The domus de janas, underground tombs in Sardinia

In Sardinia, stone has reflected the early spiritual tension aimed at self-knowledge and understanding of the world since the Palaeolithic era. The material is shaped to communicate one’s feelings, and explicit anthropomorphic features emerge in the art. Architecture becomes a complete expression of an incomprehensible sacredness. The ancient Sardinians delineated thresholds between distant worlds. They sought the essence of reality through imagination, and created rituals with archaic power. We can learn about the birth of pre-Nuragic cultures by examining the products of this process, which involves both material aspects of daily life and transcendent dimensions. The religiosity of that time is characterised by dedication to rites of passage and funerary architecture, both hypogeic and megalithic. In Sardinia, in fact, we find the characteristic underground tombs known as domus de janas and the monumental dolmens.

The underground tombs in Sardinia: the domus de janas

The evocative name domus de janas, meaning “fairy houses” in Sardinian, is the result of popular culture, which had forgotten the original use of these stone-carved rooms. There are more than 3,500 domus de janas on the Island. Most of them can be traced back to the Ozieri cultural context, which was highly advanced for its time. However, the use of underground tombs may date back even further, perhaps to the Middle Neolithic period and the San Ciriaco culture, which was a late aspect of the Bonu Ighinu facies¹.

The sacred architecture of the domus de janas

The domus de janas were carved into the rock. They consisted of at least two rooms, comprising an antechamber, used for transporting the deceased, and a burial chamber. The addition of further cells could enlarge this basic form. The domus de janas often had monumental entrances featuring pavilions or dromos. However, access could also be via a hidden vertical shaft below ground level.

Each type of entrance corresponded to different ritual purposes. In the case of the pit tombs, a desire for privacy prevailed, perhaps even accompanied by a fear that the deceased might return from the afterlife if they were not confined to the tomb². In contrast, the monumental entrances, equipped with a large antechamber, suggest the holding of collective ceremonies for the entire community. The presence of a dromos corridor in these tombs served to accommodate the ritual procession that carried the deceased to the womb of Mother Earth.

In fact, the ancient Sardinians believed that life continued beyond death. Thus, humans were reborn into a new dimension, not from a mother’s womb, but from the earth’s⁴. The rite of burial accompanied this transition. The architecture of the domus de janas was an intrinsic and fundamental component of it. They represented the symbolic, metaphysical space of the passage to the afterlife.

The underground tombs in Sardinia and the rite of passage to the afterlife

The rite of passage consisted of a preparatory phase in which the deceased was first semi-burnt⁵. He was then led into the antechamber through a narrow doorway. It recalled the dimensions of the mother’s womb, a symbolic prerequisite for rebirth. Finally, inhumation took place in the sepulchral chamber. The dead was buried in the foetal position and covered in red ochre. The blood colouring, remembering the birth of a newborn, evoked the event of a new life in the afterlife. Instead, the metaphysical threshold to the afterworld corresponded to a false door located at the end of the domus de janas. This led to another dimension, numinous, since it cannot be crossed through by the living.

The imaginary architecture of the false door was the place where the effectiveness of symbols was manifested. The lintel often featured stylised carvings, engravings or paintings of an ox’s head, particularly its horns. The ox was of fundamental importance in the agricultural economy of Neolithic societies. This animal, used to pull the plough, ensured the fertility of the soil and the seasonal awakening of life. Figuratively, it fertilised Mother Earth. Similarly, the ancient Sardinians believed that the deified bull had the power to evoke the rebirth of the deceased in a new, supersensible world. Passing through a door, false or real, crowned with the bovine protomes, meant entering the animal’s head and symbolically assume its nature⁷, having the same power to regenerate life.

