Phase IIb: Republican Destruction

Although Brown's excavations in other areas of the site, specifically at the House of the Skeleton, have demonstrated that the city of Cosa suffered some particularly devastating catastrophe around 70 B.C., the later reoccupation and reconstruction of the House of Diana seem to have removed most archaeological traces of its destruction or abandonment. A number of walls, both interior and exterior, were heavily reconstructed in the Augustan reoccupation, and it therefore seems reasonable to assume that the house was at least partially in ruins by the third quarter of the 1st c. B.C. Archaeological evidence for sudden destruction, however, was scarce and ambiguous. Toward the south end of the garden, on the surface of 392 still in use in the later Republican period, we uncovered two roughly linear patches of black earth containing large amounts of charcoal (393, 394). These patches may be traces of burnt wooden structural elements Ò beams, jambs, lintels Ò fallen into the garden during the partial destruction of the house. Since the old garden surface was covered by new soil in the later reoccupation, the remains of the burnt wood would not have been subject to the thorough clean-up that seems to have taken place in the rest of the house. In addition there was a narrow strip of burnt material (434) above and around the mound of fertilizer in the southwest corner of the garden, for which a similar interpretation might be suggested.