298 Milanese
date to the early fourteenth century. Nevertheless, one must stress that, given
the total surface area of these settlements, the sample investigated, thus far,
has been fairly limited. In the case of Castelgenovese, the restoration of the
bridgehouse in the 1970s destroyed important stratigraphic deposits without
documenting them and thus eliminated the possibility of a complex reading of
the surviving structures. In Alghero, on the other hand, certain modifications,
including the addition of ramparts to the sixteenth century fortifications, oblit-
erated the oldest phases. The features hitherto identified on the cliff cannot
date earlier than the second half of the thirteenth century, which nonetheless
accords with the 1281 date of the oldest known document referring to Alghero.
The project of erecting seigniorial fortifications was certainly attractive to
the territory’s rural population. Through the concession of benefices and privi-
leges, it also encouraged colonization by the Genoese and Ligurians who, ac-
cording to the seigniorial idea, represented themselves as founders ( fideles), as
in the case of the Genoese colony on Bonifacio’s Corsica and the construction
of Castel Lombardo near Ajaccio, where they built a castle and houses. It was
certainly no coincidence that in 1288, when the commune of Pisa was deliber-
ating the terms of its peace with Genoa, there emerged—besides Brancaleone
Doria, the true spokesman for the reparations demanded after the war with
Pisa and the sack of Alghero in 1283—a steady Genoese base that consisted of
members of the urban aristocracy and “other” Genoese that were needed to
control one of the most important citadels of the territory’s young seignioria.
Certainly, besides the relevant number of burgenses, the vast areas enclosed
by the walls make it possible to presuppose the existence of ample spaces that
were not built up, but instead served as arable areas. These are mentioned in
early fourteenth-century notarial documents pertaining to various citadels; in
Casteldoria, the terras que sunt intus muros dicti castri ortiva et lavoratas are
clear testimony of ample rural zones within the castle walls. Physical evidence
of such cultivated land within citadels has emerged in the recent excavation at
Castelgenovese,84 despite the fact that this citadel marked the end of seigniori-
al control over the agricultural, grain-growing region of Anglona, whose wheat
was the most important good to be loaded onto ships at the seigniorial port of
Frigano. Behind the sea-facing Castrum Ianuense lay the seignioria-controlled
trade in less valuable goods, such as pottery, which rarely appears in written
sources but is highly visible archaeologically. The so-called Graffita Arcaica
Savonese (formerly known as Graffita Arcaica Tirrenica) serves as an important
physical document for the history of Ligurian trade in Sardinia between 1250
and 1350, the commercial vectors of which seem to have largely consisted of
Savoyard merchants or those who frequented the port of Savona rather than
84 Milanese, “Ceramiche d’importazione.”