The gradual evolution of cultures in pre-Nuragic Sardinia reveals humanity’s inner quest. Through rituals and beliefs new metaphysical frames of meaning, new interpretations of existence are delineated. The feeling of an order beyond nature, which transcends into the sphere of the sacred, is embodied in the archetypal image of a female deity related to fertility. The pre-Nuragic mother goddess is a recurring theme in the Island’s statuary representations. The numerous sculptures discovered by archaeologists suggest, in fact, the existence of a widespread religiosity, deeply rooted in various cultural facies1.
The ritual aspects of this cult are unknown, except for the material ones. However, we can suppose that the ancient Sardinians worshipped the mother goddess as a metaphysical transfiguration of the earthly mother. She therefore had the function of ensuring re-birth beyond death, or more simply, the continuation of life. People of pre-Nuragic cultures believed that the deceased continued to carry out their daily activities in the afterlife. The grave goods and funerary architecture of those peoples demonstrate it.
The Venus of Macomer
The first recorded example of the pre-Nuragic mother goddess is a statuette found at the Riparo S’Adde in Macomer. This Venus, which may date from the Upper Palaeolithic2, is sculpted inside a block of basalt. Rather than emerging from the rock as a sculpture, the Venus of Macomer seems to have been generated from the earth itself. The artist appears to have released the goddess from her imprisonment.
The idol has the body of a woman, with sinuous legs, ample buttocks, and only a left breast, while the upper limbs are missing. Instead, the head belongs to a rodent. Therefore, the Venus of Macomer is a representation of a totemic animal: it was identified in the Sardinian pika3, now extinct, but once very numerous and known for being very prolific. The pika ideally served as the community’s guiding spirit, a sacred guarantor of fertility and life after death.
The pre-Nuragic Mother Goddess in the Middle Neolithic
The sculptures of the mother goddess, characterised by different figurative types, especially represent the pre-Nuragic cultures of the Neolithic period. At the necropolises of the Bonu Ighinu culture (4000-3500 BC) – the one at Cuccuru S’arriu in Sinis is cited for the number of finds – dozens of female statuettes were discovered. They lay inside graves, pit tombs often covered in red ochre. In some cases archaeologists found them even in the hands of the deceased. The mother goddess sculptures were made using a variety of techniques and finishes, in clay or stone (marl, plaster, tuff), and ranged in size from approximately three to eighteen centimetres4.
The Bonu Ighinu mother belongs to the figurative type known as “volumetric”. The disproportionately large head often has a headdress and shows facial features in relief: the nose and eyebrows form a “T”, and the mouth carved into an archaic smile. Sharp lines divided the torso into chest and belly. The arms assume static poses behind the back or near the hips. A later variant of the Bonu Ighinu mothers is attributable to the San Ciriaco culture (3400-3200 BC). Here, there is a more pronounced tendency towards steatopygia of the buttocks and naturalistic forms.
The geometric style of the mother goddess in pre-Nuragic cultures of the Recent Neolithic
During the Recent Neolithic, the figurative style of the Sardinian mother goddess undergoes a process of geometrisation. Sculptures become more two-dimensional and had stylised features. In the Ozieri culture, the manifestation of the sacred is almost conceptual. The presence of female attributes is minimal, as visible in the small breasts. Nevertheless, the legacy of the earlier pre-Nuragic cultures is evident in the postural patterns and sculptural techniques. In the geometric style, the shaping of forms also evoked the ancient somatic trait of steatopygia.
Instead, an absolute stylistic innovation is the “perforated plate” characterisation. In some statuettes from the Abealzu-Filigosa culture the material between the torso and the upper limbs is absent. This accentuates the geometric nature of the figure. The disc-shaped head often rests on a slender neck. The face features globular eyes and a rectangular nose. Archaeologists have found these artefacts mostly in contexts related to domus de janas, the characteristic pre-Nuragic tombs excavated in the rock. However, we have found some specimens also near monumental buildings, such as the sacred altar of Monte d’Accoddi.
The cycle of life
Despite changes in figurative types, the pre-Nuragic mother goddess, ancient fertility deity, has preserved the same cultic aspects across different cultures. In the prehistory of humanity, not only in Sardinia, the female capacity to procreate represented a profound mystery, concealing the intimate secret of existence. Like an unfathomable gift, woman conceived and carried new life within themselves, generating and feeding like Mother Earth does. Moreover, the process of fertilisation was still unknown to the people of that time5. It was believed that divine mechanisms were hidden in female power, in the disruptive creative force of nature itself. This vital impulse was expressed through cycles of continuous regeneration: the rebirth of light in the morning after darkness, the awakening of spring, the periodic return of the stars, and, above all, the resurrection of life after death.
The ancient Sardinians believed that existence continued in the afterlife, that humans were reborn not from a flesh mother, but from the earth itself. In the cave of Cuccuru s’Arriu, the deceased rested in a foetal position. Like children in a woman’s womb, they were preparing to be reborn in a new dimension. Their bodies were covered in red ochre, a symbolic colour representing the first image of the newborn after birth, thus heralding the moment of rebirth in the afterlife. Their hands held a statuette of the goddess, the mother and nurturer who accompanied her children on their final journey.
Samuele Corrente Naso
Notes
- G. Lilliu, La Civiltà dei Sardi dal Paleoltico all’Età dei Nuraghi, Nuova Eri Edizioni, Torino, 1988. ↩︎
- M. Mussi, La Venere di Macomer nel quadro del Pleistocene superiore finale europeo, 2012. Dagli atti della XLIV Riunione Scientifica dell’I.I.P.P. “La Preistoria e la Protostoria della Sardegna”, Firenze, 23-28 novembre 2009. ↩︎
- Ibidem. ↩︎
- G. Paglietti, La madre mediterranea della Sardegna neolitica. Nel volume: A. Moravetti, P.Melis, L. Foddai, E. Alba, La Sardegna Preistorica, Corpora delle antichità della Sardegna, Carlo Delfino editore & C., 2017. ↩︎
- A. Moravetti in G. Lilliu, Arte e religione della Sardegna prenuragica, Carlo Delfino editore & C., 1999. ↩︎
