Continuity and catastrophes in the evolution of settlement in Late Antique and Medieval Sardinia

  • Giovanni Serreli CNR - Istituto di Storia dell'Europa Mediterranea
Keywords: Middle Ages, Sardinia, North Africa, Settlement, Villages, Cities, Medioevo, Sardegna, Nord Africa, insediamenti, villaggi, città

Abstract

Recent research in the north African regions between the classical period and the Arab conquest highlight how the Roman and late antique settlement fabric survived almost unchanged the first Arab conquest of north Africa; such research is debunking catastrophist narratives on the first wave of Arabs in North Africa.
It would be constructive to compare the experiences of study on the evolution of settlement with those about Sardinia; they focused on the traumatic events of XIIIth and XIVth centuries, and on the institutional causes of rural depopulation, but also on the integration of these data acquired with the new contributions from geoarchaeology and paleoclimatology.

Author Biography

Giovanni Serreli, CNR - Istituto di Storia dell'Europa Mediterranea

Giovanni Serreli is a researcher at CNR ISEM; he deals with the study of human settlement and defence systems between the Early Middle Ages and the Modern Age. He has published several articles on these issues. With Maurizio Virdis he is the editor of Gozos. Componimenti religiosi raccolti nel XVIII secolo da Francesco Maria Marras. Together with his colleague Maria Grazia Mele, he carries on the project Torri Multimediali. La torre come interfaccia. He coordinated the project and edited the book Sa Massarìa. Ecologia storica del lavoro contadino in Sardegna. He teaches Medieval and Modern Institutions at the School of Archivistics, Palaeography and Diplomatics of the State Archives of Cagliari and is director of MudA.

Published
2018-12-31
Section
Articles / Articoli

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