272 Milanese
Saturnino at Cagliari, a church with a cruciform plan, attributed to the Early
Byzantine period. As has recently been demonstrated with the stratigraphic
excavation of Mesumundu (Siligo), Sardinian Byzantine churches with a cru-
ciform plan (infra Coroneo) provide highly informative sites for the study
of the transition from Late Antiquity to the early medieval period. Like the
Byzantine church of Santa Maria of Bonarcado, the Byzantine church of Santa
Maria of Mesumundu was built over a bath complex dating to the Roman
period. Research on San Saturnino at Cagliari revealed the transformation
of the site during the era of the giudicati, when the early medieval necropo-
lis was obliterated by the construction of a new church consecrated in 1119.3
The excavation of the area of Vico III Lanusei is a rare case of a fully pub-
lished excavation of an area outside the medieval walls of Cagliari, which was
used for sepulchral and residential purposes in Late Antiquity and the early
Middle Ages, and later used for farming and waste disposal (montonargio) in
the Middle Ages, after the cemeteries were moved to churches inside the city.4
The publications of Maria Francesca Porcella5 and Donatella Salvi,6 as well
as Vico III Lanusei, have provided the most solid documentation of Cagliari’s
material culture, based on excavations.7
The area of St. Gilla has provided the central key to understanding the dy-
namics of Cagliari’s urban settlement in the Middle Ages: the presumed cita-
del of the giudicati (Santa Igia), near the eponymous lagoon, destroyed by the
Pisans in 1258.8 Archaeological research has proved essential to solving the
problem of the continuity or discontinuity of the settlement around Cagliari
during the early period of the giudicati (ninth–tenth centuries). Exploratory
stratigraphic trenches in the Marina district beneath the fourteenth-century
church of Santa Eulalia have revealed a multi-strata complex, which lasted as
an urban zone until the late antique period (seventh century), when it was
completely abandoned and the population most likely relocated to Santa
3 Roberto Coroneo, Arte in Sardegna dal IV alla metà dell’XI secolo (Cagliari, 2011).
4 Rossana Martorelli and Donatella Mureddu, eds, Archeologia urbana a Cagliari. Scavi in Vico
III Lanusei, campagne 1996– 1997 (Cagliari, 2006).
5 Maria Francesca Porcella, “La ceramica,” in Pinacoteca Nazionale di Cagliari (Sassari, 1988),
pp. 177–202.
6 Donatella Salvi, “I materiali. La ceramica medievale e postmedievale,” in Santa Chiara.
Restauri e scoperte (Cagliari, 1993), pp. 133–151.
7 Martorelli and Mureddu, Archeologia urbana a Cagliari.
8 Letizia Pani Ermini, “La storia dell’altomedioevo in Sardegna alla luce dell’archeologia,” in
La storia dell’alto Medioevo italiano (VI–X secolo) alla luce dell’archeologia: convegno inter-
nazionale (Siena, 2–6 dicembre 1992) (Florence, 1994), p. 390; Salvi, “Cagliari: San Saturnino,”
pp. 225–229.