The tomb of the giants ( Italian: tomba dei giganti , Sard. Tùmba / lòsa de sos zigàntes ) - the name that the local inhabitants of Sardinia gave the local variety of graves of the gallery type of the Nuragic period (mid 2 - mid 1 thousand BC, late Bronze Age ) In total, more than 300 such monuments were discovered.
The construction of the “tombs of giants” is as follows: a stone cairn lies on the burial chamber. Several tombs have a cup-shaped entrance similar to Cort Cairn in Ireland.
Varieties
Archaeologists distinguish two main types of "tombs of giants": slab and block.
In tombs of the “slab” type, untreated stone slabs are buried at one end into the ground and are located next to each other. Usually there is a central stele, the largest (up to 4 meters high) with a passage pierced in it. The tombs had a characteristic rectangular layout with an apse. The burial chamber usually has a length of 5 to 15 meters and a height of 1 to 2 meters. Initially, the buildings were covered with hills in the shape of an inverted ship. Near the entrance was an obelisk ( betile in Sardinian ), symbolizing the ancestral gods who looked after the deceased.
In the more primitive “tombs of giants” of the slab type, the entrance is usually cut at the base of the central plate, or there is a rough dolmen-like structure of 3 untreated stones that forms the entrance (Osono, Sortali, Lolgi, Peskaredda).
In more advanced plate-type tombs, the central plate is processed: it is rounded from the top and has a simple image carved on the front surface (Dorgali, Goronna, Santo Bainzu, Coddu Vecchia).
The tombs of the so-called “block type” were made of squared rectangular blocks (Bidistili, Madau II, Seleny II, Iloi, Mura-Kuat).
The tombs of the giants in Sardinia in design features resemble the Megalithic temples of Malta .
Links
See also
- Nuragi
- Domus de Janas
- Donuragic Sardinia