410 Biccone
that at least from the eleventh century on had consolidated their political and
commercial presence on the island.53
The picture is well known and documented from the fourteenth until the
early seventeenth centuries (Pl. 15.6). In this period, the most important cen-
ters of ceramic imports were Liguria and Tuscany, especially the numerous
production centers of the Pisan Valdarno, as well as eastern Spain: Valencian
and Catalan productions.54 While quantitative analyses do not exist for all the
contexts that have been published, it is clear that Spanish pottery is generally
found on the western part of the island, while Tyrrhenian ceramics are mostly
found in the eastern part.55
Final Remarks on the Imported Trading Patterns
As already mentioned, the whole region presents a general homogeneity in
the typology of pottery evidence for the periods examined here. The geogra-
phy of imports changes greatly over the centuries. In fact, for the thirteenth
century, thanks to the activity of the Pisan and Ligurian merchants in the large
Mediterranean routes, ceramic materials from the Maghreb and the Middle
East or from Al-Andalus can be found, associated with productions from Pisa,
Savona, Provence, and southern Italy, while from the fourteenth century the
import area seems to have largely been the Tyrrhenian Sea.
This phenomenon can be explained through the improvement of the pro-
duction and distribution system of Pisa and Savona ateliers for the fourteenth
century, and of those of Savona and Valentia for the fifteenth century. One pos-
sible interpretation of this phenomenon is the introduction of pottery coating
techniques in Savona and Pisa, which from the early years of the thirteenth
century allowed the production of fine coated ceramics and gradual indepen-
dence from Islamic and southern Italian artifacts. Technical innovations and
large-scale production, and the development of business activities organized
53 A vast body of literature is dedicated to this theme; two recent works are Pisa e il
Mediterraneo. Uomini, merci, idee dagli Etruschi ai Medici (Milan, 2003) and Luciano
Gallinari, ed., Genova: una “porta” del Mediterraneo (Cagliari, 2005).
54 Martorelli and Mureddu, “Vico III Lanusei”; Milanese, Biccone, and Fiori, “Produzione,
commercio e consumo.” Only after the sixteenth century is majolica from Latium found,
although in rather limited in quantity. Other production centers in Italy, such as Deruta,
for example, are rather rare, and thus far documented only in Cagliari and Sassari.
55 This idea originates above all from evidence in Sassari, Alghero, and Bosa, on the one
hand, and Posada (NU) on the other. In the case of the latter, a preponderance of majolica
from Montelupo or the Latium vis-à-vis Spanish products can be verified.