278 Milanese
of the episcopal residence, the villa’s population in the early fourteenth cen-
tury amounted to only 25 families ( fuochi), a mere 7.66 percent of Geridu. Yet,
notwithstanding this disparity in population, available archaeological evi-
dence shows the physical features of the villa of Ardu, the housing type (tiled
roofs), building techniques, material culture, and diet of the inhabitants. These
features seem to have been quite similar to those of Geridu, the only difference
being the villa of Geridu’s more rational “urban” ground plan, which consisted
of semi-detached homes lining a gentle slope, while at Ardu they stood further
apart. Problems regarding the demography of villas run by freemen farmers,
as well as those pertaining to the hierarchy of settlements, are linked to the
problem of the visibility of archaeological finds, of formative and erosion pro-
cesses, factors that weaken the trustworthiness of site boundaries determined
by geo-referencing.
The size of medieval rural churches is a particularly sensitive subject. At
times they serve as indicators of the precise location of a village, but they were
often not situated exactly at the site of a deserted settlement. In Geridu and at
the villa of Taniga (Sassari), the presence of numerous churches attributable to
the same village attests to the polycentric manner of structuring a large villa,32
even in a region with notable distances between various ecclesiastical struc-
tures (in Geridu, between Santu Biasu and Sant’Andrìa), that were sometimes
greater than those between two villages.33 However, regardless of the coinci-
dence (or not) of an ecclesiastical structure and a buried village, it is precisely
the perception of the centrality of rural medieval churches that in many cases
blurs our vision of ecclesiastical structure as the tip of an iceberg constituting
an abandoned medieval settlement, whose buried remains characterize the
surrounding area.
For many years now there has been a race to restore the rural churches of
Sardinia (or rather, those of the island’s deserted villages), which has not been
backed by institutional support or a genuine archaeological approach to ar-
chitecture, either during the restoration or in terms of preventative measures.
Greater commitment on the part of all institutions involved in the protection
and management of the territory cannot be further postponed if we are to pre-
vent the loss of an archaeological legacy from reaching devastating propor-
tions. At this time, it is not as important to excavate as it is to identify and
monitor sites, to determine the borders of their extended areas, understand
when they were built vis-à-vis the nearby deserted village, to probe and assess
their state of preservation, and submit them to proper territorial planning.
32 Among others, see the case of Tonara in Mandrolisai, a polycentric village composed of
the distinct settlements of Arasulè, Tonara, Toneri, Teliseri, and Ilalà (all deserted).
33 Such is the case for the villas of Innoviu and Murusas, a short distance from Sassari.