418 Rovina
“dux Constantinus,” who is celebrated in a seventh-century Byzantine epigraph
in Porto Torres (Sassari).2
Several early medieval cemeteries have been found on the island. They often
pertained to small military garrisons, in which the warriors were buried along
with their family members, including women with rich personal grave goods. In
northern Sardinia, the collective tombs of Laerru, San Pietro di Sorres-Borutta,
San Pietro in Murighe in Cheremule, and Santa Maria di Mesumundu in Siligo,
were archaeologically investigated between the mid-1800s and the mid-1900s,
with most of the findings being collected in the National Archaeological
Museum G.A. Sanna in Sassari. In southern and central Sardinia, the findings
from the burials of Cornus in Cuglieri, Santa Vittoria di Serri, Santa Maria della
Mercede in Norbello, and San Giovanni Battista in Nurachi are exhibited in the
National Archaeological Museum of Cagliari.3
The most common military clothing elements from these cemeteries are
bronze buckles for sword belts, rings, and open-ended armils. The so-called
brachiati warriors were named for the distinctive bracelets that were a defin-
ing element of their gear.4 Archaeological studies at various early medieval
cemeteries on the island have brought to light different types of belt buckles.5
Those most widely disseminated between the sixth and seventh centuries are
made of molded bronze, with a kidney-shaped ring, a beaked tongue, and a
U-shaped movable plate impressed with a wide assortment of decorations:
2 Letizia Pani Ermini, “Ancora sull’Iscrizione bizantina di Turris Libisonis,” in Queritur inven-
tus colitur: Miscellanea in onore di Padre Umberto M. Fasola (Vatican City, 1989), pp. 513–527.
See also Corrado Zedda, “Bisanzio, Islam e il mondo mediterraneo tra VII e XII secolo,” in
Archivio Storico Sardo di Sassari n.s.10 (2006), pp. 39–112.
3 The two main national archaeological museums in Sardinia were born during the 1800s from
important donations by private collectors. Both the museums were then enriched and re-
organized to accommodate the findings from these early, poorly documented excavations
and then more recently updated with material from archaeological surveys and stratigraphic
excavations.
4 Paolo Benito Serra, “L’armamento,” in Corrias and Cosentino, Ai confini dell’Impero (2002),
p. 153.
5 Most of the manufactured objects are preserved in Cagliari’s and Sassari’s national archaeo-
logical museums; regarding the latter, see Roberto Caprara, “Tarda antichità e alto medioevo,”
in Il Museo Sanna in Sassari, ed. Fulvia Lo Schiavo (Milan, 1986), pp. 169–184; and Daniela
Rovina, La sezione medievale del Museo “G. A. Sanna” di Sassari (Piedimonte Matese (CE),
2000). On the former, see Letizia Pani Ermini and Mariangela Marinone, Catalogo dei mate-
riali paleocristianii e altomedievali del Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Cagliari (Roma, 1981);
see also Salvi Donatella and Paolo Benito Serra, “Corredi tombali e oreficerie nella Sardegna
altomedievale,” Quaderni didattici della Soprintendenza Archeologica per le provincie di
Cagliari e Oristano 3 (1990). On buckles, see Serra, “L’armamento,” pp. 152–153.