The complex is located on the top of the marble-limestone hill of Genna Maria, in the Marmilla region of central-southern Sardinia. It has a field of vision that ranges from the Gulf of Cagliari to that of Oristano, and, to the N, to the Marmilla and the Gennargentu mountains.
The structure consists of a three-lobed bastion that encloses the original tower, a hexagonal antemural and a village placed inside and outside the antemural.
The original tower, perhaps built in Middle Bronze (15th century BC), now standing tall, houses a simple room without subsidiary rooms and with a very small internal diameter compared to the outside.
In a second phase, at the beginning of the recent Bronze Age (XIII century BC), the tower was enclosed and partially re-framed by a bastion of four towers equipped with slits, connected through recto-curviline curtains. The small inner courtyard, open air, constituted a useful corridor and gave access to the keep room and the rooms of the secondary towers; it housed a well partially dug into the living rock, with a vault superimposed on rows.
A third construction phase, of the Final Bronze Age (XI century BC), saw the bastion being rebuilt, with the exception of the E and NE sides, the sacrifice of one of the towers and the blinding of the slits.
Perhaps at the same time, the fortress was surrounded by a powerful hexagonal antemural divided into towers (four of which are still visible) connected by straight wall curtains and an entrance to SE.
In the early Iron Age (IX-VIII century BC), a settlement that succeeded a previous Middle Bronze settlement occupied the area between the bastion and the antemural, partly overlapping it and using material from the dismantling of older huts.
The new “geometric” village has complex structures with a central plan, with elliptical, quadrangular and rectangular rooms. The houses are residential and are functional to the needs of the family unit: rest, preparation and consumption of food, storage of tools and supplies, crafts on a domestic scale. The walls are made in microlithic technique with small blocks and sheets of marl.
Evolved and of high quality, sometimes decorated with elegant geometric patterns, the ceramics found in the village: pyriform vases, flasks, jugs, “appetizers”, pebbles, portabrace, pintadere. But also ziri, boilers, cooking bowls, basins and millstones that testify to the industriousness of this ancient agricultural community. Hut 12 also returned grains of cereals, acorns, legumes and a fragment of charred bread. Among the remains of the meal: ox bones, sheep-goat, pork-wild boar, deer, prolage and lamellibranchi valves.
After the Nuragic period ended and the settlement was abandoned in the 8th century BC, after a period of sporadic visit to the hill, around the 4th century BC, the keep and courtyard of the nuraghe were reused for religious purposes. In fact, the excavation of the area near the courtyard wall in front of the entrance to the keep has revealed the remains of burnt animals and charcoal. The wall wall here is strongly reddened by flames.
The votive materials, on the other hand, lay starting from the floor of the room and the corridor of the keep: mostly lights (about 600), but also coins, vitreous vases and a few precious and fictile metal elements.
The context of the discovery therefore reveals how inside the open-air courtyard the bloody sacrifice was carried out, while in the center of the room there was the chapel intended to house the simulacrum and the gifts of the faithful. The cult, with a strong indigenous character and linked to the feminine agrarian sphere, seems to have lasted until the 7th century AD.
The scarcity of materials found in the area already occupied by the protohistoric village leads us to believe that, during the time when the sanctuary was active, a small number of people, probably the same worshipers, resided permanently on the hill.
The materials from the Genna Maria excavations are on display at the homonymous archaeological museum in Villanovaforru.

History of excavations
The excavations in the area, currently not completed, were conducted several times, starting in 1969, under the direction of Enrico Atzeni and the collaboration of Ubaldo Badas and Mauro Perra, as well as the local workforce.

Bibliography
E. Contu, “Nuragic architecture”, in Ichnussa. Sardinia from its origins to the classical age, Milan, Scheiwiller, 1981;
U. Badas, “Genna Maria - Villanovaforru (Cagliari). The rooms 10/18. New contributions to the study of housing in the central court”, in Proceedings of the III Study Conference “A Millennium of Relations between Sardinia and the Mediterranean Countries” (Selargius-Cagliari, 27-30 November 1986), Cagliari, 1987;
C. Lilliu, “A cult of the Punico-Roman age at the Genna Maria Nuraghe di Villanovaforru”, in Notebooks of the Archaeological Superintendence for the Provinces of Cagliari and Oristano, 5, 1988, pp. 109-128; “Villanovaforru”, in L'Antiquarium Arborense and the Civics archaeological museums of Sardinia, curated by G. Lilliu, Cinisello Balsamo, A. Pizzi, 1988, pp. 181-198;
U. Badas, “Nuraghe Genna Maria (Villanovaforru - Cagliari)”, in Archaeological Guides. Prehistory and protohistory in Italy, Forlì, UISP, 1995, pp. 162-169.

How to get
to Sanluri, leave the SS 131 and turn at the intersection with the SP 52 to Villanovaforru. Once near Villanovaforru, take the SP 49 road towards Collinas. The archaeological site is just a few hundred meters away.