The “Goddess of the Eyes” of the underground tombs in Sardinia

While the male generating principle was represented by the bucranium or bovine protomes, the female principle was associated with the Earth itself. As a mother, she carried the dead into her womb as her children. In the antechamber or main chamber, archaeologists have sometimes found spirals and concentric circles, signifying the cycles of regeneration of life. When arranged in pairs, these spirals or circles represent the anthropomorphic attributes of the Mother Goddess. In this circumstance, she is referred to as the “Goddess of the Eyes”⁸.

It is as if Mother Earth were watching over her children, ensuring their safe passage. The numerous cup marks often found on the floors were also manifestations of the Goddess’s feminine presence. Similar to inverted breasts, the cup marks had a cultic function, now forgotten. Probably they served to contain libations, votive offerings or animal sacrifices.

The continuity of life in the afterlife

In order to allow for an ordinary continuation of existence in the afterlife, burial chambers resembled the architecture of the living world, albeit in its most essential form. In the domus de janas we find representations of pitched roofs, pillars, lesenes, doors, fireplaces, even the entire floor plan of pre-Nuragic dwellings. At the Tomb of the Chief in the necropolis of Sant’Andrea Priu, in Bonorva, the sculpted ceiling of the semicircular vestibule reproduced the roof of a hut and its beams. Thanks to this custom, we can now learn about certain aspects of daily life in pre-Nuragic civilisations that would otherwise remain unknown. During the burial ritual, the ancient Sardinians placed the deceased’s earthly belongings inside the chamber, including arrowheads, mollusc shells, necklaces, bracelets, and various types of pottery.

The ancient Sardinians considered the tools used to dig their tombs, usually stone picks, to be sacred, as they shaped the womb of Mother Earth. These picks were crafted within the domus de janas and added to the deceased’s grave goods¹⁰.

Millennial use of the domus de janas, the underground tombs in Sardinia

The domus de janas were in use for more than two thousand years. This is attested until the Early Bronze Age, when underground burials began to be influenced by megalithism. Some of the entrances were now dolmenic or of the allée couverte type, while others mimicked or anticipated the exedra of giants’ grave.

However, the sacred use of the domus de janas continued for many centuries afterwards. There are, in fact, sporadic examples of their later reuse for different purposes. At the Tomba del Capo in Bonorva, which dates back to the end of the Neolithic period (3000 BC) and is attributed to the Ozieri culture, the rooms were radically adapted in the Byzantine era to create a church. An unknown artist frescoed the cells’ walls with scenes from the Gospels and Christian symbols, creating an exceptional blend of figurative elements separated by millennia.

The megalithic architectures

Alongside the spread of domus de janas, epigeic burials also developed in Sardinia. We can find the earliest example of this type of funerary architecture, emerging from the ground, in the circular tombs of Li Muri in Gallura.

Some scholars date the Li Muri burials to the Late Neolithic period (3400-3200 BC) and therefore attribute them to the Arzachena culture¹¹. Others date them to the Middle Neolithic period¹². The deceased rested in cist graves consisting of four small stone blocks arranged in a square formation. It is unclear if there was also a top cover. Each of the five cists at Li Muri was surrounded by slabs set into the ground to form concentric circles up to eight and a half metres in diameter. These stones most likely served as supports for large tumuli. There were small menhirs inside and outside the circles.

The dolmens of Sardinia

The circles with cist graves of Li Muri are not yet megaliths in the traditional sense. They lack the monumental stone blocks that characterise dolmens from the late Neolithic period onwards. It was not until the Ozieri culture (4100–3500 BC) that gigantic funerary architecture began to spread throughout Sardinia. The pre-Nuragic dolmens, of which there are about two hundred and forty, are mainly located in the central-northern part of the Island¹³. They are characterised by the juxtaposition of stone slabs, called orthostats, which form a covered burial chamber for the interment of the dead.

Sardinian dolmens are classified according to the presence of an entrance corridor, which can be either an allée couverte or a dromos, and the orientation of the burial chamber. Most megaliths, however, are of the simple type, without a corridor, as the dolmen of Sa Covaccada in Mores.

