A complex nuraghe incorporated into a fortress

In Sulcis, the south-western part of Sardinia, immersed in the scented greenery of the mountain, there is an archaeological site dating back to the 8th century BC that will fascinate you with its stories of battles, devotion and daily life.

From Mount Sirai, a slight elevation near Carbonia, the coasts and islands of Sulcis and the Cixerri valley up to Campidano are kept under control. The Neolithic and Nuragic civilizations, who first occupied the area, knew this, and the Phoenicians and Punics, who later settled along the access route to the sea and plains, understood it.

On the hill the Phoenicians who a few decades earlier had built Sulky on the island of Sant’Antioco, integrated with the Nuragic community, founded a city (750 BC), which lived in prosperity between the 7th and 6th centuries. In 520 BC it was occupied by the Carthaginians, who, after a period of decadence, fortified it (mid-4th century) and completely rebuilt it (250 BC). The Roman occupation of the 2nd century did not affect its interior: no other Phoenician-Punic colony has such intact evidence.

On the Sirai, colored by red stones covered in moss, you can distinguish houses, squares, temple, tophet and necropolis (Phoenician pit tombs and Carthaginian hypogea). At the entrance to the acropolis there is the pomerium, an inviolable sacred boundary for the Phoenicians. The town developed around the keep – built on a nuraghe – for centuries a defensive fortress, in the 3rd century BC it became a temple. This is evidenced by the statue of Astarte, a Phoenician deity, now preserved in the archaeological museum of Cagliari. On the acropolis the houses, made up of rooms around a courtyard, give the idea of ​​opulence, especially the Fantar and Talco Lucernario houses, where a transparent mineral filtered the sunlight illuminating the rooms.

The city walls were strengthened by the Punics in 370 BC. The tophet, a necropolis for children, dates back to the same period. The ashes of small deceased children, buried with little animals, amulets, vases and jewels, rest in the urns, shaped like covered pots. There was a temple above. Part of the tophet has been reconstructed in the Villa Sulcis museum in Carbonia, where you can virtually enter the Punic city through multimedia installations. At the end of the 6th century BC, the types of funerals changed: from the incineration of the Phoenician era to inhumation in underground tombs with an access corridor. The Punic necropolis had 13 tombs, eleven dug into the tuff, two obtained from pre-existing domus de Janas.

Contact

Località Sirai – SS126 km 17

+39 345 755 9751 / +39 0781 188 8256

museicarbonia@gmail.com