Cosa - Grosseto. Campagne di scavo 2017-2019 presso l'Edificio P: relazione preliminare

The present work is a preliminary report of the first three years of excavation in Cosa carried out by the University of Florence (2017-2019). The campaign seasons have focused on an unexplored building located in insula 10, which was identified by a georadar survey and denominated P from the name of the main street which runs along it, connecting the Arx to the Forum of the colony. Building P was presumably a functional annex to the adjacent domus 10.2, which is still unexcavated. It consists of a central courtyard with cocciopesto and opus tessellatum floor, onto which several rooms open, some of which feature ceiling and wall decorations in the third Pompeian style. The detailed study of the dating materials has allowed us to attribute its construction to the first century B.C.E., presumably under Augustus, a restoration around the middle of the 1st century C.E., and its final abandonment by the Flavian age. After a detailed stratigraphic analysis of the building, a selection of finds is presented (pottery, lamps, glass, coins, metal objects, stamped bricks, architectural terracottas, fauna). The paper therefore provides an update on the state of knowledge of the urban history and material culture of Cosa in the Early Imperial age. A possible interpretation of Building P as a commercial annex to a nearby domus, perhaps devoted to the sale of edible mollusks, is here suggested.