Has Any Nuraghe Ever Been a Fortress? 0 Comments

Each time, ever fascinated on the topic, I write about Nuraghi, I am always faced with this unknown: what was the true destination of these megalithic monuments? Were they homes, palaces, war strongholds or sacred monuments used for worship?

Massimo Pittau (Nuoro 1921 - Sassari 2019), scholar of the Sardinian, proto-Sardinian and Etruscan idioms, who published numerous studies on the Nuragic civilization and historical Sardinia, has always retained that «No nuraghe has ever been a fortress», but which instead had an exclusively cult purpose. He was in open conflict with some archaeologists, whom he called "militarists", because they claimed that the 7 thousand nuraghi found on the island (and how many still remain to be discovered are unknown) had the function of a defensive fortress.

The same Pittau’s theory had already been shared in the mid-nineteenth century by the Marquis Alberto Ferrero della Marmora, in his book Voyage en Sardaigne, a milestone of Sardinian archaeology. He believed it was difficult to believe in a military use of the nuraghi during an assault considering that: they are dark, without openings to let smoke out, with no finds of remains of military use. Moreover, the besieged would not have been able to resist for a long time to the smoke and heat that could have come from the surrounding village which was certainly set on fire during the assault. He considered it an “incomprehensible” and “irrational” conduct to use them as military strongholds. And furthermore, during the siege, how could the fighting men defend the old people, women and children and the livestock outside the fortresses, at the mercy of the attackers?

Pittau’s religious use option would be supported by finds of cult destination found inside the nuraghi. Statuettes, votive objects were found, such as globe jars, with refined decorative motifs, pyriform jugs with geometric decorations and, almost intact, the altars on which animals were sacrificed to the gods. Many swords have also been found, but votive ones, fixed with the tip up at the top of temples and sanctuaries, to indicate the place of worship, as we wrote in The swords in the stones.

Ercole Contu, archaeologist (1924-2018), excluded the presence of slavery or an aristocracy in Nuragic society, due to the collective social function that megaliths seem to have.  Consequently, Pittau sustained that the population who lived in the humble huts, would have really lent themselves to building with enormous effort and using decades of work if they had not been intended for religious use but for the mansion of a ruler? Constructing a nuraghe, though large or small, could only be done in honour and out of devotion to the divinities they worshipped. Thus, it had been done by all men in all times.

Archeoastronomy would instead opt they were used for astral and solar cults. In fact, scholars note that a certain number of nuraghi examined are orientated towards very bright stars, such as Sirius (Canis Major) and Rigel (Orion). Furthermore, altars found near the megaliths, appear to be positioned where the Sun rises on the summer solstice. And finally, certainly not accidentally, an important element on the astronomical orientation of the nuraghi is common to the studies on megalithic monuments in Great Britain and France for which a unit of measurement (the megalithic Yarda) equal to 0.830- 0.829 metres. Studies made on the nuraghi constructions revealed that measurements between 0.8309 and 0.8321 metres were used.

When will we be able to find out more? Perhaps following the wise advice of Professor M. Pallottino: "It would be enough to adopt a historical analogy process... that elementary criterion - too often neglected - of judging the events of a dark and nebulous past with the same concreteness and with the same logic with which facts from historically well-known eras and civilizations are judged...".

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Written by Daniela Toti