Project
The research line on the rural organization in the Mediterranean regions under Punic domain has developed only in the last twenty years. The studies published by Profs. Peter van Dommelen and Carlos Gómez-Bellard about west central Sardinia and Ibiza have begun to bring to light a wealth of evidence relating to rural settlements and agricultural exploitation.
Since 2010 a research team of the University of Valencia, led by prof. Carlos Gomez-Bellard has kept alive several successive research projects on the Punic territorial occupation model in Sardinia (HAR 2012-32488, supported by the Ministerio de Economía, and HAR 2016-76100, supported by the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación), a continuation of previous research carried out on the Ebusus Island (Ibiza) (Cerdeña e Ibiza: dos modelos de ocupación rural, HAR 2009-11116, founded by the Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia).
The area investigated in Sardinia is the Terralba district on the west central coast, where a remarkably dense cluster of numerous small to medium-sized rural settlements have been recorded dating to the Classical and Hellenistic periods (van Dommelen 2003; 2006).
During the first five years the research focused on the exploration of the territory and, later, on the excavation of the Punic farms Truncu 'e Molas and Pauli Stincus, both located in the Terralba municipality, with the explicit aim to document material culture and paleo-environmental remains relating to agrarian production at these sites as well as in the surrounding Punic countryside.