Villaggi e Monasteri. Orria Pithinna. La chiesa, il villaggio, il monastero

Description

The church of Santa Maria di Orria Pithinna (Chiaramonti) in Anglona, ​​which has come down to us in a modified form from the works of the XNUMXs-XNUMXs, represents the identifying mark in the contemporary landscape of the antiquity of the place and its historical interest.

The essays contained in this volume allow today, thanks to the contribution of numerous scholars, to understand more precisely the nature of this complex site, in which next to a village presumably already existing in the twelfth century, starting from 1205 a Camaldolese monastery, which was mentioned on November 6, 1209 as "monasterium in Orrea".

In addition to dwelling on the historical stylistic analysis and the restorations of the monastery church, which was donated in 1205 to the Hermitage of San Salvatore di Camaldoli by the noblewoman Maria de Thori, the book proposes an archaeological approach to the site, to the identification of distinct areas of the village and the monastery and to the historiographical effects determined by the application of archaeological methodologies.

The high-intensity reconnaissance of the area highlighted the archaeological traces of the village of Orria Pithinna, at a slightly lower altitude than the church of S. Maria de Orria Pithinna, in the vicinity of which traces of some wall structures appear referable to the Camaldolese priory, which was find your reference in the ecclesiastical building. The careful observation of the church structures has made it possible to identify an important corpus of epigraphs and graffiti, extremely significant for the history of the Camaldolese priory of Orria Pithinna.

The most complex question to ask today in the archaeological research agenda is however on which themes in Orria Pithinna, as in the other cases of bipolar "monastery-village" sites, archeology can work effectively, in addition to chronology, on spatial organization, on construction techniques, on economic resources and on other fields of investigation that are traditionally more familiar to it. The question is whether it is possible to think of an incisive contribution of archaeological research - as well as in the modeling of the settlement - in the investigation of social complexity, conflict and the dynamics that governed the relationships between local communities, partly dependent and monasteries, in relation to the transformations that took place with the inclusion of the Benedictine monastic communities, from the mid-XNUMXth to the XNUMXth century, in the exploitation of the Sardinian countryside.

SUMMARY