Part 2: The Stratigraphy : Trenches in the Area of the Forum, and IX D North : Forum V : Phase IV: Claudian Renovations

The niche midway along the southwest wall of the garden seems to have continued to serve as a fountain during the Augustan period, but in the course of the Julio-Claudian renovations the basin of the fountain was filled in with earth and stones (379). The fill was covered with a level layer of mortar (378) that served as a preparation for a surface in opus sectile, several marble elements of which were found embedded in situ in the mortar preparation. These included various spolia, including a fragment of an anthemion frieze. The walls and roof of the niche, meanwhile, received a covering of irregular lumps of variously colored slag deriving from vitrified kiln walls, together with seashells set in a rough mortar matrix. Parallels for this treatment of the niche as a grotto can be found in a number of 1st c. A.D. nymphaea and aediculae at Pompeii, and it seems clear that the fountain had now become a decorative element in the new arrangement of the garden.

To the southeast, the bedrock-cut depression associated with the raised cistern in the south corner was filled in with soil; the fill (294) contained a coin of Claudius (catalogue n. 60). At the same time a door was cut through the southeast wall of the garden (272), interrupting the wall-painting scheme of the Augustan-phase plaster. A massive sill (429), made up of two regular stone blocks, one much larger than the other, was then inserted into the wall. Bronze sockets for doorposts, set into the sill blocks, suggest substantial wooden doors, and the generally high level of workmanship in the sill may indicate a fairly elaborate entrance. In contrast to this, however, a crude step (430) composed of several irregular stones led up to the sill from the garden surface. In N, the cubilia were torn from their preparation and used, with rocks and soil, as a fill (352) for the drain. The room was then refloored with a plain signinum pavement (348; pl. 50) which bonded to the sill and covered the filled-in drain. There are no clues as to the use of room N in this phase: the wall plaster is too poorly preserved to be informative, and the absolute plainness of the pavement seems an odd contrast with the monumentality of the new door. Given the religious overtones of the rest of the changes in the garden, it is possible that N was used for a cult purpose -- as a storage area for cult items, perhaps, or as a meeting place for the participants in some ritual activity. Alternatively, it may simply have become a dining room. The grand door may have been intended to complete the decorative effect of the garden, regardless of the purpose of the room behind it.

Probably at the same time, a low bench or platform about 0.5m. wide (435) was added to the area of 272 southwest of the new door. Although this structure was built of tiles and flat stones set in gray, not yellow, mortar, it stops just short of the position of the new door to N and thus may have been built in conjunction with it. On the other hand, the door may have been placed to respect the location of the bench. While the exact relation of these two features cannot be determined with any certainty, the bench abuts both the southeast and the southwest walls of the garden and, like the door, is clearly posterior to the initial Augustan reconstruction of the area. A last feature of the Julio-Claudian garden was a very large stone in the form of a flattened rectangular solid (439). It was worked on one of the wider surfaces and rough on the other, and it was set on one of its narrow long sides in the soil of the garden at an approximately right angle to the back wall of the house, about 0.2 meters away from it and about 2 meters in front of the bench. It was approximately 1.7m. long and served no obvious purpose Ò in fact, the only reasons to suspect that it was not part of the collapse of the house walls were the depth to which it was set in the garden surface and the fact that its width was somewhat greater than that of the walls from which it could have fallen. The squarish area bounded by this stone, the southwest wall of the house, and the bench mentioned above contained nothing different from the rest of the garden. The only incongruous feature was a pronounced belling of the bedrock forming the lower part of the west wall, while elsewhere along this wall the bedrock had been trimmed to an even plane. The plastering of the wall was not interrupted in this area, and the plaster simply followed the curve of the rock.

The house seems to have been abandoned fairly suddenly at some point in the third quarter of the 1st c. A.D., soon after the changes discussed above. Two collections of pottery were found on the floor of the house, immediately covered by roof and ceiling collapse (pl. 59). Both groups probably fell from wooden shelves. In the atrium, a group of vessels (80) gave a date of A.D. 40-70; another group (154 and 155) on the floor of room F could be dated less precisely to the end of the 1st c. A.D. Other pottery found in the lower levels of strata of collapsed pis» tells a similar story: groups of articulated sherds found under the collapse in M (140) and in N (350) can be dated to around the middle of the 1st c. The latest coins found in the main cistern are both of Claudius and belong to the middle of the century (catalogue nn. 58 and 59). Finally, a coin of Nero dating to A.D. 66-68 was found on the floor of I (catalogue n. 62). It seems safe, therefore, to assume that this collection of dating material provides a terminus post quem for the abandonment of the living areas of the house.

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