The first season of field survey and documentation of the territory of the comune of Nuragus began in March 2007, followed by a second season in 2008 which included the study of the archaeological material. The initiative for the survey of this area came from Valenza, a locality to the east of the small centre of Sardicano situated between the Giara di Gesturi and the slopes of the Monti di Isili. The position seems to be significant, given that it represents route through to the more internal zones of the island, thus acting as a bridge between the low lying areas of the Campidani and the mountains of the Barbaria.

The research is based both on the study of the historical sources and on the archaeological data recovered from work in the territory. As regards the ancient sources: Pliny, in his list of the Formula Provinciae, includes the people of the Valentini, numbering them among those romanized peoples of central Sardinia, while the geographer Ptolemaeus lists a series of centres on the island in geographical order from north to south and from west to east, which mentions the Valentini people. The secure confirmation of the possible presence of the ancient remains of a Roman centre is also supported by the results of an excavation described principally by Spano and Taramelli ( Notizie degli Scavi e Bullettino Archeologico Sardo ) who from the mid nineteenth century until the first decades of the twentieth century investigated various areas in the territory of Nuragus. As well as the excavations of a number of prehistoric sites? (nuraghi, a metallurgical workshop and a sacred pit), an extremely important excavation of some Roman cemeteries was carried out near the zone which still today is known as Valenza. The excavations demonstrated that the cemeteries were in use from the early imperial period until at least the late imperial period.

Nevertheless, with the exception of the necropoli, the first excavations did not confirm the existence of an inhabited centre which could have served a purely military function (a castrum) or acted as a key communication point which was also of commercial importance. The field survey has so far not identified structures which allow us to suggest the existence of a complex system for military or civil purposes. However the land has been in continual use, mainly for the cultivation of grain, and has changed greatly during the centuries, as a result much archaeological data must have been lost. Nevertheless, the identification of a series of secondary roads (realized in various technique) which appear to link the sites recovered by the field survey is significant. It has therefore emerged that in a territory which was of no great dimensions, not even 2000 hectares, diverse small nuclei existed dispersed throughout the territory with evidence for Roman occupation. This is true also as regards the reuse of more ancient structures, such as the nuraghi. Of these monuments (38 have been recorded, of which circa 20 are still preserved), the majority, on the basis of the material recovered, were also frequented in the Roman period.

Future work will focus on the study of an apparently intact site (apart from some clandestine digging by people looking for coins) situated on the summit of a hill at the boundary with the Giara di Gesturi.