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The thesis focused on the relationship between ceramic technology and social organisation and studied 488 ceramic thin sections from eight Bronze Age settlements located in two micro-regions of south-central Sardinia. The approach proposed - analysing ceramic fabric variability among selected common nuragic vessel forms in close connection with the domestic architectures - represents an innovation with respect to the previous studies of pottery in Sardinia, that have mainly focused on stylistic attributes and their use in assessing a chronological typology. The principal research question of this thesis was whether a technological study of a selected group of pottery coming from nuragic domestic structures, could shed new light on the pattern of pottery production, consumption and exchange at an inter-site level among the archaeological settlements considered. The petrographic analysis and laboratory tests contributed successfully to the establishment of the relevant fabric groups and classes of raw materials used by potters, their characterization, the reconstruction of certain technological and social choices, and identification of the provenance of the principal clays used. All this constitutes a firm basis for future analysis of ceramics from the two study areas and for the whole of Sardinia. One of the most striking results achieved was the realization that nuragic plain domestic pottery, like the imported exotica coming from the Aegean, could have been circulating among nuragic settlements as exchanged items, at an inter-site and inter-regional level throughout the Bronze Age. This result was complemented by the identification, in the landscape between the Orroli plateau and the Mulargia river valleys, of several distinct pottery traditions that might reflect patterns of interaction between groups of people of different cultural affiliations.

This thesis investigates the way the national identity of Sardinia was perceived in travel literature – and more particularly the way writing about travel experiences contributed to shape identity, both of the visited place and of its inhabitants. The thesis draws from different sources (travelogues, belles lettres, history books); the work reflects therefore a rather eclectic panorama. For obvious reasons the research field has been circumscribed in time and space, but , but aims at drawing general conclusions, i.e. assessing whether national identities are the result of an endogenous process, or rather are influenced by exogenous elaborations. As regards geographical delimitation we restricted our inquiry to the island of Sardinia for two main reasons: i) it is isolated not only geographically but also culturally and has never been a conventional destination along the Grand Tour routes; ii) up to the first half of the twentieth century the island had a reputation for being an “unknown” or “forgotten” land. As regards time, the choice was to concentrate on modern times, that is approximately between the second half of the 18th and the first half of the 20th century. Thereafter, the coming of the post-industrial society, mass tourism, faster means of transport, the standardizing effect of globalization changed the idea of travelling, leading some to argue that the birth of post-modern tourism implied the end of travel, or at least a totally new attitude towards travel, that has been defined post-modern. When D.H. Lawrence wrote that Sardinia had “no history, no date, no race, no offering” he was drawing from a consolidated image of the island as an unknown land rather than on its millenary history. The Nobel laureate Grazia Deledda challenged this idea in the first quarter of the 20th century by countering the codes elaborated in the island – namely the language code, the common law and the rustic life and passions – to the civilized way of life of industrialized European societies. The thesis concludes that the making of the identity of Sardinia was the result of the interaction between these two views.

Since the inauguration of academic disciplines such as Anthropology, Classics, and Mediterranean Studies, the island of Sardinia and its rich cultural history have remained largely underinvestigated and underappreciated in scholarly work. The typical image of Sardinia, largely dictated by the scant investigations in these disciplines along with the works of travel writers and Italian intellectuals, is one of a backward and savage people belligerently dependent on anti-modern pastoralism. This dissertation project, motivated by the Sardinian slogan “Sardigna no est Italia” (“Sardinia is not Italy”), explores the nuanced notion of resistance on the island. Beginning with an overview of the contemporary North-South struggle in Italy and the economic subjugation faced by Sardinia and the South after unification, this dissertation documents the many phases of subjugation and exploitation Sardinians have resisted as far back as classical antiquity. In doing so, this project highlights the island’s role as a Mediterranean trading center since the Neolithic period as well as the advanced Nuragic civilization, thereby challenging traditional historiography which has centered Greece and Rome as the ‘civilizing’ forces of the Mediterranean Basin. In connecting perennial resistance from antiquity to the present, this work emphasizes the critical need for collaboration between classical studies and cultural studies by acknowledging that contemporary cultural identity and resistance are deeply entrenched in the historical past. The remainder of this dissertation focuses on the many forms of artistic production – murals, graffiti, public art, political posters, and literature – which serve as the primary preservation efforts for the island’s rich cultural heritage. The Sardinian language is also explored both in terms of its historical development and of the contentious sociolinguistic dilemma birthed from national language movements forced by peninsular Italy. In sum, this dissertation intends to reclaim Sardinian identity by bringing it from the liminal periphery of Italy, the Mediterranean, and academic scholarship and placing it at the fore of Mediterranean Studies moving forward.

