New discoveries in the excavation of Geridu in Sorso

The site of the medieval village of Geridu, in the countryside of Sorso, was the scene of new, important discoveries thanks to a new phase of excavations which took place in June.

Geridu has confirmed itself as the pilot site for understanding the Sardinian rural Middle Ages, with the use of archaeology, whose magnifying glass allows us to explore infinite aspects of the community with a strong agro-pastoral base, which inhabited it. The excavations are taking place in the context of works for the construction of the new fence of the archaeological site, enhancement measures and a video surveillance system.

The latest results of the excavation were presented

The results were presented this morning, on the Geridu site, during a press conference attended by Marco Milanese (Professor of Archeology - University of Sassari, Excavation Director), Gabriella Gasperetti (Superintendent of SABAP Sassari and Nuoro), Fabrizio Demelas (Mayor of the City of Sorso), Federico Basciu (Councillor for Culture - City of Sorso), Justin Leid Wenger Stanford University, professor of Archaeology, who collaborates with Marco Milanese together with three doctoral students.

 The ongoing research is aimed within the wall perimeter of a house that burned down around 1350 and has highlighted previous housing phases, with wall structures dating back to the thirteenth century.

Further delving into the excavation, the archaeologists identified an occupation of the area dating back to the full Judicial age (11th-12th century), with the brickwork of an even older house probably from the Judicial or early medieval age.

This is the extraordinary discovery of three medieval houses superimposed on each other in the same space which testify that for at least three hundred years (from 1000-1100 to 1350) the houses of the village were built, lived in, demolished and rebuilt in the same area.

The evidence that emerged from last month's excavations confirms that this place holds a history that is at least three centuries long and that its origins could go even further back in time, giving us a picture of extraordinary settlement continuity. This is told by the homes, rebuilt in the same place over the centuries, and the places of worship, with the medieval Gothic church of Sant'Andrìa built to replace the previous Romanesque church".

  The continuation of the research will allow us to further investigate the depth of time and discover the foundation phases of the medieval village and its relationships with the traces of the Roman age, which testify to the presence of an older settlement, in the same site where the " bidda de Geriti ”.

 The excavations also continue in the area of the church of Sant'Andrìa (the parish church of Geridu) and confirm the plan of the large medieval Gothic church, a building proportionate to the number of inhabitants (around 1500) estimated around 1320. The structures of the square bell tower emerge, the traces of the flooring of the transept and the nave, of the demolition of the church which took place in the nineteenth century to recover the large limestone blocks and reuse them in the new parish church of San Pantaleo in Sorso.

There are also the remains of the Romanesque church of Geridu from the 11th century (from the Judicial age), which was demolished, also because it had now become insufficient, to build a larger one in Gothic style.    With the desirable continuation of the excavations, it is hoped to identify the shape and dimensions of this oldest Romanesque church (but which is believed not to have been the oldest church in Geridu, as it was probably preceded by an early medieval one).

Like a matryoshka doll, the Geridu site, for the first time in Sardinia, allows us to read the rural Middle Ages of a community on the island in its evolution and transformations; for centuries, houses and a church continued to exist in the same spaces which accompanied, from Romanesque to Gothic, the growth of the village community, which from the year 1000 to 1300 experienced a long phase of economic well-being and openness to trade: this resulted in a perfect integration into Mediterranean relations, before the great fourteenth-century crises, in particular due to the feudalism introduced with the Catalan-Aragonese domination, to the wars and to the various fires that the village suffered around 1350.