
Campidano () is a plain located in South-Western
Sardinia
Sardinia ( ; ; ) is the Mediterranean islands#By area, second-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, after Sicily, and one of the Regions of Italy, twenty regions of Italy. It is located west of the Italian Peninsula, north of Tunisia an ...
(
Italy
Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe, Western Europe. It consists of Italian Peninsula, a peninsula that extends into the Mediterranean Sea, with the Alps on its northern land b ...
), covering approximately 100 kilometres between
Cagliari
Cagliari (, , ; ; ; Latin: ''Caralis'') is an Comune, Italian municipality and the capital and largest city of the island of Sardinia, an Regions of Italy#Autonomous regions with special statute, autonomous region of Italy. It has about 146,62 ...
and
Oristano.
Geography
Geologically, it is a
graben
In geology, a graben () is a depression (geology), depressed block of the Crust (geology), crust of a planet or moon, bordered by parallel normal faults.
Etymology
''Graben'' is a loan word from German language, German, meaning 'ditch' or 't ...
,
a tectonic structure formed in the mid-
Pliocene
The Pliocene ( ; also Pleiocene) is the epoch (geology), epoch in the geologic time scale that extends from 5.33 to 2.58[Pleistocene
The Pleistocene ( ; referred to colloquially as the ''ice age, Ice Age'') is the geological epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was fin ...](_blank)
(4 to 2 million years ago). Later it was subject to large
sedimentary deposition phenomena, creating an overall thickness of 600 m of sediments.
The plain is crossed by the
Tirso River, the longest in Sardinia.
History
Agriculture has been successful in Campidano since the
Neolithic
The Neolithic or New Stone Age (from Ancient Greek, Greek 'new' and 'stone') is an archaeological period, the final division of the Stone Age in Mesopotamia, Asia, Europe and Africa (c. 10,000 BCE to c. 2,000 BCE). It saw the Neolithic Revo ...
, continuing on through the
Punic and the
Romans, who cultivated here grains and grape. Dams of the large Sardinian rivers nourish the
artichoke and
wheat
Wheat is a group of wild and crop domestication, domesticated Poaceae, grasses of the genus ''Triticum'' (). They are Agriculture, cultivated for their cereal grains, which are staple foods around the world. Well-known Taxonomy of wheat, whe ...
cultures, also typical products of this zone.
Paddy fields are present near Oristano. The
Sardinians
Sardinians or Sards are an Italians, Italian ethno-linguistic group and a nation indigenous to Sardinia, an island in the western Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean which is administratively an Regions of Italy#Autonomous regions with special st ...
from this area, and by extension all the people inhabiting the lowlands of Southern Sardinia, are called Campidanese (, ).
See also
*
Province of South Sardinia
The province of South Sardinia (; ) is a Provinces of Italy, province in the autonomous island region of Sardinia, Italy, instituted on 4 February 2016. It includes the suppressed provinces of Province of Carbonia-Iglesias, Carbonia-Iglesias and ...
References
Geographical, historical and cultural regions of Italy
Plains of Italy
Landforms of Sardinia
Province of South Sardinia
Province of Cagliari
Province of Oristano
{{Sardinia-geo-stub