Appunti sul bosco nella Sardegna medievale

The poorness of the Sardinian forests as a result of a millenary work, on which has more recently insisted Maurice Le Lannou, in the historiography is opposed to the vision of forests kept intact by a sort of medieval stagnation. According to the French geographer, the natural conditions, marked by centuries of nomadic pastoral practices, would have deprived the vegetation cover of the necessary conditions for development, where the intensive use would be grafted on a resource already poor and compromised.
Whether the vision of a landscape dominated by an uncontrollable nature or heritage inevitably degraded by centuries of neglect and exploitation, it is legitimate to drop these medieval paintings on Sardinia without observing the conflicting marks in documentary sources from the natural space? The woods, as a positive stereotype of an impenetrable and mysterious island, a closed pastoral world, a land near and at the same time distant, virgin, wild, or, in negative, of a land where backwardness and the 'neglect leads to the unconscius devastation of resources, to the incapacity to put them to good use, in both cases have become the emblem of opposites taken.
Without attempting to reconstruct the changes that affected in the long run the vegetation, in these pages we will try to understand some features of the relationship between man and environment, analyzing the the progressive transformation of the landscape in the late Middle Ages. Extended and lush forests, partly modeled, exploited and integrated in the economy, in a substantial balance between natural resources and agriculture, including farmers and shepherds. Where the lack of human pressure does not show the need of harsh conflicts, massive deforestation and the limits of technological development can not be separated by the narrow needs and demand of a population numerically small in relation to the territory.