The Nuraghe

What they once were

So close to concluding this chronicle--however sketchy---of our travels in Sardinia, I must once again return to the Nuraghe, the stone towers and huts that captivated us as we stood inside of them and experienced the stillness of their power.

How they look today

The name Nuraghe has unknown origins in oral history. Unique in the 1500 BC world of the Myceaneans and Egyptians and Cypriots and Etruscans, they were an architectural achievement of an apparently non-literate peoples who nonetheless created a major civilization from thousands of years B.C. Of the more than 7,000 Nuraghe that have been registered, only a fraction have been excavated. This is one project the European Union, rightly, funds. The seemingly crude ruins that are left behind bely the architectural soundness--the niches that lightened the load of the rocks, the corbels that supported upper terraces, the skill in splitting the stones using only pieces of wood that were swollen with water, the deliberate design of the lintels that balanced the weight over doorways--and the profound experience of standing inside of them. In Myceneaen (Achean, or Greek ruins), a similar stone structure is covered with an earth mound, but these bare stone towers of Sardinia have much more grandeur.

The Meeting Hall

Climbing through the brush

The architecture seems to have been developed from earlier necropolises, where communal graves came to be covered with corridors of stone, that developed into tholos roofs. The tholos is the kind of ceiling in the Nuraghe that arches several meters overhead, as rocks were placed in a gradually narrowing dome, and then capped with the tholos or capstone. Above the capstone an earthen   floor was the basis of the next story. The outside walls of these stories, each closing to a narrow opening and a capstone, slope inward more gradually, so a thick layer of stone outside the dwelling protects it. Around these stories, usually three comprising up to 20 meters high, a winding stairway would often run through the outer wall, although dozens of different architectural designs have been found. The stairway might be missing, implying a ladder was used to reach upper floors, or might be found in external structures. One guide showed us how light reflected off slanted walls at each opening (oriented to a position of sunset or sunrise) lit the interior--her own conjecture. For lack of written records, the history of the Nuraghe is continually reinterpreted. But the Nuraghe are everywhere, in fields of sheep, by the side of highways, sometimes with ticket office and guide, but more often not.

In the women's tower

Warriors, chief, wrestlers

The lives of the Nuraghic people are recorded in their bronzetti, beautiful tiny cast bronze statues created since 1000 BC, though the Nuragic civilization is considered to have its earliest beginnings in 1800 BC. They show warriors with bows and arrows, wrestlers and figures with four eyes and multiple arms, perhaps demons or gods, women making offerings, a famous woman holding what seems to be a slain warrior on her lap, animals, ships, and what seem to be figures offering animals for sacrifice. Most men wear daggers around their necks. Women seemed to have prominent roles in a society that included builders and weavers and potters and warriors. From the structure of the village, with a large tower in the center sometimes surrounded by multiple towers, it seems that there would have been a chief, in a hierarchical structure of some sort. In the large ruin of Nuraghe Arrubiu, one of the towers is called the women's tower, because it contains the remains of women's work. In the lovely little village of Armungia which has preserved a Nuraghe in its center, there is a Byzantine well inside, and remains of a Vandal have been found, indicating ongoing use. In Arrubiu a Roman winery operation was found in the courtyard of the Nuraghe, which has some 17 towers. Other Nuraghe stand in fields as lone sentinels, solid as Genoan towers, still holding their secrets.

Excavations have brought to light objects buried in the ruins from throughout the known world, from Palestine, Egypt, Greece. The Nuraghe itself is represented in bronze miniatures, or stone, in significant places like the center of the meeting hall, implying that the architecture of the Nuraghe itself seemed to have a significant or magical meaning. The other plentiful excavations are of pottery, which was elegantly shaped and decorated from early years. Sardinia's rich mines yielded metals which brought contact with other civilizations, starting with the Mycenean in the 13-14th c. BC., continuing with the Phoenicians and Carthaginians. But by the time of Carthage's second attempt at a conquest, in 500 BC, the Nuraghic civilization had passed its strength. It was the end.

Nuraghe Losa

On our last day out, in a sudden chill that told us it was indeed time to leave the island, we saw the extensive Nuraghe Arrubiu with its long walls and many towers. "And that may be the last time we ever stand inside a Nuraghe," said Jacques. "No," I protested, "that can't be." It just can't.