Idols, models of nuraghe and the great statuary

The stone statues from the Nuragic age, not very numerous and yet widespread in various parts of the island, are closely linked to religion: they come mostly from sanctuaries, and generally reproduce animal protomes, especially the bull.
Perhaps it is the continuation of that cult for the male partner of the mother goddess already worshiped in the prenuragic age. The goddess, on the contrary, is not represented, and it is only possible to see a hint of her in the birches with mammellas in relief.
Another widely reproduced subject, in both medium-sized and small statues, is the nuraghe itself, mostly single-tower, consisting of a single pillar, so for these sculptures we often speak of “betilo-tower”, also in relation to the fact that their usual location was inside the “meeting hut”, almost always in the center of the room and on a support placed in the floor.
A sort of altar (a 'betyl'), therefore, from which the divinity watched over and was the guarantor of the decisions and pacts that were sanctioned during the meetings. However, there is no shortage of depictions - even partial, and also in bronze and small in size - of complex nuraghi, with a realistic representation of the keep soaring on the turreted bastion, of the stands on shelves that crowned the upper part of the walls, sometimes even of the “loopholes” that opened at the base.
These depictions are extremely important, since they help to understand what the nuragic towers originally looked like, all of which came without the upper parts. In the last phase of its development, now in the middle of the Iron Age, the Nuragic civilization will also be able to produce a large anthropomorphic statuary, limited, however, to an isolated case, in the hinterland of Tharros, precisely in the funerary sanctuary of Monti Prama in Cabras.
It is perhaps a period in which “Sardinian-Phoenician” aristocracies were already forming and the time of the Nuragic civilization was already bordering on myth. Precisely to the myth of these distant ancestors, now heroized and deified, the great statues of Monti Prama seem to be based on the great statues of Monti Prama, which essentially reproduce the same warriors depicted in bronzes, with their rich weapons of bows, horned helmets, shields, gloves and other protections for the limbs and body.

Still in stone, there are some depictions of sometimes clear meaning - such as the stool of the meeting hut in Palmavera, perhaps a sort of small 'throne' - but often uncertain. Furthermore, there are numerous stone slabs richly adorned with engravings that reproduce geometric patterns, whose magical-religious meaning escapes us today, and which certainly decorated the foreheads of cult buildings.

Update

11/7/2025 - 11:12