Abstract

Trade and traders in West Mediterranean: the case of Sardinia in the light of archaeological and written sources (IXth-XIIIth c.). The main subject of the research concerns trade traffics between Sardinia and the Mediterranean during a long period in which written sources are few, mainly for IXth and Xth centuries, and generally don't give information about commerce. This work is based above all on archaeological sources, and particularly on ceramic evidence from latest excavations and surveys made in North West Sardinia. The study of medieval pottery is based on typological comparisons and archaeometrical analyses on the clays to locate its provenance. It showed that Sardinia was included in the inter-regional maritime trade routes with South Tyrren, Rome and the Gulf of Amalfi, and islamic Sicily until the XIth century. A very few pottery came from east Mediterranean in this time. During the XIIth and the beginning of the XIIIth century in the archaeological finds we have pottery from Sicily or Tunisia, South Spain or Morocco, Egypt or Syria, and early imports from Pisa. Brokers of Mediterranean commerce until the XIth century are traders from Amalfi that hand out goods from East to West and from North Africa to South France. But from the XIIth century new actors move in the Mediterranean, such as traders from Pisa and Genoa, so we can follow a change in distribution of pottery in Sardinia due to this replacement.

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