Christopher Motz

The University of Cincinnati, in collaboration with the Soprintendenza Archeologia, Belle Arti e Paesaggio (Cagliari), undertook its first season of archaeological excavations and fieldwork at the Punic-Roman city of Tharros, Sardinia, in the summer of 2019. This report outlines the preliminary results of this first season of activities, while also situating them within an overview of the broader interests of the project. The excavations were carried out in two different and relatively distant areas of the city: one of these areas is identified as a series of Roman shops (tabernae) to the south of a bath complex (Terme II), which had already been cleared down to (and through) the latest floor surfaces during the first systematic excavations of the city in the 1950s; the other area, further north toward the top of the Murru Mannu hill, had never been excavated, and thus provided an opportunity to both delineate urban structures and to investigate the contexts associated with their decline and abandonment. Our investigation of this second area revealed the remains of a Roman shop. The sequences of development for these retail properties revealed construction activities associated with a pre-Imperial period of occupation, with sizable structures adhering to a somewhat different urban configuration than that associated with the Roman era. Most of the surviving architecture, however, dates rather to a period of significant urban development in the 2 nd century CE; it was at this time that we see the construction of shops in both areas. These shops underwent a series of structural developments until about the 5 th century CE, when they appear to go out of use and were subsequently abandoned and ultimately dismantled for their building material to be used elsewhere.