Each
community was not closed in itself in its own villages where,
some times, alongside the residential buildings there were silos
for preserving food stuffs and places of worship such as the
megalithic terraced altar at Monte D’Accoddi -Sassari,
similar
in shape to the ziggurats of Mesopotamia. |
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A megalithic scenario
that blends with the environment is not be seen in the rows of
sixty standing stones (menhirs) that converge on a sacred burial
area of domed underground tombs at Pranu Matteddu-Goni.
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The
menhir know as perdas fittas (fixed stone) Goni
in the province of Cagliari are similar
to other megaliths found many parts of
northern Europe.
They showed the way to the
necropolis at Pranu Mutteddu. This one is olso a unique
examples of
a Sardinian cromlech
, the Welsh term for a tomb carved out of a large stone
brought from another place.
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Erected
around ..3400 and thus
well before the nuragic period ,these monuments obviously
requied the work of many hands to haul heavy
blocks over the rough ground and are presumably the
expression of a hierarchical tribal society.
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The
religious practices, of a naturalistic-animistic
religion, an organic part of the rural word, led to the
development of artistic production in ceramic and stone:
ceremonial themes were engraved on polished
ceramic substance, or it was used to model
free-standing male female figurines. |
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With
stone they produced highly
abstract, almost ethereal images of the Mother Goddess
in a style similar to that of the little idols found in
the regions of Anatolia and the Aegean, hinting at trading
activities and specific roles in the agricultural society
of which these same images are an allusive expression. |
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There
was a considerable
civil evolution in
the Copper Age (2400-1800BC), characterised by different
aspects of material culture , perhaps indicative
of communities of a different stock , but all distinguished by their use of metal (
copper, lead, silver, gold) which their had only come to know in the
previous phase of the Neolithic.
As
a result there was
a further development of megalithic constructions, with
the erection of collective burial places (one hundred and forty
simple
and elongated dolmens) and of cromlechs, circular
structures surrounded
by artificial or natural menhirs, whith have been
interpreted
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as an astronomical observatory a calendar of the
monthly
phases of the sun and moon, revealing the variation of
the season and the agricultural cycles connected with them:
examples are to be found at Monte Baranta –Olmedo,
Hiriai-Oliena, Circuitus-Laconi. The first fortification
appeared. The mark a
turning
point in the sense that being built of reasons of defence
and control they presuppose the existence of political
and military leaders belonging to a dominant class of worriors,
necessary for the cohesion of the communities
which had become aggressive. |
There
were the first form of accumulation of wealth and
specialisation of roles , while craftsmen were
particularly actives in the field of metallurgy. Great
armed menhir statues of stone, found in the central
regione of Sardinia , representing heroic ancestors ,
illustrate this socio-cultural change , contemporary and
not with out
contracts with the ways of life and behaviour of other
ethnic groups in the Mediterranean and above all in the
European world.
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