La storia del territorio

HISTORY OF THE TERRITORY
After having analyzed the environment of the examined area, an historic analysis
can give further insight into the evolution of the landscape. In this regard, the
transformations which each single civilization brought to the territory will be analyzed and
the conditions which today still exist or which have influenced the various historic periods
will be studied. More specifically, economic transformations, degradation created in the
different historic periods, possible changes to soil use and the most important motivations
which led to these factors will be considered.
Confirmation that Sardinia has been inhabited since the Paleolithic has come
from excavations in the Corbeddu cave in the area of Oliena. The investigated layers,
which have even yield a human bone fragment, can be dated to 13,500 to 12,500 years ago.
The organization of prehistoric inhabitants of central-eastern Sardinia (in particular in
territories under study) was probably driven by a strong need for social cohesion. In fact,
people had to deal with an environment, parcelled by nature, which tended to divide, and
yet still divides people into clans made up of a few family groups.
Numerous nuraghes and villages, and to a lesser extent, giant tombs are
widespread indicators of the age of nuraghe. Several noteworthy examples bear witness to
the important diffusion of this civilization in the studied territories, as well as to the
complexity of their surely not casual distribution.
With the Roman occupation there was a process of very rapid integration in the
coastal regions, but this process was nearly inexistent in the internal areas until the II or
III century A.D. The area under study appears characterized by villages and small coastal
settlements, but with little or no urbanization; in the internal, isolated areas there were
settlements by the local population, which was generally hostile toward Italic immigrants,
and of which few written accounts remain.
The inhabitants of the territory were, in the Medieval period, sparsely distributed
or located in correspondence to defensive fortifications in strategic areas. Unfortunately,
following natural or political disasters, the smaller settlements were easily destroyed and
the surviving inhabitants moved to larger towns or other unscathed villages.
At the beginning of the 14th century the territory examined in this study was under
the dominion of the Republic of Pisa when l’Infante Alfonso d’Aragona, with his troops,
disembarked in Ogliastra to conquer the kingdom of Sardinia and Corsica. The arrival of
Iberian troops was well accepted by the majority of Sardinians, and in particular by those
under Pisan rule as they hoped to obtain, with the new government, an improvement of
their living conditions.
The unification of Italy put in evidence the serious and unresolved problems,
which were still afflicting the island: safety of the countryside, bandits, road network,
maritime communications, economic and social backwardness, education. These problems
make up what has been considered, since the Unification, the essence of the so-called
“Sardinian Question”