I Villaggi medievali abbandonati del Meilogu

In the middle-age Meilogu was the center of Sardinian historical, economical and settlement dynamics, especially in the context of the Judgedom of Torres. Etimology shows his centrality. The toponym Meilogu comes from the Latin Medium locum, which means “the place of the middle”, and It was the name of a “curatorial”, "territorial districts" in which the kingdom was divided.This PhD thesis aims to investigate, with archaeological perspective and diachronic perspective, the evolution of the landscapes of settlements in the middle ages (VI-XIV a.D.).In particular, the research focus is the phenomenon of “deserted villages”. Between the XIV and XV century a change of settlement involving all Europe and the historical conjuncture, led to the disappearance of thousands of villages; Sardinia was particularly affected by this phenomenon with the abandonment of about 50% of his settlements. The deserted villages of Meilogu have been studied with the methods of Landscapes Archeology, combining the analysis of the written sources, geographic and cartographic to archaeological surveys, which had as its purpose the delimitation of archaeological sites of the medieval period. The investigations have led to the knowledge of 30 medieval and post-medieval archaeological sites, mostly unknown; the settlement of this period is divided among different types (villages of varying size, domos, castles, isolated churches), with a variety unknown to written sources.