284 Milanese
Among the problems with the terms used for rural Sardinian settlements be-
tween the eleventh and thirteenth centuries is that curtes and donnicàlias
seem to have been understood to be synonymous.47 Curtes, quae domnica-
liae vocantur is a useful specification, possibly requested by those interested
and involved in these registers—giudici, donors, and beneficiaries from the
continent—to clarify technical terminology.48 This is typical, and points to the
difficulty of attributing clear physical features to the various terms that appear
in documents.49 Barbara Fois has pointed out how, “in a single document three
different names (curias, donnicalias, curtes) can be used to indicate the same
settlements.”50 According to the excavators of Santa Maria di Tergu in Anglona,
which dates to between the late tenth and early eleventh centuries, the most im-
portant archaeological features belonging to a domo may be that some spaces/
rooms are arranged around a central courtyard.51
Beyond the case of Tergu, which was reconstructed using archaeological
research methods, the characterization of different rural settlements of a ser-
vile type—as evident in written documents—is a strategic objective for the
47 Giovanni Murgia, “La conquista aragonese e il crollo dell’insediamento abitativo rurale
sparso nella Sardegna dei secoli XIV–XV,” in Tra ricerca e impegno. Scritti in onore di Lucilla
Trudu, ed. Claudio Natoli (Rome, 2004), pp. 33–63; p. 36 emphasizes that “the donnica-
lias or domos were complex agrarian units consisting of farms, meadows, pasture, woods,
large and small livestock, serfs and maidservants.”
48 The paper documenting the donation of 1107 refers only to the term donnicalie, while
the document of the following year (1108) identifies it as a curias with the specification
that: “id sunt quatuor curtes quae donnicaliae vocatur”; N. Deliperi, “Aspetti della vita eco-
nomica della Sardegna nel secolo XII,” Mediterranea 4 (1935), p. 33; Maria Teresa Atzori,
Glossario di sardo antico (Modena, 1975), p. 180; Geo Pistarino, “Genova e la Sardegna nel
secolo XII,” in La Sardegna nel mondo mediterraneo: atti del primo convegno internazio-
nale di studi geografico-storici, Sassari, 7–9 aprile 1978, eds Pasquale Brandis and Manlio
Brigaglia (Sassari, 1981), pp. 41–42, n. 32.
49 The complexity of the problem in the regional context of Sardinia emerges clearly in Gian
Giacomo Ortu, Villaggio e poteri signorili in Sardegna: profilo storico della comunità ru-
rale medievale e moderna (Rome, 1996), especially p. 28; see also the more recent articles
Gian Giacomo Ortu, “ ‘Carta de Logu’ e ‘cartae libertatis’: in tema di giurisdizioni nella
Sardegna del Trecento,” in La Carta de Logu d’Arborea nella storia del diritto medievale e
moderno, eds Italo Birocchi and Antonello Mattone (Rome, 2004), pp. 99–101; and S. De
Santis, “Consuetudine e struttura fondiaria in Sardegna tra XII e XIV secolo,” in Birocchi
and Mattone, La Carta de Logu d’Arborea, pp. 240–242.
50 Fois, “Sardegna.”
51 D. Dettori, “Abbazia di Santa Maria di Tergu: le fasi premonastiche,” in Committenza, scelte
insediative e organizzazione patrimoniale nel Medioevo (Atti del Convegno di studio, Tergu,
15–17 September 2006), ed. Letizia Pani Ermini (Spoleto, 2007), pp. 49–50.