Contribution Of Archaeology To Medieval And Modern Sardinia 285
immediate future, starting with some examples identified in Anglona and the
Valle of Silis, close to the coast. Here, at the sites of Uruspe, Gennor, and Othari,
proof of monastic or private agricultural holdings, documented from the elev-
enth century on (Gennor) and in the thirteenth century (the others) through
a variety of means, starting with written sources, suggest the possibility of fo-
cused digs.
Other examples of rural settlement about which little is known, even from
written sources, are fortified homesteads, such as that of the Malaspina, the
curia de Banguos (Bangios) recorded in the territory of Uri. The structure
(circumscripta est murata cum turri) appears to have been fortified and con-
tained houses inside it (cum istis domibus positis intra dictam curiam).52
Despite the fact that this and similar structures are no longer visible today,
territorial lords had access to a network of rural estates located beyond castles,
at least from the thirteenth century onwards. Such establishments obviously
served as temporary residences from which they could control their territory.
These residences were sometimes located in villas in their possession, such
as those noted at Perfugas and Orria Manna (Nulvi), which were probably en-
dowed with defensive walls, and had the appearance of a fortified palazzo or a
house with a central courtyard, as did the feudal residence discovered during
an emergency intervention in Olmedo in 2008.53
The impact of fortifications or seigniorial defensive works between the late
thirteenth and mid-fourteenth centuries caused villages to transform in ways
that were not completely painless, as territorial analyses of rural areas around
these strongholds and new readings of documents have begun to show. There
is the case of the castle of Malaspina di Osilo, whose attractiveness to the
rural population led to the depopulation of the nearby villa of Ogosilo. But
the same process seems to have occurred in the case of the castles of Alghero,
Castelgenovese, and Chiaramonti, the last of the castles founded in the mid-
fourteenth century.54
52 Alessandro Soddu, I Malaspina e la Sardegna (Cagliari, 2005), pp. LVI, and docs 396, 411.
53 Pending new archaeological data on rural residences (whether fortified or not) inter-
spersed among strongholds, the one found in Olmedo, dated to the fifteenth century and
destroyed in the first half of the sixteenth, may serve as the first archaeological point
of reference. See Marco Milanese, M. C. Deriu, and Mauro Fiori, “Olmedo, Loc. Binzas
Bezzas. Scavo d’emergenza di una residenza feudale (XV–XVI secolo),” Archeologia
Postmedievale 12 (2008), pp. 179–181.
54 Marco Milanese, ed., Villaggi e monasteri: Orria Pithinna: la chiesa, il villaggio, il monastero
(Florence, 2012).