344 Rovina
two transepts during this same campaign (Fig. 13.6). Such finds indicate that in
the early Middle Ages the site was occupied by agricultural production. These
features, together with the plowshare tracks on the stone facing of the Piazza
Duomo, and the residential type, confirm the rural character of the settlement,
which is also evinced by the village’s food consumption23 and twelfth-century
written sources.
Remnants of material culture linked to phases of the village’s existence are
too scarce to permit a satisfying reconstruction of life as it unfolded there. All
the same, in addition to offering a chronology for the settlement, Forum Ware,
tableware from Latium and Campania, as well as Sicilian shipping amphora
testify to commercial contact with southern Italy.24 The vitality of the villa
in the early giudicato period—the seat of the parish at least from the early
twelfth century on—is equally attested by the discovery of a small treasure
trove of 200 silver Luccan dinars of Otto III (983–1002) during a nineteenth-
century reconstruction of an unspecified house in the historic center.25 This,
along with the documented circulation of goods of various provenance from
southern Italy, seems to offer proof of the settlement’s remarkable mercantile
bent in its earliest phase, which may have been the basis of its subsequent
growth and evolution into a city.
In the course of the twelfth century, the villa of Thathari must have grown
demographically, strengthening its position to such an extent among the other
settlements in the vicinity that by the late twelfth century it had become, along
with Torres, Ardara, and the stronghold of Goceano, one of the seats of the
23 Studies carried out on the remains of fauna from the two settings provide information
on the village’s food consumption and confirm its connection to the countryside. Present
in decreasing quantities are sheep, goats, pigs, and occasionally cows, in terms of do-
mestic species; deer and very occasionally mouflons, in terms of wild species. Birds are
also documented; chickens among domestic species, and the partridge among wild ones.
Fish, on the other hand, are very scarce, and shellfish are altogether absent; Elisabetta
Grassi, “Faunal Remains from Sassari (Sardinia, Italy). An Urban Archaeozoological
Case Study,” in Proceedings of the General Session of the 11th ICAZ International Council
for Archaeozoology Conference (Paris 23–28 August 2010), ed. C. Lef.vre, BAR International
Series 2354 (2012), pp. 127–136.
24 Laura Biccone, Paola Mameli, and Daniela Rovina, “La circolazione di ceramiche da
mensa e da trasporto tra X e XI secolo: l’esempio della Sardegna alla luce di recenti indag-
ini archeologiche e archeometriche,” in Atti del IX Congresso Internazionale Association
Internazionale pour l’Etude del Céramiques Médiévales Méditerranéennes, Venice 23–28 no
vembre 2009 (Florence, 2012), pp. 122–128.
25 Vincenzo Dessì, Gli scritti di numismatica (Sassari, 1970 [1898]), p. 21, n. 28.