August 2, 2018 – The Terralba Project was developed to discover the rural and civil organization of the Terralba region in Sardinia during the Punic period. The research was carried out by Pere Pau Ripollès (Universitat de València) and Manuel Gozalbes (Museu de Prehistòria de València) under the project title “Cerdeña e Ibiza: la organización rural en época púnica”, led by prof. Carlos Gomez-Bellard. A contents management system and the website have now been developed by Alejandro Peña and Francisco Onielfa (Render S.L.).
The area investigated in Sardinia is the Terralba district on the central west coast, located between two important urban and agricultural centers, Tharros to the north and Neapolis to the south. In this area, a remarkably dense cluster of numerous small to medium-sized rural settlements has been recorded as dating to the Classical and Hellenistic periods. 132 archaeological sites that were active in the 4th century BC have been individualized and, among these, 123 have been interpreted as settlements. These figures imply that the settlement density in the Terralba territory amounts to ca. 5.5 archaeological sites per km2.
This Numisdata Sardinia website shows the monetary findings coming from this area and describes as well as illustrates all coins meticulously. The studied pieces come from various sources, such as the archaeological excavations conducted in Truncu ‘e Molas and Pauli Stincus, the collections of Gino Artudi and Sandro Perra (given to the Italian State), and also from the published findings. Sardinia website is based on the numisdata management system, a data model ready for any numismatic research. This first version of the Sardinia website is the result of a research conducted entirely online.
The interactive website includes maps showing the coins and their findspots, a catalogue presenting the entire corpus of coins, a project section explaining the research territory, and a detailed bibliography section.
The number of coins found in Terralba local area is very large – it has risen to 376 specimens. Punic coinages make up no less than 20 % of the total stray Punic finds that have been published coming from the entire island. But the interest of the coin finds goes beyond the notable recovered quantity because the precise location of a high proportion of them is known, allowing us to understand the occupation of the Terralba territory better.
The website assembles coinages found in a total of 90 archaeological sites, including the recent findings of Truncu ‘e Molas and Pauli Stincus excavations and those published by R. Zucca.
The Numisdata Sardinia web catalogue is available in English, French, Italian and Spanish (Castellano).