New Approaches in Landscape Analysis of the Bronze Age in Central-Western Sardinia: the Area of Mogoro (Oristano – Italy)

Abstract

Research on the prehistoric and proto-historic landscape in Sardinia (Italy) allows knowledge and analysis of the island's archaeological heritage. Besides, recent studies have aimed to delineate the type of relationship that the prehistoric and proto-historic societies established with the variegated Sardinian landscape in connection with the ways of articulation and territorial appropriation, without neglecting the important and fundamental aspect of economic organisation of the territory. From this point of view, we want to analyse, as a sample-area, the region that includes the communal territory of Mogoro, in central-western Sardinia. Particularly we studied the ways of anthropisation and fruition of the landscape in proto-historic age, with the objective to reconstruct, through the study of the settlements and the relationships among them, some of the economic and social aspects of those groups of nuragic culture that enjoyed this area from the Middle Bronze Age to the Iron Age. The area of Mogoro has been intensively investigated from the half of the past century; the investigations then culminated with the stratigraphical investigation carried out beginning in 1994 near the site of Cuccurada, the main centre of an articulated territorial system including a rich network of monuments related to the nuragic civilisation, such as nuraghi, giants' tombs and villages. In this work we present the results obtained through various research methods: geomorphological analysis, spatial analyst GIS tools (Viewshed, Cost Surface and Least-cost path analyses) and multivariate analysis (cluster and principal components analysis) that allow us to set a new hypothesis on population dynamics in this area and to individuate, among proto-historical monuments, one or more homogeneous and distinguished groups, starting from a database that results from indexing geomorphological characteristics.

Protohistoric Landscapes in Sardinia (Italy): Territorial Control and Exploitation of Natural Resources in the Middle and Late Bronze Ages

“…In this territory, currently we know at least 29 sites (Cicilloni et al, 2015e) belonging to the Protohistoric period: 1 archaic nuraghe, 9 simple towers, 17 complex nuraghi, 1 giants' tomb, 1 sacred well (fig. 2).…”

“…4) (Cabras, 2015). During the phases of the Middle and Late Bronze Age this part of Sardinia shows a widespread distribution that denotes a systematic control of the territory (Cabras, 2015;Cicilloni et al, 2014;Cicilloni et al, 2016a;, and the creation of a specific landscape in which visual connection an monumental buildings played a complementary role of exhibition and visual domain.…”

Bronze Age stone tools in Nuragic Sardinia: The case of the ground-stone tools from Nuraghe Cuccurada-Mogoro (Sardinia, Italy)

“…More recent research in the Mogoro territory, coupled with some archaeobotanical analyses, revealed an intense exploitation of the land, with areas used for agricultural activities, especially for the cultivation of cereals (Cabras, 2015;Cicilloni et al, 2016;Cicilloni et al, 2017).…”

El Abrigo de Luzzanas (Ozieri, Italia): Nuevas valoraciones de los motivos rupestres pintados mediante el empleo de Dstretch

“…De ser cierta tal interpretación, la representación tiene, de nuevo, puntos en común con otras como la de Orri y la de Su Crabiosu. En cualquier caso, los círculos concéntricos son representaciones frecuentes y se constatan también en domus de janas (Tomba delle Spirali, Ossi) (Tanda, 1977:363) y sobre determinados megalitos (Merella, 2009) cuya cronología, según algunos hallazgos como los de Motorra (Dorgali) (Cicilloni, 2009) puede remontarse a la cultura Ozieri. También se conocen petroglifos con este tipo de representaciones de círculos concéntricos, aunque ciertos ejemplos como el de Pirarba (Barisardo) muestran un mayor cuidado en el diseño (con mayor regularidad y generando espirales en lugar de círculos concéntricos) y en el número de círculos que rodean el punto central que en el caso del motivo de mayores dimensiones es constituido por una cazoleta excavada, estando presentes otras cazoletas tanto al interior de espirales como fuera de ellas (Merella, 2009:140-141).…”