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The Nuraghi of Sardinia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Giovanni Lilliu
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Extract

One of the most characteristic features of Sardinian architecture, playing an important part in the scenery of the island, is provided by the ancient, forbidding and imposing megalithic structures which the local inhabitants, in the original prehistoric and pre-Indo-European tongue, call nurakes, nuraghes, nuraxzk, nuraccis, nuragis, nuracus, etc., according to district and dialect. We generally know them by the Italian form of the word, nuraghi (singular nuraghe).

Built of large blocks set without mortar in more or less regular horizontal rows, the nuraghe, in its simplest form, appears as a round tower with battered sides. Its height depends upon the number, from one to three, of the storeys it contains, and may sometimes, as at the nuraghe Santu Antine at Torralba in the province of Sassari, reach as much as 20 m., with walls from 2 to 5 m. thick (PLATE VIId).

Type
Research Article
Information
Antiquity , Volume 33 , Issue 129 , March 1959 , pp. 32 - 38
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 1959

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References

Lamarmora, A., Voyage en Sardaigne, 11, Paris-Turin 1840; Spano, G., Memoria sopra i nuraghi di Sardegna, Cagliari 1854 (1867); Pais, E., La Sardegna prima del dominio romano, Rome 1881; Pinza, G., Mon. Ant. Lincei, 1901; Pais, E., Arch. Storico Sardo, 1910, p. 85; Taramelli, A., Mon. Ant. Lincei, 1907, col. 6, 1909, col. 225, 1910, col. 201, 1919, col. 406, 1939, col. 10, Not. Scavi, 1915, 1916; Convegno archeologico in Sardegna, 1926; Motzo, B. R., Convegno cit.; Patroni, G., La preistoria, 11, 1937; Lilliu, Not. Scavi, 1941; Mingazzini, P., Studi Sardi, vii, 1947; Pallottino, M., La Sardegna nuragica, Rome 1950; Conto, E., Studi Sardi, x-xi, 1952; Zervos, C., La Civilisation de la Sardaigne du début de l’énéolithique â la fin de la période nouragique, Paris 1954; Lilliu, G., ‘Il nuraghe di Barumini e la stratigrafia nuragica’, Studi Sardi, XII-XIII, 1, 1955 ; Lilliu, ‘I nuraghi della Sardegna’, Realta Nuova, 9, 1956 (Rivista dei Rotary Club d’Italia) ; Lilliu, Illustrated London News, 8 March, 1958.Google Scholar