Nuove testimonianze di architetture doriche in pietra di età arcaica da Cuma

The excavations carried out by the University of Naples L’Orientale in the Graeco-Roman residential quarter situated between the Forum Baths and the northern walls revealed a complex stratigraphical sequence running from the late Bronze Age to the late Roman period. A large peristyle built in the late Republican period was investigated together with the fauces, reception-service rooms, and shops facing onto a sidewalk and which had originally opened onto the street. The deepening of the excavation inside the colonnaded courtyard revealed the earlier stratigraphy constituted by a pit containing pieces of tufa Doric column shafts and capitals intentionally broken and dumped there. Several comparisons with Archaic Doric architecture shows that the dating of these new elements can be fixed in the second-third quarter of the 6th c. BC. It is impossible to say whether the late archaic columns belonged to a building that occupied this sector and of which no traces of the walls remain or whether they were moved from somewhere else to be reused in the late Republican house.