The Giara di Gesturi, in southern Sardinia, a basaltic plateau particularly suitable for grazing, is surrounded on its edge by an almost regularly spaced series of 20 nuraghi, the well-known tower monuments in use for much of the Bronze Age on the island (ca. 1750-1100 BC).

Scholars have long wondered about the residential and defensive use, symbolic aspects and ritual connotations of the nuraghi, given their large number (more than 6,500 have been mapped to date) and the effort required to build them.

These questions were the starting point for researchers from Sapienza University of Rome who, in a study published in the journal PLOS ONE, analysed the positioning of nuraghi and their potential for territorial management using advanced and innovative geostatistical methods.

Contrary to previous assumptions about the significance of the nuraghi as planned constructions for territorial control and management, it has not been proven that they had precise control of the routes and accesses to the Giara, whereas these nuraghi, due to their often isolated position on the ridges at the edge of the plateau, combine a good local defensive potential with the possibility of overlooking the territory at medium and long distances. These features suggest that the primary aspect was the desire to be seen and recognised as signs of a power exercised over specific segments of the territory, i.e. as markers of the landscape, associated with a certain capacity for defence.

"That matches the concept of landmark, rather than to the idea of active control of the territory: a power that is based on mutual recognition, based on knowledge, rather than on military control against hypothetical incursions," says Davide Schirru, a Sapienza PhD.

"The Sardinian landscapes," adds Schirru, "marked by perhaps 8,000 Bronze Age nuraghi, are an extraordinary field for the application of digital geostatistical modelling techniques, but the application of advanced and formalised analysis methods is still underestimated".

"Working on Sardinia is enlightening", Alessandro Vanzetti concludes, "and shows how important it is to use traditional studies to subject them to formal analysis, and perhaps, as in this case, turn the point of view upside down: it is a lesson in method".

References:

Climbing the Giara: A quantitative reassessment of movement and visibility in the Nuragic landscape of the Gesturi plateau (South-Central Sardinia, Italy) – Davide Schirru, Alessandro Vanzetti – PLOS ONE 2023 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0289023

Further Information

Alessandro Vanzetti
Department of Ancient World Studies
alessandro.vanzetti@uniroma1.it