312 Milanese
on cross-written sources and materials can, perhaps, move well beyond this,
and certainly develop a significant plan of action and strengthen analysis for
the formulation of models.
I will address some questions posed by Marco Tangheroni, in the margins of
the registers of the Aduanas Sardas, the customs records of the port of Cagliari,
preserved irregularly since 1351. Some of these questions are concerned with
the role of the main square of Cagliari in the redistribution of imported goods
towards the inland markets, once they had arrived at the port, and in particu-
lar, those due (but not monitored by the registers) to the Catalans; according
to Tangheroni these issues are “destined to remain without a definite answer.”137
The theme of the commercial redistribution from the ports to the interior
may be better addressed—at least from the qualitative and semi-quantitative
point of view—by material finds, which enable comprehensive monitoring
of the redistribution of Catalan and Valencian ceramics contemporary to the
port registers, both in the urban market and in numerous inland sites, arriv-
ing from the port of Cagliari and other island harbors.138 Further, the data re-
sulting from the architectural bacini, field surveys, and the rare excavations of
pottery undertaken with scientific criteria, while predominantly qualitative in
nature, nonetheless makes it possible to locate the redistribution pessimisti-
cally mentioned by Tangheroni, and to draw the first geographical outlines for
the circulation of goods supplied by the harbor’s markets. But the potential
of archaeological sources can go beyond the qualitative aspects which appear
dominant139 and thus formulate quantitative or semi-quantitative new av-
enues of interest. To access this significant level of archaeological data for the
history of medieval trade requires access to rigorous and stratigraphic archaeo-
logical methods and transparency on the quantitative process the material has
undergone.
137 Marco Tangheroni, Aspetti del commercio dei cereali nei paesi della Corona d’Aragona. 1. La
Sardegna (Cagliari, 1981), pp. 62–63.
138 Mauro Dadea and Porcella Maria Francesca, “La diffusione della ceramica spagnola in
Sardegna: importazioni e tentativi di imitazioni locali, in Transferencies i comerc de
ceràmica a l’Europa mediterrània (segles XIV–XVII),” XV Jornades d’Estudis Historics
Locals, Palma de Mallorca, Institut d’estudis balearics (1997), p. 231, the authors summa-
rize a wide spectrum of pottery that should be revisited and updated to create a more
precise chronological framework.
139 For the use of the term “qualitative” for archaeological sources see David M. Gaimster
and Paul Stamper, The Age of Transition (Oxford, 1997); and on a European scale see the
similar positions that emerge in John G. Hurst, David S. Neal, and H.J.E. Van Beuningen,
Pottery Produced and Traded in North-West Europe 1350–1650 (Rotterdam, 1986).