Contribution Of Archaeology To Medieval And Modern Sardinia 287
institutional features that illustrate the materiality of the site can be inferred
from written and archaeological sources, and they reveal a bipolar organization
of the settlement (village and monastery), even if they are only simply differ-
ent expressions and manifestations of a unified historical reality. In the case of
Orria Pithinna, this bifocal vision is represented by a rural settlement, which,
in the twelfth century, corresponded to a territory characterized by vast agrar-
ian estates belonging to the powerful clans of the de Thori-de Athen families,60
and early in the next century, to a small Camaldolese monastery founded after
the noblewoman Maria De Thori donated the church of Santa Maria di Orria
Pithinna in 1205 (Fig. 11.4).61 The double nature of the site is upheld by intense
archaeological surveys, whose readings locate the occupied areas of the medi-
eval settlement on weak calcareous terraces, with a contour reaching 300–310 m
above sea level and elevated over the Iscanneddu River. In particular, archaeo-
logical traces of a settlement, presently identified as the villa of Orria Pithinna,
which is known from tax records of the 1340s,62 seems to have been located in
the lower portion of the altimetric fork. The church of S. Maria de Orria Pithinna
stands at a slightly higher altitude (310 m above sea level)63 and related traces
of walls, if only at the level to which they were razed,64 suggests that they may
instead belong to the Camaldolese priory, which must have found its own refer-
ence point within the ecclesiastical structure.65
If, upon initial analysis, the topography of the site suggests a hierarchy based
on altitude between the religious and the secular, the spatial arrangement
certainly indicates a distinction (Fig. 11.5). This is a bipolarity that the latest
fiscal documents of the fourteenth century seem to express in an indepen-
dent arrangement between the monastery and the village66—with separate
fees paid by the priory (for the monastery) and the parish (for the village)—an
arrangement that occurred in other cases, as well, such as the abbey of Santa
patrimoniale nel Medioevo: atti del convegno di studio, Tergu, 15–17 settembre 2006 (Spoleto
(Perugia), 2007).
60 Whose ties to the Athen family in the thirteenth century can be verified in the written
documents cited in this and later articles.
61 Ginevra Zanetti, I Camaldolesi in Sardegna (Cagliari, 1974), p. 23.
62 Other contributions explain its role; see the chapters by Marras and Cherchi, Maxia and
Piras in Milanese, Villaggi e monasteri.
63 On the problem of the building’s dedication, see Giuseppe Piras, “Le epigrafi, i segni lapi-
dari e i graffiti,” in Milanese, Villaggi e monasteri, n. 159.
64 See the chapter by Marras and Cherchi in Milanese, Villaggi e monasteri.
65 Contrary to the earlier tendency to view the church of Santa Maria de Orria Pithinna as
the village church.
66 Piras, “Le epigrafi,” n. 67.