Nuraghe
The nuraghe, or nurhag,[1] is the main type of ancient megalithic edifice found in Sardinia, Italy, developed during the Nuragic Age between 1900 and 730 BC.
An etymological theory suggests a Proto-Basque origin by the term *nur (stone) with the common -ak plural ending;[6] the Paleo-Sardinian suffix -ake is also found in some Indo-European languages such as Latin and Greek.
[8][9] The typical nuraghe is situated in areas where previous prehistoric Sardinian cultures had been distributed, that, is not far from alluvial plains (though few nuraghes appear in plains currently as they were destroyed by human activities such as agriculture, dams and road building) and has the outer shape of a truncated conical tower, thus resembling a medieval tower, with a tholos-like vault inside.
A spiral stone stair, leading to upper floors (if present) and/or to a terrace, was built within the thick walls and it was illuminated by embrasures.
[11] There is no consensus on the function of the nuraghes: they could have been rulers' residences, military strongholds, meeting halls, religious temples, ordinary dwellings or a combination of any of these things.
Recent unconfirmed theories tend to suggest that Sardinian towns were independent entities (such as the city-states, although in a geographical sense they were not cities) that formed federations and that the building of these monuments might have depended on agreed-on distributions of territory among federated unities.
They were not tombs of princes and their families, as was mistakenly believed by taking as an argument the discovery of human remains there, but of strata of a later age than the Nuragic, that is, Carthaginian and Roman.
[12] In 2002, Juan Belmonte and Mauro Zedda measured the entrance orientations (declinations and azimuths) of 272 simple nuraghes and of the central towers of 180 complex ones.
The data revealed clear peaks corresponding to orientations pointing to the sunrise at winter solstice and to the Moon at its southernmost rising position.
[15] The only buildings widely accepted as being related to nuraghes are the torri (plural of torre) from southern Corsica and the talaiots from Menorca and Majorca.
[8] According to Massimo Pallottino, an Italian archaeologist specialized in Etruscology, the architecture produced by the Nuragic civilization was the most advanced of any in the western Mediterranean during this epoch, including those in the regions of Magna Graecia.
