44 Hobart
to flourish under Aragonese rule. He and his colleagues from the University of
Sassari have excavated a number of sites located in the northwest region and
the city of Alghero, with a stratigraphic, open-area excavation approach. Over
the last decade, Milanese has looked at the exponential expansion of the city
under the Aragonese. This work dovetails with a summary of late medieval and
early modern economic expansion in Sardinia, wherein Alghero was the new
commercial hub of the island, beginning with the arrival of the Aragonese in
the first half of the fourteenth century.117 Particularly interesting is Milanese’s
examination of a cemetery in Alghero, attempting to identify the buried
community.118 He also addresses Alghero’s urban excavations in the following
chapter.
Continuing with archeological research, the next chapter examines Cagliari,
the largest city on the island. Cagliari has been excavated more than any other
city in Sardinia over the last 40 years. Rossana Martorelli discusses the most
recent excavations she has co-directed, which have helped address some of the
gaps in the medieval city’s history.119 Interested primarily in the early Christian
period, Martorelli has identified what may perhaps be the earliest proof of a
Christian presence in Sardinia connected to Gregory the Great and seventh-
century monasticism in Cagliari.120
117 Antonello Argiolas and Antonello Mattone, “Ordinamenti portuali e territorio costiero di
una comunità della Sardegna moderna: Terranova (Olbia) in Gallura nei secoli XV–XVIII.”
In Da Olbìa ad Olbia: 2500 anni di storia di una città mediterranea: atti del Convegno in-
ternazionale di studi, 12–14 maggio 1994, Olbia, Italia, eds Giuseppe Meloni and Pinuccia
Franca Simbula, vol. 2, pp. 179–180.
118 Marco Milanese, ed., Lo scavo del cimitero di San Michele ad Alghero (fine XIII–inizi XVII
secolo). Campagna di scavo giugno 2008–settembre 2009 (Ghezzano-Pisa, 2010).
119 See also, Rossana Martorelli, “Cagliari in età tardoantica ed altomedievale,” in Cagliari tra
passato e futuro, ed. Gian Giacomo Ortu (Cagliari, 2004), pp. 283–299; Rossana Martorelli,
“Archeologia urbana a Cagliari. Un bilancio di trent’anni di ricerche sull’età tardoan-
tica e altomedievale,” Studi Sardi 34 (2009), pp. 213–237. And, for the later periods, see
Francesco Artizzu, Gli ordinamenti pisani per il porto di Cagliari. Breve Portus Kalleritani
(Rome, 1979); Marco Cadinu, Cagliari. Forma e progetto della città storica (Cagliari, 2009);
Marco Cadinu, “Il nuovo quartiere aragonese sul porto nel primo Trecento a Cagliari,”
Storia dell’Urbanistica. Sardegna 1 (2008), pp. 137–146, 45–48; Laura Galoppini, I registri
doganali di Cagliari (1351–1429); Robert-Henri Bautier, “Le sel de Sardaigne et l’activité por-
tuaire de Cagliari. Quelques données chiffrées (1349–1417),” in Le Rôle du sel dans l’histoire,
ed. Michel Mollat (Paris, 1968), pp. 203–225.
120 Rossana Martorelli, “Gregorio Magno e il fenomeno monastico a Cagliari agli esordi
del VII secolo,” in Per longa maris intervalla: Gregorio Magno e l’Occidente mediterraneo
fra tardoantico a altomedioevo, eds Lucio Casula, Giampaolo Mele, Antonio Piras, and
Luciano Armando (Cagliari, 2006), pp. 125–158; Martorelli, Settecento-Millecento.