The dolmen of Sa Covaccada is one of the most significant megalithic monuments in Sardinia. It is impressive in size, measuring over two metres in height, and it has some exceptional features. On one of the side orthostats, for example, there is a carved niche. It was already planned during the design phase, as can be seen from the greater thickness of the stone. Furthermore, a front slab covered the entrance to the burial chamber. Here, a small doorway foreshadows the symbolic architecture of Nuragic giants’ graves.

The cultic and social aspects

A circle of boulders, called peristalith, surrounded some dolmens in Sardinia. Nonetheless, it is unclear whether this served a structural purpose, as a residue of a tumulus, or if it had purely cultic significance. If the latter, the peristalite may have represented a sacred threshold between the worlds of the living and the dead¹⁵. Cup marks engraved on some altars near the dolmen, on the surface of its orthostats or on the covering slab, were also associated with rites of passage.

The megaliths stood generally in isolation on plateaus and in valleys. This suggests that they were built by people dedicated to sheep farming. Their open-countryside location allowed the dolmens of Sardinia to serve as territorial markers to indicate the location of a grave. Thus, the deceased were perhaps illustrious members of their community. Indeed, we can not rule out that social stratification existed in pre-Nuragic society, particularly when considering the contemporary use of domus de janas, underground tombs much more hidden from view. Nevertheless, the cultural or social criteria underlying the choice of sacred architecture remain unknown.

Samuele Corrente Naso

Notes

1. G. Tanda, L‘ipogeismo funerario in Sardegna. Nel volume: A. Moravetti, P.Melis, L. Foddai, E. Alba, La Sardegna Preistorica, Corpora delle antichità della Sardegna, Carlo Delfino editore & C., 2017. ↩︎
2. P. Melis, La religiosità prenuragica. Nel volume: A. Moravetti, P.Melis, L. Foddai, E. Alba, La Sardegna Preistorica, Corpora delle antichità della Sardegna, Carlo Delfino editore & C., 2017. ↩︎
3. A. Taramelli – Fortezze, recinti, fonti sacre e necropoli preromane nell’agro di Bonorva, in Monumenti Antichi dei Lincei, vol. XXXV, Roma 1919. ↩︎
4. E. Contu, La Sardegna preistorica e nuragica: La Sardegna prima dei nuraghi. Chiarella, 1997. ↩︎
5. M.G. Melis, La dimensione simbolica e sociale della Sardegna preistorica attraverso le manifestazioni funerarie. Alcune osservazioni, «SCBA», IX, 2011. ↩︎
6. Di Gianni Careddu – Opera propria, CC BY-SA 4.0, image. ↩︎
7. G. Lilliu, La civiltà dei sardi dal Paleolítico all’età dei nuraghi, Il Maestrale, 2004. ↩︎
8. Ibidem. ↩︎
9. By Archeologosardos – CC BY-SA 3.0, image. ↩︎
10. Ibidem note 1. ↩︎
11. G. Lillliu, Aspetti e problemi dell’ipogeismo mediterraneo, Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, 1998; E. Atzeni, Aspetti e sviluppi culturali del neolitico e della prima età dei metalli in Sardegna. Nel volume: AA.VV, Ichnussa – La Sardegna dallle origini all’ età classica, Libri Scheiwiller, 1981. ↩︎
12. L. Alba, Nuovo contributo per lo studio del villaggio neolitico di San Ciriaco di Terralba (OR). Nel volume: L. Alba et al., Studi sardi, Edizioni AV, 2000. ↩︎
13. R. Cicilloni R., I dolmen della Sardegna, PTM Editrice, 2009. ↩︎
14. Di zagordemores – Flickr, CC BY 2.0, image.
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15. B. D’Arragon, Presenza di elementi cultuali sui monumenti dolmenici del Mediterraneo centrale, Rivista di scienze preistoriche vol. XLVI, issue 1, 1994. ↩︎