Travel guide

The nuragic age
from 1800 to 500 B.C.E.
Between 1800 and 1600 B.C.E., the culture of Bonnanaro typically draws
upon the two cultural components characteristic of the origins (i.e. the
eastern and western ones) and generates the first forms of nuraghi.
The transition from the Ancient Bronze to the Middle Bronze (1600–1300
B.C.E.) marks the actual beginning of the Nuragic civilisation. The
monument-symbol is the nuraghe, a tower-shaped construction made of
large slabs more or less regularly carved, inside of which are one or more
superimposed rooms with the typical false dome or tholos cover. It is
found both in the mono-tower version and in a variant of increasing
complexity, featuring a central tower onto which others eventually add up.
Around several nuraghi, villages of stone huts are then built. The nuragic
civilization (between 1300 and 500 B.C.E.) represents the element of local
continuity within the Island, increasingly affected by the movements of the
Mycenaean and Phoenician traders and, later, by the military conquests of
the Carthaginians and of the Romans. Apart from its most characteristic
monument (i.e. the nuraghe: e.g. Su Nuraxi at Barumini, Santu Antine at
Torralba, Serra Orrios at Dorgali, Losa at Abbasanta, S’Uraki at San Vero
Milis, Arrubiu at Orroli), the civilization expresses itself with sanctuaries
(e.g. Santa Vittoria in Serri), sacred wells (e.g. Su Tempiesu at Orune, Santa
Cristina at Paulilatino), burial sites known as ‘giants tombs’ and, from a
plastic point of view, not only with the tiny bronze sculptures of warriors,
vessels, female figures of the Mother Goddess or of priestesses (currently
exhibited mainly at the National Archaeological Museum of Cagliari), but
also with the monumental stone statuary, documented by the sculptures of
Monte Prama in the Oristano region. In the vicinity of Barumini, a town of
the Marmilla region, is one of the most famous and important
archaeological sites of Sardinia: the nuraghe Su Nuraxi. It towers on its
own over a small plain and it is surrounded in the vicinity (i.e. in the hills
around the giara of Gesturi) by other nuraghi forming a star-shaped
system, with Su Nuraxi located in the middle and testifying to the
importance of the complex in those times. From the period of its origins
(the Middle Bronze) until the Punic-Roman Age, the construction has
undergone several changes and evolutionary steps, both in its structures
and in the culture of its material. It features a central torrione or mastio
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