Villaperuccio

In the fields around Villaperuccio obsidian arrowheads are still found, and pierced stones that probably served for hunting. It is the smallest sign of a territory that has enormous ones: the pre-Nuragic necropolis of Montessu, that of Marchianna, some forty nuraghi and the menhirs scattered over the countryside. The most imposing is that of Luxia Arrabiosa, almost six metres high, at the locality of Terrazzu on the south-western edge of the village; then there is the one of Monte Narcao, and there are the stones they call here Is Perdas Croccadas, that is, the lying stones. Today's village, on the other hand, is medieval: it lay in the giudicato of Cagliari, in the curatoria of the Sulcis, and in 1258 it was assigned to the Della Gherardesca.

Then Villaperuccio stopped existing as a comune, and it took a century and a half to come back. The plague of 1348 decimated the inhabitants, the wars between Arborea and Aragon did the rest, and at the beginning of the fifteenth century the village was reduced to very little, with the fields turning back to woodland. It picked up only from the eighteenth century, when farming families settled here; but when the Otger, its feudal lords, died out, the territory was no longer enfeoffed, in 1821 it ended up in the province of Iglesias and was then joined to the comune of Santadi. It became an autonomous comune again only in 1979, by a referendum, and smaller than before, because part of the old lands stayed on the other side. In Sardinian, at any rate, it goes on being called Sa Baronìa.