36 Hobart
Sardinia was recorded and mapped again, this time as part of the reconstruc-
tion of Italy.107
4 Overview of the Chapters
The book is divided into four sections, covering a millennium of Sardinian his-
tory: setting the scene, history, archaeology, and culture.
The first section literally “sets the scene,” historically and visually, by contex-
tualizing the primary sources and presenting the surviving cartography. The
second covers different historical points of view and current debates within
Sardinia, and in a Mediterranean context. The third uses new data that has
emerged from archaeology, field surveys, and material culture, which contrib-
utes to filling the gaps created by the great loss of documentation in Sardinia
(see infra Schena). A new generation of post-classical archaeologists address
questions in both rural and urban contexts that otherwise appear unanswer-
able. The fourth and last section provides assessments of selected disciplines,
including music, urban planning, and architecture. The period under consid-
eration begins as the Byzantine outpost in Sardinia takes on new waves of set-
tlers arriving from North Africa (starting ca. 500 AD). The book ends in 1500,
when Spanish rule from the continent is withdrawn in favor of more local rule
with the vestiges of Spanish aristocracy.
It is key to keep in mind, however, that the views of the authors in this vol-
ume occasionally diverge. In addition to translating the most current research
into English, this book seeks to dismantle a singular narrative of the past,
which has been carefully crafted since the sixteenth century, and to replace it
with multiple perspectives on Sardinia’s medieval and modern history.
The book commences with the primary sources, reorganized by Olivetta
Schena’s presentation of what survives in Sardinia, and by the cartographer
Nathalie Bouloux. Sardinian’s patchy stock of documents is generally attrib-
uted to destruction perpetuated by the conquerors to erase traces of their
predecessors, as well as to human negligence. This is one of the many issues
107 Antonello Mattone, La cartografia: una grafica dell’arretratezza (Cagliari, 1982); Bacchisio
Raimondo Motzo, Il compasso da navigare; opera italiana della metà del secolo XIII, intro-
duction and text of Codice Hamilton 396 (Cagliari, 1947); revised by Dalché, La géogra-
phie de Ptolémée. See also, Bacchisio R. Motzo, “La Sardegna nel compasso da navigare del
secolo XIII,” Archivio Sorico Sardo 20 (1936), pp. 67–113 and 122–160; and Patrick Gautier
Dalché, Carte marine et portulan au XIIe siècle. “Le Liber de existencia riveriarum et forma
maris nostri mediterranei” (Pise, circa 1200) (Rome, 1995).