| Sardinia in the middle ages was a strategic center of the Mediterranean world. Between the wane of Byzantine control in the 11 th century to the arrival of the Spanish in the 14th century, the activity of merchants, landlords and Latin monks transformed the island. Along with town and road development, some two-hundred churches were built and many were decorated with medieval pottery, called bacini. This glazed pottery was imported from production centers in North Africa, Spain and Italy. Using what is known about the dates of pottery production, and given that the pottery was installed during building construction and not after, more accurate dates for the architecture can be established.;The new dates deriving from the bacini supplement data provided by documents and stylistic comparisons with continental architecture. More than fifteen churches, of a total of sixty-two with this form of decoration, can now be dated more precisely.;Sardinian architecture and material culture from the Gregorian reform period also suggests the predominance of Pisa over its rival, Genoa. Pisan Romanesque architecture used bacini much more than any other continental town and Pisan merchants seem to have been among the largest importers of glazed pottery to the west and certainly in Sardinia. Sardinian architecture demonstrates a variety of contacts within the Mediterranean, where French and Tuscan Romanesque styles are fused with classicizing spolia and bacini, creating familiar, yet, idiosyncratic results. |
