Sardinia and the Byzantine West Paradigm Shifts and Changing Perceptions
Sardinia and the Byzantine West Paradigm Shifts and Changing Perceptions

Summary/Abstract: The paper focuses on Sardinia from the fall of Carthage (698) to the rise of its autonomous rulers, the iudikes, in the mid-9th c. During these centuries, the island managed to conveya sense of historical standing between different ‘worlds’: the Latin West, the Byzantine empire, andthe Muslims in North Africa and Spain. Albeit traditionally considered as a proof of ‘periphery’and ‘isolation’, Sardinia’s insularity condition and its development as an unconquered liminal polity among the major powers in the Western Mediterranean received renewed interest through there-assessment of the archaeological, sigillographic and numismatic record. As such, the paper isan account of the key features of this transition and offers new perspectives on the island’s resilience within the formative phases of a Medieval Mediterranean that we increasingly understandin terms of its connectivity.

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