382 Milanese
Barcelona, the obra verda de Barchinona mentioned in Algherese sources, as
well as the mortar, the greixonera, the servidora, the aiguaman, the canter and
the ribell, ribelletas, casolas, and giarras, occasionally also produced later in
Oristano.
Beginning in the mid-fifteenth century, the market in Alghero was over-
run by pottery from around Barcelona and other Iberian centers (Valencia,
Tarragon). Lesser quantities of the same wares have also been found in other
locations of northwestern Sardinia. Interestingly, it is everyday pottery that
predominates: pots of no particular value for cooking, as well as manufactured
items that were produced in Sardinia. The massive importation of Iberian pot-
tery to Alghero gave the city qualities of a Catalan “internal market,” in which
all the ceramic products of the motherland circulated. The broad commercial-
ization of these manufactured items can be explained solely through a sce-
nario of continuous commercial exchange, regular importation of substantial
volumes of goods, and a high local demand for Catalan products determined
by cultural factors, dietary and culinary traditions, and a strong anthropologi-
cal bond to a specific material culture previously unknown in the repertory of
Sardinian products.
6 The Discovery of Catalan Alghero’s Biological Archive
Under various circumstances the excavations of Alghero have brought to
light sepulchral remains (primarily ones datable to between the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries). However, the recent discovery of a large medieval
urban cemetery near the church of San Michele—one of the largest Italian
cemeteries archaeologically investigated to this day; circa 600 anatomically re-
lated skeletons—has produced new historical conclusions related to Alghero’s
Catalan period.63 Such research suggests the possibility of developing a vast
Mediterranean project to monitor ethnic identity. The discoveries from the
cemetery of San Michele in Alghero have at once shed light on the ethnic pan-
oply of Sardinia over the span of nearly 400 years, and enabled the anthropo-
logical study of demographic development for the Spanish period.
Cemeteries are the sites of a city’s biological memory. When preserved by
transformative processes of the city itself, sepulchral skeletal remains func-
tion like a magnetic strip, which is capable of registering dietary habits and
possible deficiencies, disease, genetic profile, gender, age of death, and type
of labor (in the case of particularly demanding occupations). Thus, an ancient
63 Milanese, Lo scavo del cimitero di San Michele.