Sardinia As A Crossroads In The Mediterranean 25
In the last 20 years, studies in archaeology and urban planning have rein-
vigorated the investigation of Sardinia’s deserted villages.59 Interestingly, there
is no evidence of feudalism—at least until the arrival of the Aragonese in
the fourteenth century.60 The traditional view of feudalism is that it entered
Sardinia with the Aragonese in 1354. Where the giudicati retained power, feu-
dalism held no sway, as in the pre-Spanish times. This is because the power of
the judges did not extend to personal ownership of the property of the giudi-
cato (“state”), much as in Byzantine and Roman times.
Archaeological evidence helps us understand the relationship between the
village and the churches, and the sequence of these settlements’ development.
Marco Milanese, and his team from the University of Sassari, excavated aban-
doned rural sites around Sassari, finding evidence that disproves the assump-
tion that villages flourished around pre-existing churches, offering a different
picture of what some of the documents describe.61 Information from surveys
and archaeological fieldwork has shown the presence of many previously un-
known villages, which developed prior to, and in distinct locations from the later
churches. Further study is underway, and should yield new interpretations of the
life and death of the villages, the nature of their relationship with the church,
and when each area was abandoned. In 2011, one of Milanese’s project sites
near Sassari was turned into a museum centered on abandoned villages, with
reconstructions of how people lived and worked in those spaces.62 Currently,
the University of Sassari is working on a revised atlas of the island, building upon
59 Graziella Berti, Catia Renzi Rizzo, and Marco Tangheroni, eds, Il mare, la terra, il ferro.
Ricerche su Pisa medievale (secoli VII–XIII) (Pisa, 2004), pp. 279–312; Giovanni Serreli, “Vita
e morte dei villaggi rurali in Sardegna tra Stati giudicali e Regno di ‘Sardegna e Corsica,”
RiMe—Rivista dell’Istituto di Storia dell’Europa Mediterranea 2 ( June 2009), pp. 109–116.
60 Marco Tangheroni described Sardinia as a place that had no feudal system in place before
the Aragonese settlements; see Marco Tangheroni, “Il Feudalesimo in Sardegna in età pre-
aragonese,” Annali della Scuola Normale di Pisa III (1973), pp. 861–892; Marco Tangheroni,
“La Sardegna pre-aragonese: una società senza feudalesimo?” in Collection de l’ecole
Francaise de Rome, XLIV (Rome, 1980); see also Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals; Giovanni
Serreli, Aspetti del feudalesimo nel Regno di Sardegna (Cagliari, 2002).
61 Marco Milanese, “Vita e morte dei villaggi rurali tra Medioevo ed età moderna: dallo
scavo della Villa de Geriti ad una pianificazione della tutela e della conoscenza dei vil-
laggi abbandonati della Sardegna,” in Vita e morte dei villaggi abbandonati tra Medioevo
ed età moderna (Borgo San Lorenzo, 2006); in the same volume, for the south of the is-
land, see Giovanni Serreli, “Villaggi abbandonati nel regno di Calari: tre casi emblematici,”
pp. 147–160.
62 This is the first museum of its kind; see http://www.museobiddas.it.