When Sardinia became a province in 227 BCE, the lex provinciae included regularized norms for the exploitation of the island's resources. Both a stipendium in cash and a vectigal in kind were imposed on the individual communities and the land; the fixed stipendium in particular will have encouraged expanding the amount of arable under cultivation, especially after Ti. Gracchus doubled the amount to be paid by those communities that had rebelled in the early 170s; surely this change is to be associated with his re-settlement project in the north. In the south, as we know largely from archaeological research, agricultural production in the territory previously under Punic domination was progressively expanded. For example, recent survey in the territory of Bauladu (Oristano) has increased the number of known Roman sites by 600%. It has been calculated conservatively that, in the high empire, the island produced surplus grain sufficient to feed a minimum of at least 250,000 persons more than its own population. Because the Phoenicians and Carthaginians had exploited some of Sardinia's mineral resources, we must assume that the Romans from the very beginning did so as well, although we have no details about either specific locations or the modalities of exploitation before the imperial period. Our earliest secure datum is that, in 47 BCE, the Pompeian army in Africa obtained from Sardinia both weapons and crude iron (Dio 42.56.3); minerals and natural products, including horses, played an important role in the Roman imperial economy and martial affairs.
We know from Cicero's speech in defence of Scaurus, who had governed the island in 55, that the ruling class of Nora still had Punic names (Aris, Bostar), a phenomenon that is repeated elsewhere. The magistrates (sufetes) at Cagliari, perhaps around 40 BCE, were named Aristo and Muthumbal, and the name of the modern city of Oristano probably derives from the landholdings of someone name Aris (i.e., ager Aristanus). In Cagliari, the atrium of a Roman house had a cocciopesto floor with the symbol of Tanit. At Bithia, coins associated with the votive deposits made to the god Bes continued into the time of the empire; and the temple to that deity was restructured by the people, sufetes and other citizens, which activity is recorded on a neo-Punic inscription from the late second or early third century CE. Such continuity can well be illustrated by the cemeteries of Olbia which date from the fourth or third century BCE into the early imperial period; in many cases, a burial can be identified as "Roman" only by the coins, and 11 of the 53 tombs in one cemetery (Juanne Canu) which had identifiable coins had both Punic and Roman ones (24 had only Punic, 18 only Roman).
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