by drystone wall structures, made of large limestone blocks, installed to the east of Room A. These are pertinent to a building that had a roof lined with late antique reused bricks and medieval vacuolated tiles, found in a collapsed state. A large dump, located in the western sector of the essay, probably outside the perimeter of the domus, characterised by layers of ash mixed with animal bones and abundant Islamic pottery, should be referred to the same phase.
