houses elsewhere in the colony that have been excavated are only half as wide as the large houses surrounding the forum. There are a few possibilities as to what the larger houses meant in the grand scheme of the colony. Archaeologist Vincent Bruno suggests of the unusual layout of the house of the skeleton, a larger, 'atrium' house that this "quality of the unexpected may perhaps be regarded as a symptom of the period in which Roman builders were still experimenting with structural ideas later employed in more rigidly symmetrical compositions". Elizabeth Fentress suggests that the differentiation in house size between the smaller plots in this block and those clustered around the forum is due to a colonist class distinction. The houses near the forum and along the processional streets are almost certainly...houses for two classes of colonists, some of whom received plots twice as large as the others. The smaller houses are those of the ordinary colonists, with clear parallels at Pompeii and elsewhere. Regardless of the reasoning behind the different sizes and layouts of the private spaces, the houses at Cosa are extremely telling of the history of Cosa after 200 BC. Scott's excavations of the West Block show "not only the effects of the sack and subsequent abandonment of the town in the first century BC, but also those of more recent and seasonal occupation by small farmers and herdsmen between the beginning of the 18th and 19th century." Ancient port The ancient port of Cosa is located below the city on the hill to the southeast. It was likely founded at the same time as the early Roman colony in 273 BC, and thus represents the earliest Roman harbor known thus far. The port was initially associated with the Etruscans, however excavations have determined that it was first used by the Romans in the 3rd century BC and continued being used into the 3rd century AD, as confirmed by the material evidence. The Cosa harbor was never a major port of transit, however in ancient times it provided the best anchorage between Gaeta in the south and La Spezia to the north. This was probably a primary reason for the colony's position within newly acquired Etruscan territory. Eventually the harbor established its own community, including a temple dedicated either to Portunus or Neptune, which resembled the Temple on the Arx and probably also dates to 170-160.