Servizi Culturali ed Informativi

NATIONAL ARCHAEOLOGICAL MUSEUM OF CAGLIARI

The Archaeological Museum is the most authentic way to find out about Sardinia's past; this huge museum contains a great number of discoveries, artefacts (among which there are many pieces of a very high quality) from all the ancient cultures of the island, from the pre-Nuragic period to Roman times, including ceramics from Phoenician tombs, Punic jewellery and Nuragic bronzes. There is an important collection of ceramics, pottery, glass, Roman statues, sarcophagi and gold jewellery from the High Middle Ages.
It has the finest collection of artefacts related to the different ancient cultures of Sardinia, that can be recognized in sequence from ceramics, small pre-nuragic statues, copper ingots, small bronzes, carvings, artefacts from the Phoenician tombs, stele (one of the most important collections in the world) and a marvellous Punic jewellery.

Thanks to the vastness and quality of its collections, which began in the nineteenth century, the Museum offers the possibility to make a complete temporal digression through the prehistory and ancient history of Sardinia.
On the ground floor of the building there is a didactic introduction to the exhibition with a historical-cultural succession of the phases that characterized Sardinia from the early Neolithic to the High Middle Ages - through a chronological itinerary - following criteria which partly reflect the organization of the old museum, the memory of which is thus preserved. The three remaining floors are arranged on the basis of topographic considerations (the territory in which they were found) with the presentation by localities of the most significant contexts.

The chronological itinerary moves from the pre-nuragic age, with the cultures of the Neolithic, Eneolithic and early Bronze Age. In sequence, the nuragic culture characterises (with its refined megaliths) human events on the Island until the moment of the first encounter with the urban cultures from the eastern Mediterranean Sea.

Relatively to the Neolithic and Eneolithic Sardinian period, here You can find ceramics of varied manner, utensils in stone, arrows and daggers in obsidian, necklaces of bone and shells and different figurines of the mother goddess.
As concerns that prehistoric period, the section reserved to the Middle Neolithic is of special interest: here we find the grave finds of Cuccuru is Arrius (Cabras – province of Oristano) with the enigmatic stone female statuettes associated with paste pottery and mollusc shells. The anthropomorphic lithic sculpture represents the " Mediterranean Mother "; it’s a nude Venus, with strong stylistic deformation of geometric type. The feminine attributes are only the breasts. In common with the previous Venus, it has absence of arms and feet.
The Late Neolithic is also well represented by findings belonging to the Ozieri Culture, characterized by pots and small boxes glazed by rubbing with refined etched and painted designs.

Finds of the Nuragic period present in the museum are: ceramics, utensils, weapons in bronze and above all many small bronze statuettes (representing subjects of varied type) of the final stages of the nuragic age, representing curious details of the social organisation and ideologies of that time.
There are the votive artifacts of Su Benatzu in Santadi, santa Vittoria in Serri, Sant'Anastasia in Sardara, Sianeddu in Cabras and Molinu in Villanovafranca. Furthermore there is important figurative bronze art, in particular the art from Abini in Teti and Santa Vittoria in Serri which represents various figurative themes and magical rituals.
They are among the main attractions of the Museum, like the statues of Teti-Abini and of Santa Vittoria from Serri; among these bronze figurines we can see the series of tribal chiefs, warriors, archers, priest and mothers, as well as the lifelike representation of animals.
The "bronzetti" show a rich variety of themes which depict the social organisation and daily life, but also the idea of the sacred, the magic rituals, the hieratic figures of the shepherd-kings, masters of social ideology, women of upper classes, military men, men and women in their daily work. They create a collective representation of the nuragic people, which has rare and powerful charm.
Among the didactic exhibits in this Museum are the models of a single tower nuraghe and a nuragic tomb.

The finds regarding the phase of the Phoenician colonisation along the coast (Cagliari, Nora, Sant'Antioco, Tharros) are accompanied by those relating to the Carthaginian conquest, first and later the Roman conquest. There are numerous findings of votive offerings from cemeteries that bear witness to the importance of Phoenician, Punic and Roman influences in Sardinian history.
Of particular interest are the artefacts from the Necropolis of Nora and Tuvixeddu (Punic-made and imported objects from Greece, Italy and Spain).
The tophet of Tharros is evocatively reconstructed to represent the Phoenician-Punic period. It shows an expanse of sand on which there are cinerary urns, cippus and ritual stele of the sacred purification area.
There is the reconstruction of a Phoenician tomb from Bithia in Domus de Maria and also numerous relics from all over the island, particularly from the regions of Sarrabus-Gerrei, Marmilla, Trexenta, Campidano, Sulcis-Iglesiente, Oristanese, Barigadu and Montiferru. These relics can be traced back to Phoenician and Punic times, as well as to the Roman era.

From the Roman period there are black ceramics, thin ceramic vases and everyday ceramics.
From the Roman city of Olbia there are the effigies of the Nerone and Traiano emperors, a marble urn and the cinerary urn of Claudia Calliste. There is also the famous milestone from Cuglieri with the mention of Huddaddar populations.
From the late-ancient period (IV-V century A.D.), when the ties between Sardinia and Africa became stronger, there are clay ceramics, oil lamps richly decorated with Christian symbols and everyday ceramics.
Bronze, silver and gold jewels and ornamental exhibits from the late Medieval funerary art (from various Sardinian sites) are also on display.