Romanzesu Nuragic Village Sanctuary’s Labyrinth 0 Comments

Romanzesu Nuragic Village Sanctuary’s Labyrinth

Sardinia, a magical treasure chest of precious splendors and wonderful legacies of the Nuragic civilization, gives us the Romanzesu Nuragic Village Sanctuary near Bitti (NU), 1 and a half hour and 92 km drive from Gabbiano Azzurro Hotel & Suites. Excavations made between the 1980s and 2001 have brought to light, only in part for the time being, an archaeological area of ​​several hectares wide. 

When the excavations topic is dealt with, it often comes to mind questioning why the Nuragic monuments were all covered by such a massive layer of earth. The hypothesis that they would have been in earthed by the very Nuragic people while moving upcountry, who would have covered the sites with earth to protect them from enemies and invaders, was considered very unlikely, a second hypothesis of the sedimentary successions of overlaying layers replaced the first one. That stratification that allows stratigraphy, used to give an age to the rocks.

However, taking into consideration also the third of Sergio Frau’s hypothesis, as explained on the article of Atlantis, the Center of the World, who imagines how Nuragic Sardinia may have been submerged by a huge Tsunami, s'Unda Manna, (the Huge Wave) which buried many coastal settlements in Sardinia with debris, inducing the population to go upwards the inland, onto the mountains, thus giving rise to a Sardinia that replaced warriors and navigators with shepherds and farmers.

The Romanzesu Nuragic Village Sanctuary, which has always been lying among cork oaks and granite rocky outcrops, offers us an "initiatory labyrinth" of 3000/3200 years ago, a monumental body never found in other Nuragic ceremonial centers known on the island. Chronological references hypothesize that the inhabited area of ​​the Nuragic village was built between 1300 and 1200 BC., and they theorize its transformation into a Village-Sanctuary in 1200-1100 BC.

Local granite was used to construct the Village-Sanctuary but unlike the sacred source of Su Tempiesu and the well of the Nuragic Complex Of Santa Cristina In Paulilatino, in this case the blocks of a single module are arranged in strictly equal courses just offset from each other .

The center of Romanzesu Nuragic Village Sanctuary consists of a well temple with stepped rooms, almost like an arena in a theater, for collective rites related to the Water Cult. There are also two small temples with a rectangular design, megaron type, a large enclosure and a probable "labyrinthine" ritual path, which is the access to the centre of the temple, where there is a small round altar that presumably supporting a divinity simulacrum.

A further rectangular structure is connected with three betyls (rocks considered sacred because they are the deity home), which complete the Romanzesu scenario. Other buildings, such as huts with a circular and ovoid plan, a house with three rooms opening onto a common courtyard, five large meeting huts with perimeter seat and in two cases with a central hearth, give us an idea of ​​the settlement which, however, has not yet a definite physiognomy.

 

“There is a sacred center in each labyrinth, where the inexpressible mystery resides”. (Mario Praz)

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Written by Daniela Toti

Photo credits Laura Mor

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