474 Coroneo
Giorgio Spanu’s La Sardegna bizantina tra VI e VII secolo, in which the author
analyzed the archaeological context of Late Antiquity and the Byzantine era.3
Many lines of research remain open and require further development, both
through the exploration of sites whose stratigraphy is intact enough to provide
new insights into the island’s architectural legacy, and through a rereading of
primary sources. It is important to stress that archaeologists have made sig-
nificant finds in the course of restorations, particularly in cases of late antique
churches discovered beneath consecutive levels of pavement.
As for sources, few have so far become known.4 Christianity is attested early
in Sardinia; indeed, a reference to Christians damnati ad metalla (condemned
to the mines)—probably the mines of Sulcis-Iglesiente—dates back to the
second century. The earliest evidence of a diocese on the island is a reference
to the participation of Quintasius, the bishop of Cagliari, in the Council of
Arles in 314. However, there are as of yet no documentary or archaeological
records to determine which church served as Quintasius’s cathedral, or where
within Cagliari it was located. None of the island’s known churches date back
to the fourth century. Archaeological excavations in various areas of the oldest
coastal cities have brought to light churches with longitudinal plans, as well
as baptisteries, but none of these seem to predate the fifth century. Such is
the case of the basilicas of Cornus, Tharros, Nora, Porto Torres, and Donori,
among others, located inland from Cagliari. Only in the last of these is the
dedication—S. Nicola—definitely known. These are all late antique buildings
typologically and technologically, and although they are difficult to date with
precision, none of them were erected later than the seventh century.
In the 1960s, archaeologists, who initially engaged in sporadic digs and later
planned excavations, discovered traces of the imposing episcopal complex
of Cornus in the area of Columbaris, near Santa Caterina di Pittinuri.5 This
fieldwork revealed an aisleless basilica with a baptistery, and two single-aisle
churches with longitudinal plans, one of which was later converted into a bap-
tistery (Fig. 18.1). Each of the latter had apses on its eastern and western termi-
nations. These excavations also revealed the ruins of an aisled basilica with a
western apse and a baptistery with an octagonal basin in the archaeological
zone of the Phoenician-Punic (later Roman) city of Tharros, which is now in
3 Pier Giorgio Spanu, La Sardegna bizantina tra VI e VII secolo (Oristano, 1998).
4 Attilio Mastino, “La Sardegna cristiana in età tardo-antica,” in Attilio Mastino, Giovanna
Sotgiu, and Natalino Spaccapelo, eds, La Sardegna paleocristiana tra Eusebio e Gregorio
Magno: atti del Convegno Nazionale di studi, Cagliari, 10–12 October 1996 (Cagliari, 1999),
pp. 263–307.
5 Anna Maria Giuntella, Cornus I: l’area cimiteriale orientale (Oristano, 1999).