about the project
The Landscape Archaeology of Southwest Sardinia Project (the LASS Project) is an international and multi-disciplinary project conducting an archaeological study of the Sulcis Region situated in the Southwest of Sardinia. Since 2016, the LASS Project has focused its archaeological reconnaissance work on the territories stretching between the modern towns of Santadi, Nuxis, Villaperuccio, and Piscinas. The Project is particularly interested in bringing to light evidence of everyday life and in identifying settlement patterns and activity areas in order to better understand rural communities in this agriculturally fertile and mineralogically rich region over time.
Such research is particularly fruitful due to the region's complex history. Repeatedly incorporated into and then disarticulated from larger political and economic structures (from Late Bronze Age and Iron Age Mediterranean systems, via the empires of Carthage and Rome, to the Byzantine reconquest, the reorganization under the judicate and subsequent European kingdoms, and finally under the Italian state), this region of southwest Sardinia provides an ideal context in which to study the influence of changing political structures on local economic practices and social organization. Thus, the results of the LASS Project serve to balance large-scale historical narratives about the island and its position in the wider Mediterranean world with the lived experiences of local rural communities.
Such research is particularly fruitful due to the region's complex history. Repeatedly incorporated into and then disarticulated from larger political and economic structures (from Late Bronze Age and Iron Age Mediterranean systems, via the empires of Carthage and Rome, to the Byzantine reconquest, the reorganization under the judicate and subsequent European kingdoms, and finally under the Italian state), this region of southwest Sardinia provides an ideal context in which to study the influence of changing political structures on local economic practices and social organization. Thus, the results of the LASS Project serve to balance large-scale historical narratives about the island and its position in the wider Mediterranean world with the lived experiences of local rural communities.
Southwest Sardinia
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human-Environment interaction
The low hills and small valleys between the Sulcis Mountains and the Gulf of Sant’Antioco represent a patchworked landscape of schist, granites, and karst, possessing fertile valleys as well as varied mineral resources, while rivers, springs, and groundwater all contribute to a complex regional hydrology. Indeed, this Sulcis region has presented a rich and varied landscape for human exploitation since the Neolithic. The Project therefore aims to better appreciate human-environment interactions in this small, but complex corner of the Mediterranean. To achieve this, the LASS Project has adopted a holistic landscape approach that involves systematic reconnaissance of both the region’s expansive valley systems (which evidence long-term cultivation and occupation), as well as its mountainous fringes (which show evidence of mining and extraction, pastoral herding, and industrialized forest management). Documentation of transportation routes (roads, rivers, and railways) further reconstruct connections across the region and beyond.
