Rural Landscape in Sardinia. Historical Settlement in the West Coast of Sardinia: The “Ager Bosanus”

Abstract

The rural landscape object of this research is located in Planargia, a geographic region of north-west Sardinia. This area is characterized by a territorial system constituted by the town of Bosa, a network of very small settlements placed on the edges of the basaltic plateau and rustic villas dispersed in the country, strongly linked among them by a tight net of connections. Historic settlement and technical-productive model comes directly from the morphology of the territory, where in a limited area, volcanic plateaus and depression of Miocene marls are interlaced, where the deep canyon of the Temo river and of several tributary streams creates a landscape characterized by heavily steep slopes with mixed soil, ideal to grow olives and grapes (Le Lannou in Pâtres et paysans de la Sardaigne, Tours Arrault, Traduzione italiana (a cura di Manlio Brigaglia): Pastori e contadini di Sardegna, Cagliari, Edizioni della Torre [1]). The disperse settlement is still present in the organization of the territory, but the time of living are solely those related to agriculture activity and summer season; starting from the early Middle Ages, as confirmed by archeological surveys, a gradual renunciation of the permanent residence in the country has produced the development of the villages located on the edge of the plateau. A further testimony of the existence of this historic residential model, is the presence of isolated churches (today ruined), that confirms the existence of villas, aggregates of few buildings that in the Byzantine period were the centers of the country (Day in Villaggi abbandonati in Sardegna dal Trecento al Settecento, Parigi [2]).