Discovery of a new site is always exciting, but this is nothing terribly world-shattering. Albania has been producing a lot of promising archaeology recently (Butrint, for example). What is nice about this site is that it seems to be undisturbed by looting, especially modern looting. Illegal digging can ruin a site. It was also abandoned in antiquity, meaning no wide-scale disturbance of the deposits by later habitation.

If it is ever excavated, it will be (or should be) done systematically, which means slowly. We don't want it "dug out completely," because modern archaeology moves slowly, methodically, conserving and studying material as it is carefully unearthed. Using a thousand low-wage locals to dig up twenty hectares of dirt in a single summer is a practice that belongs to the 18th century. Excavation is also expensive, and most institutions are strapped for cash these days, and already have other projects to fund. The Albanian government is also not exactly stacked at the moment, either.

If excavated, what can we expect to find? We will come across the Roman town first, which will (hopefully) mean a relatively intact forum area (temples, civic architecture, with statuary and inscriptions). There would likely be mosaics. The forum would give us a sense of what the town was about, and how it adapted to the Roman way. We have countless other examples of how defeated peoples adapted (or didn't) to Roman rule, but there is always room for more data on that front. Did the local elite "become Roman?" Did they adopt Roman-style names? If so, we would potentially see such things on the inscriptions they put up in the forum and on the temples. If we are lucky, the Roman town was situated directly atop the earlier, Illyrian town. Examples of Illyrian towns are much more rare, and that could afford us an opportunity to learn a lot about the pre-Roman character of the area. Perhaps beneath that are even older iterations of habitation, even going back into the Iron Age, the Bronze Age, or the Neolithic.

The first steps would probably be survey archaeology: teams who walk the site step by step, noting any ancient remains that are visible on the surface. Possibly some exploration of buried features via ground penetrating radar, aerial photography, etc. Next would be small exploratory trenches in areas which seem to be promising for whatever targets the excavation has in mind. Are they looking for the forum/agora? For residential quarters? For sacred sites? For a Roman theater? For places of burial?

At any rate, it is a potentially exciting site! It is good to read that the local government is already taking steps to prevent (or minimize) looting.

Wondering what kind of stuff would be recoverable here if the city is 2000 years old. Maybe some ties to Illyrians with modern day Albanians or another group.