In this study two types of analysis, Mass Analysis and Typological Analysis, are applied to lithics from the Middle to Late Sardinian Bronze Age or Nuragic period. The Nuragic period of the Sardinian Bronze Age (ca. 1700-900 B.C.) saw the development of a complex social system with hierarchical forms of administration. Excavations at the Nuragic site of Sa Conca Sa Cresia, directed by Emily Holt, took place between 2009 and 2011. During the summer of 2013, 760 flaked stone artifacts from Sa Conca Sa Cresia were recorded and examined as part of this study. The site’s clear stratigraphy and discrete occupation layers facilitated diachronic observation of the lithic data to study changes throughout the sites occupation. This study proposed to assess whether or not changing patterns of social hierarchy resulted in shifts in lithic production that are visible in the archaeological record. Additionally this study addressed gaps in previous research by including non-obsidian flaked stone and by observing diachronic changes during the use of a single space within a site. The results of this study indicate that little change occurred in the lithic production techniques over the course of the site’s occupation. These results lay out a useful framework and identify additional methods of analysis for future study while identifying the lithic production history of Sa Conca Sa Cresia.

This dissertation proposes a synthetic framework of the economic processes that underlie the formation and growth of social complexity, with specific emphasis on the recursive relationships among the mobility of non-elites, natural resource availability, elite strategizing, and the environment. Non-elites in a complex society have little motivation to overproduce beyond their own needs, and they have an interest in maintaining the long-term productive capacity of their territory. In contrast, elites may be more concerned with the immediate goal of increasing production to support competitive displays. If elites can enforce their own goals over those of non-elites, or if they can convince non-elites to participate in their strategies of competition, resource degradation may occur. However, if non-elites can use mobility to resist elite demands, elites may be forced to find other ways to support competitive displays, including raiding, taking slaves, refining craft production, and making greater use of the symbolic resources of distance and time. This theoretical framework is used to interpret the relationship between the political economy and environmental change at a Middle Bronze Age Nuragic settlement (ca. 1700-1450) on the Siddi Plateau in south-central Sardinia. Excavation and survey evidence suggests that incipient elites had difficulty controlling non-elite labor due to low population densities and the availability of mobility as a form of resistance. Elites were forced into strategies of motivation and reward to secure the cooperation of non-elites, which led to agricultural extensification. The leaders of the Siddi Plateau settlement system increasingly focused their production on foods that were water-intensive to raise - wheat and pigs – and the Siddi Plateau community had to travel at least two kilometers to reach the nearest streams. The Mediterranean climate may also have become drier during the Middle Bronze Age, making water-intensive agriculture even more difficult. The settlement system of the Siddi Plateau was abandoned at the end of the Middle Bronze Age, and the productive capacity of the Siddi Plateau region does not appear to have been damaged. The abandonment of the plateau should be seen as a compromise between elites seeking higher agricultural productivity and non-elites resisting higher labor demands.

El monopolio real del tabaco fue decretado sólo para la Corona de Castilla en 1636. Debido a su reconocida eficacia, los gobernantes españoles intentaron implantarlo allá donde fuese políticamente posible. Después de la guerra de Sucesión, fue establecido en la Corona de Aragón, ya que estos territorios perdieron entonces su régimen foral de autonomía. Como las provincias vascas y Navarra consiguieron conservar su régimen foral, el Gobierno español no pudo someter allí el régimen general del estanco tabaquero y tuvo que contentarse con negociar soluciones que no perjudicasen al estanco general. Finalmente, en el contexto de las reformas borbónicas en América, la Renta del Tabaco fue gradualmente introducida en todos los territorios de las Indias españolas.