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Much
is known, for example, about the cultures that developed throughout
Europe in the late stone age. In Sardinia, their
artefacts
include decorated
pottery and granite
idols.
In the central period of
the Neolithic (4300-3000 BC), groups of humans, living in caves, moved inland from the sea and began to built huts to live in,
to dig tombs
in the rock (in Sardinian they are called "Domus de
janas" that is "fairy houses") where they buried
their dead, sometimes whith precious grave goods. |
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When
traveling through the island, one’s eye is often
attracted by small openings like the doors of so many
houses in
the faces of cliffs besides a valley or in the celfts of
hills. |
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These are domus de janas, the homes
of little fairies that weave golden fabrics
on golden loom, must stand aside
in favour of the most prosaic version of
archeologist, for whom these are prenuragic
necropolises, mostly un the form of the tiny rooms with a roundish
floor plan carved out of the rock,
or most complex layouts such
as that of Sant’Andra Priu near Bonorva, whose |
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open
corridor leads to a colonnaded courtyard where it may be
supposed thet
the protosardinians
gathered both to pay homage to their
dead and to pray to the Mother goddess and the
bull god represented in numerous votive
stattuetes. The doors, rafters and
fireplace embodied in some of these tombs provide the
usual examples
of the primitive belief
in resurrection and an after-life in dwellings
similar to those occupied by the living.
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In
the period of the recent Neolithic (3000-2400 BC), the
productive economy grew (the so-called “agricultural
revolution”, with the wider diffusion of groups exchanges among themselves and with other countries in
the Mediterranean.
This
gave rise to a system of social organization based on
the family. |
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The
communities formed villages with essential services and
developed particular types of tombs
which now assumed a monumental appearance.
The hypogeums are
particularly impressive, composed of “cities of the
dead” which reproduce the people’s
houses with the details of the architectural
finishing of the interior and with a symbolic
decorations depicting patterns of the heads and horns of
bulls and rams (sacred animals),
silhouettes of the
female
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deity and other symbolic linear motifs,
attractively composed in sculpture and painting, on
walls, pillars, doors and ceilings. Outstanding examples
of hypogeums may be seen at Anghelu Ruju -Alghero, Mandra
Antine - Thiesi, Sant’Andrea Priu - Bonorva, Montessu -
Villaperuccio. |
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