500 Cadinu
presence in Sardinia may have led not only to conditions of political and eco-
nomic control, and relationships with the local aristocracy that preceded the
giudicati era, but also to the migration of a large number of settlers. It is thus
that the formation of a Sardinian/Islamic urban form can still be detected in
rural villages of the southern center of the island, whose first foundations can
be traced to a period between the eighth and eleventh centuries AD.7
The fragmentation of cities certainly anticipated a crisis in the countryside,
with a sharp decline in the number of rural settlements that were of Roman
origin. Numerous rural villas, some of which had adapted to Byzantine cul-
tural conditions, lost their populations and disappeared within the first few
centuries of the Middle Ages. Even so, the narrative is not entirely one of loss.
In some cases, residents renovated baths and often dedicated them to Santa
Maria.8 It is crucial to underline that material urban traces (roads, compounds,
and houses) attributed to the Sardinian Byzantine culture have not been rec-
ognized in context beyond the seventh century AD.9 The birth of the new
settlements transformed even the Roman road system, discretely distributed
throughout the island. Some roads, like those surrounding the ancient Carales
pp. 27–118; Piero Fois, “Il ruolo della Sardegna nella conquista Islamica dell’occidente (VIII
secolo),” RiMe. Rivista dell’Istituto di Storia dell’Europa Mediterranea 7 (2011), pp. 5–26;
Raimondo Pinna, Santa Igia: la città del giudice Guglielmo (Cagliari, 2010), pp. 11–37. See also
the chapter by Corrado Zedda in this volume.
7 Cadinu, Urbanistica medievale, pp. 21–28.
8 A widespread system of Roman rustic villas can be found in the plains and in contact with
coastal ports. See Mastino, Mare Sardum, pp. 180–183. Spanu mapped these villas: Spanu, La
Sardegna bizantina, pp. 129–143, in particular p. 133, fig. 131. Some such settlements became
models for the construction of domestias and donnicalias, the farms of the giudicati period,
even if their connections to a more ancient era are not always clear. See Gian Giacomo Ortu,
Villaggio e poteri signorili in Sardegna: profilo storico della comunità rurale medievale e mod-
erna (Rome, 1996); Marco Milanese, “Paesaggi rurali e luoghi del potere nella Sardegna me-
dievale,” Archeologia Medievale 37 (2010), pp. 247–258. Evidence from the eleventh century
on survives in the plains areas of a property lot system (Milanese, “Paesaggi rurali e luoghi,
p. 253). Traces of centuriation (in ruins) can be found in particular in the Cagliari (Karales)
area; see Marco Cadinu, “Persistenze centuriali nell’agro caralitano,” in L’Africa Romana: atti
del XII convegno di studio Olbia, 12–15 dicembre 1996, eds Mustapha Khanoussi, Paola Ruggeri,
and Cinzia Vismara (Olbia, 1998), vol. 2, pp. 695–707.
9 The challenges to identify topographical and structural Byzantine urban planning are such
that it becomes unclear what to look for in archaeological excavations. Regarding these is-
sues see Luca Zavagno, “La città bizantina tra il V e il IX secolo: le prospettive storiografiche,”
Reti Medievali Rivista, IX—1 (2008), pp. 1–24. Enrico Zanini, “Le città dell’Italia bizantina:
qualche appunto per un’agenda della ricerca,” Reti Medievali Rivista, XI—2 (luglio-dicembre)
(2010), pp. 45–66.