The archaeological site of Corte Lucetta, currently bisected by Provincial Road 53 connecting Esterzili with Escalaplano, is a large settlement only partially explored.
In this area, in March 1866, the Esterzili farmer Luigi Puddu, nicknamed "Pibìnca," while plowing a small field, struck a strange object with his plow, a rectangular bronze plate, in excellent condition, 60 centimeters long, 45 cm high, 5 mm thick, and weighing about 20 kilograms. The unsuspecting discoverer donated the tablet to the parish priest of Esterzili, Canon Giovanni Cardia, in exchange for two silver scudi, corresponding to the decent sum of ten lire, a small fortune at that time. Canon Cardia, who was able to assess the value of the discovery, contacted the illustrious archaeologist Canon and Senator Giovanni Spano, who studied it with interest, published it, and finally, ceded it to the National Museum of Sassari, where it is currently displayed.
The inscription, written in the time of Emperor Otho, is the sentence pronounced on March 18, 69 AD by proconsul Lucius Helvius Agrippa in the case pitting the Patulcenses, farmers arrived from Campania and settled on the island since the 2nd century BC, against the local population of the Gallilenes, guilty of not respecting the borders and creating disorder with brawls and territory occupations.
The tablet is an administrative document of extraordinary interest and a rare testimony of the situation of local communities in the imperial age, characterized by raids, guerrilla warfare, and border crossings that the Roman authority tried in vain to quell.
The epigraph was to be displayed in a public building or, in any case, significant for the populations involved, especially the Patulcenses who had every interest in exhibiting a sentence in their favor.
The search for this building and the importance of verifying the presence of settlements attributable to the chronological phase of the important document, prompted the Superintendence to carry out, between 1992 and 1994, an excavation that brought to light rectangular rooms, some of which arranged on an open paved space. The walls are preserved for only a few rows, sufficient only to identify the plan layout of the rooms.
Materials attributable consistent with the period of the tablet were recovered, consisting mainly of fragments of dolia and amphorae for food storage, everyday ceramics, and fragments of millstones for cereal processing. Numerous fragments of tiles that were to constitute the roofing were also found.
The site is of great interest in relation to the ways in which the Romanization of the inland areas of Sardinia took place and to the identification of the borders that had marked the presence of the colonists desired by Rome.
