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SARDINIAN PREHISTORY

Today in Sardinia we can still find lots of important monuments used by the ancient Sardinian people (the so-called "Giants tombs", megaron temples, sacred dwellings, "sacred wells", sanctuaries, enclosures). Surely most of them (probably all of them) are linked with that population spirituality and gullible country folk regarding these monuments (hold amongst people until our days) have protected them from destruction by human being.
In Sardinia we have some problems to establish an exact prehistoric chronology, because of the protracted use of any typology of archaeological monuments in subsequent epochs, sometime each other pretty distant.
Archaeologists are more and more postdating the chronology of Sardinian prehistoric cultures. Then, here we don’t talk about exact dates, but about the characteristics and the sequence of Sardinian Ages.

Early Neolithic
In Sardinia, the first widespread human settlements can be dated around 6000 BC and the great attraction for the Neolithic tribes was the Obsidian, the rare volcanic stone of Monte Arci.
These proto-Sardinians were a Afro-Mediterranean population, which was also widespread in the north western Africa, Corsica and the Iberian-French-Ligurian region. These people lived and buried their dead in cave-shelters.

Middle Neolithic
In the Middle Neolithic we find the first rock-cut tombs (locally known as domus de janas – the witches’ houses in English), the first statuettes of the Mother Goddess and the first hut villages. The growth of the trade in obsidian suggests the development of social and economic hierarchies; during this period occur the first indications of cultural interactions with the Eastern Mediterranean, from which a marked increase in prosperity spread westward.

Late Neolithic
In the late Neolithic the greatest concentration of inhabitants was in the south west of the island and many villages were built on low ridges overlooking the biggest plain of Sardinia: called Campidano; this period is characterized by population expansion and internal colonization in unwalled villages with marked social and economic hierarchies.
They engaged in trade with the Mediterranean and central European communities and created megalithic monuments and fine statuettes of the Mother Goddess.
Also, the first metal objects began to appear: a modest number sites provided evidence for metallurgy, demonstrating the existence of an active extractive and processing industry in the late Neolithic.
The intense spirituality of these proto-Sardinians comes down to us from their monuments: "domus de janas" tombs, circular tombs, menhirs and dolmens. These early inhabitants of Sardinia produced exceptional necropolis and sanctuaries. The most visible traces of this period are the 2000 domus de janas.

Chalcolithic - Copper Age
The Copper Age is characterized by a proliferation of regional "cultures", which formed the substrate that originated the Nuragic civilisation.
From the findings we perceive a more warlike atmosphere.
Large stone architecture developed into the first defensive structures, like the massive curtain walls (up to 3 m thick) and the so-called proto-nuraghes. That fortified structures suggest the further evolution of society and economy shaped by the nascent metal industry and increasing population.
In this Age, the fanciful decorations of the Neolithic disappeared and the religious sense of the Chalcholithic peoples was far different from the all-pervasive spirituality of the previous periods.
Giants' grave is the name given by local people and archaeologists to a type of megalithic gallery grave that Sardinians start using in this period. They can be found in the whole Sardinia, and so far more than 300 are known. They blent the two pre-existing Neolithic traditions of cists and galleries.
The tomb has a characteristic rectangular plan with apse. Uncut slabs are buried standing in the ground and arranged side-by-side; stones lie over the burial chamber itself.
The burial chamber is usually 5 to 15 meters long and 1 to 2 meters high. There is usually a central stele, which is the largest (up to 4 m in height) and it has a doorway cut through it or a dolmen-like arrangement of 3 uncut rocks to form the entrance.

Bronze Age
The building of the nuragic towers dates from the Bronze Age although renovation and rebuilding works were carried out until the Iron Age.
But the first beehive buildings in the world were built in a Neolithic Culture of Syria and Turkey, where they may have been used for ritual purposes. Later they were built in Cyprus, where the dead were buried just under the floors of the houses and presumably a form of ancestor cult existed inside that households.
During his prehistory Sardinia kept a strong link with Cyprus, but we don’t know if exist some links between the buildings created in other lands of the Mediterranean and the appearance of nuragic towers in Sardinia, although beehive buildings were constructed as tombs in the Iberian Peninsula in a Chalcolithic Period and during the Bronze age in Greece by the Mycenaean culture.
Surely we can say the Nuragic civilization played a fundamental role in spreading the Mycenaean culture and Sardinia was also fully inserted among the Western Mediterranean civilizations. And during the Bronze Age in the West basin of Mediterranean we can find towers similar to Nuraghes in Southern Spain, Balearic Islands, Corsica and some Island near Sicily, probably founded under Aegean cultural impulse of Pelasgians people, who migrated westward from the end of the Chalcolithic Age until the catastrophic volcano Thera eruption, that contributing to the collapse of the Minoan culture.