West Wall

Renée Forsell

The wall is built in op. incertum consisting mostly of limestone but also cruma, tufa and lava stones set in buff to yellowish mortar. In the upper part of the wall there are two sections of op. vittatum mixtum with alternating one row of tufa bricks and two rows of tiles. These sections are framing a rectangular opening at the height of 3.60-4.80 c. 0.70 from the SW corner. This is clearly a door opening between an upper floor of rom 6 and the upper floor of V 1, 31.
There are two rectangular beam holes in the S part of the wall at the height of 2.78, c. 0.6 apart. First hole is placed almost by the SW corner, the second 0.6m from the SW corner. The second hole is filled with lapilli and spolia and seems to have been blocked up in antiquity. These beam holes doesn’t correspond with the beam holes in the S wall and are placed more than half a metre below the opening in the upper part of the wall. It is therefore probable that they do not belong to an upper floor construction in this room but to an earlier construction in taberna 31.

Wall plaster is preserved in the larger part of the dado, except for along the floor and a section in the upper S part of the dado. The plaster has a pinkish hue. Above the dado in the centre and N part of the wall the plaster continues up to the height of 3.30 where the ceiling seems to have been. The plaster of the main zone is weathered and dirty. There is some modern support plaster along the edge of the dado. There is also some modern mortar in the S part of the wall where the wall plaster is missing. There are five holes in the plaster at various heights, three in the main zone two in the dado. The lowest hole in the main zone has been refilled with wall plaster the two in the dado has been filled with mortar. As the holes only affect the plaster and not the actual wall they may have been made in connection with some kind of scaffolding. There are also some nail holes in the plaster.