A Revision Of Sardinian History 123
reference. As for the name of the province, Arborea does not refer to a defined
center. It differs from the archdioceses of Calari (Cagliari) and Turris (Porto
Torres), whose names were obviously derived from the names of the respective
cities. It seems likely that, if the territory of this archdiocese had been sepa-
rated from that of the diocese of Santa Giusta, which was of minor importance
to the general papal plan, the ancient origins of the archdiocese of Arborea
may have remained manifest.
It is thus important to emphasize how much emerges from the study of the
formation of the archdiocese of Arborea and its suffragan dioceses. The pre-
cincts of the archdiocese were identical to those of the ancient dioceses of
Tharros and Forum Traiani, though nothing remained of those centers—not
even their names—due to the destruction possibly carried out by Muslims
in preceding centuries. Islam’s entry into Sinis did not bring about a full and
stable occupation of the territory; instead, I may argue, it disrupted the equi-
librium of the island and, in the long run, permitted its division into various
territorial entities that were legitimized by the Roman Church—as the four
giudicati that are known to history—only in the eleventh century.
The destruction of the territory—still visible in the early eleventh century—
was similar to what was happening in other parts of Italy during the early me-
dieval period. In Sardinia, the ancient cities disappeared, and for some time
there was no stable center for legal or administrative systems. Such destruc-
tion could have solely been the work of Islamic raids, which must have led to
some sort of settlement in the area of Sinis. Recent archaeological research has
led to a preference for such hypotheses, thanks to the discovery of monetary
weights, seals, and inscriptions, datable to between the ninth and eleventh
centuries, in the area of Tharros. As these studies show, the castrum of Tharros
was protected by a Byzantine primicerius.22 The context of the settlement be-
comes more problematic in the eighth century, though there are indications
that commerce with Muslims was taking place there. In May 2012, an excep-
tional discovery was made: a small lead disk containing a profession of Islamic
faith that is atypical of Islamic coins or monetary weights. What is this object?
Neither a seal nor a coin, but perhaps like others found in Spain, a lead talis-
man from the ninth or tenth century.
see Raimondo Pinna, “I confini della diocesi di Santa Giusta dall’istituzione all’unione con
l’archidiocesi di Arborea,” Biblioteca Francescana Sarda 15 (2013), pp. 5–74.
22 See the contributions of Piergiorgio Spanu, Raimondo Zucca, and Piero Fois, Settecento-
Millecento. Storia, archeologia e arte nei «secoli bui» del Mediterraneo, ed. Rossana
Martorelli (Cagliari, 2013).