At the dawn of the third millennium BC, at the sanctuary of Monte d’Accoddi someone lifted his eyes to the sky. In the firmament, during the night, he saw the divine image of the mother, the great goddess, creator and nurturer of the universe. By her will, even the stars, like beings on earth, were visible for a time and then reborn to new life when the morning light shone beyond the darkness. The mother goddess bore all things in her womb, both on earth and in the cosmos. She guaranteed the continuity of natural cycles and established the time of life and death.
The emergence of unprecedented cultural expressions in pre-Nuragic Sardinia was the mysterious reflection of new conceptions of the world and the divine. Ancient Sardinians of the Ozieri culture were the first to elevate the ritual towards the heavens. This phase of change took concrete form in the realisation of innovative cultic architectures. Not far from Sassari, a sanctuary was erected facing the sky, a high place similar to the Mesopotamian ziggurats1. Monte d’Accoddi could be accessed via a steep ramp and sacrifices to the deity were officiated on its monumental, terraced altar. The goddess of Sardinia, the female archetype that regenerates everything, then became mother of the earth and owner of the sky2.
The discovery of the sanctuary of Monte d’Accoddi
About eleven kilometers from Sassari, in the flat Nurra region, stood a hill, the only elevation in the area, which aroused more than a little suspicion among archaeologists. While everyone agreed that the mound of earth and stones was artificial, what lay beneath it was the subject of various hypotheses. Antonio Segni, the Minister of Education at the time, could see the hill from his property. He believed it to be a large burial mound, similar to those of the Etruscans. Convinced that he would find tombs and burial goods there, he financed excavation projects at Monte d’Accoddi.
Instead, the archaeologist in charge of the project, Ercole Contu, was not at all convinced. In his opinion, the small hill hid another nuraghe, similar to the other seven or eight thousand found in Sardinia3. However, when the excavations began, it was discovered to everyone’s astonishment that they were both wrong. What lay beneath the hill of Monte d’Accoddi was beyond imagination. It was something totally different from anything archaeology had unearthed on the Island until then.
Excavations carried out by Ercole Contu between 1952 and 1958 revealed a monument from the pre-Nuragic period, older than the known nuraghes by at least one thousand and six hundred years. The unusual structure, made of soil and rubble, could not have served a funerary purpose. In fact, there was no access to hypogeic chambers along the perimeter, as in the domus de janas, for instance. Ercole Contu wrote that “it was instead an embankment, delimited by a simple rough wall, made to support an altar, on which rites were in some way celebrated”4. There was an ancient sanctuary at Monte d’Accoddi.
Sanctuary of Monte d’Accoddi
The building, enclosed by limestone block embankments, had the curious shape of a truncated pyramid. The upper platform (approximately 38 m x 31 m), also called the “altar” by analogy with the Mesopotamian ziggurat, was accessible from the south side via an inclined ramp, approximately 42 metres long. The earth around the building also revealed the foundations of a village and numerous female statuettes. To the west, there was a menhir in a reclining position. Instead, to the east, archaeologists rediscovered two slabs used for ritual sacrifices, as suggested by the animal bones found on site (cattle, deer, pigs, sheep).
One of slabs, made of limestone, shows numerous cup-marks. Furthermore, it had seven holes at the edges for the ropes used to tie up the sacrificial victim. The blood was then drained to the ground through a natural swallow hole. These are important clues, allowing us to partially understand the cultic function of the sanctuary of Monte d’Accoddi. Here, the mother goddess received offerings from the community, aimed at propitiating the rebirth of life.
The Lady of Heaven
The construction of the ramp and the terracing introduces a novel concept: an elevated space facing the sky where the divine presence is sought. The building welcomed that particular conception of the mother goddess as the Lady of Heaven. It represented the focal point of the entire cultic complex. Indeed, two stele statues found near the monument refer to this divinity. One, in granite, shows a stylised female figure5. The other, in limestone and fragmentary, hosts two spirals. This was a recurrent motif in domus de janas, known as the “Goddess of the Eyes”.
On the upper altar of the sanctuary of Monte d’Accoddi was thus a rectangular sacellum. Here, as scholars supposed, sacrifices performed on the altar slabs were carried in procession along the ramp and thus offered to the deity. The ceremonies were accompanied by ritual dances, as deduced from the finding of a neck jar on site.
The earlier altar
Ercole Contu discovered the entire perimeter of the monument: the absence of openings suggested that there were no interior rooms. However, about twenty years later, a new excavation campaign started to investigate the deeper layers of the embankment. This analysis, made possible thanks to improved technical tools for archaeological investigation, was conducted by Santo Tinè of the University of Genoa between 1979 and 19896. Professor Tinè was still convinced to find, under the great mound of soil of the Sanctuary, the burial place of some illustrious ancient Sardinian. He therefore excavated up to the base of the monument, reaching a depth of eight metres.
Once again, however, expectations were betrayed: the archaeologists found no tomb but other unexpected twists. Santo Tinè discovered that the lower layers consisted of a peculiar honeycomb structure. By rows of stone, it delimited defined portions of land. Most importantly, he found the remains of a pre-existing and now buried building, very similar to the one discovered by Contu, but smaller and older. This earlier altar, with a truncated pyramid shape and access ramp, probably existed already at the beginning of the 3rd millennium BC, under the late phase of the Ozieri culture (3200-2900 BC)7.
The red temple
Even more exceptional was the discovery on the platform of portions of the floor and a perimeter wall, belonging to the original sacellum. Some dig post holes indicated the presence of a portico and perhaps a double-pitched roof. Santo Tinè realised that this was the first true cultic centre of Monte d’Accoddi. The sacellum, surprisingly, revealed traces of colour: at the time of its use, it was probably entirely sprinkled with ochre. This is why it is known today as the “red temple”. The use of this particular pigmentation was not accidental. Red ochre, in Sardinia as in many Neolithic societies, simulated the presence of blood, the vital principle of human beings, and had the same symbolic value.
Around 2800 BC, however, when the people of the Filigosa culture colonised the area of Monte d’Accoddi, a fatal event probably occurred. Archaeologists have found traces of combustion. It is possible that a fire devastated the red temple. The structure was then covered with soil and rubble to form the altar that is visible today, still in the shape of a truncated pyramid but placed higher and larger than the original one. Consequently, the ramp also became longer.
The sanctuary of Monte d’Accoddi as axis mundi
At that time, the ancient Sardinians used to bury the dead in a foetal position. Thus they covered them with red ochre to recall the first image after parturition. This aimed to guarantee a new birth in the afterlife. It is possible that the sanctuary of Monte d’Accoddi was an expression of the same way of conceiving reality, but in a broader, almost cosmic, sense. The ritual sacrifices carried out on the altar were meant to propitiate not only the rebirth of the individual through Mother Earth, but of the entire universe, in order to ensure the continuity of agricultural cycles and soil fertility8. The monument had the function of connecting humanity’s perspective to the heavens, thus assuming the role of axis mundi between different dimensions.
The omphalos of the sanctuary of Monte d’Accoddi
The sacellum on the sanctuary of Monte d’Accoddi referred to the concept of the Sacred Center. We already find it in the meaning of the mountain, natural or artificial, in numerous ancient cultures. It was the place of encounter with the divine, a privileged space where the transcendent manifested itself. Not dissimilar in meaning to the Omphalos stone of Delphi, a large spheroidal stone was found just beyond the archaeological site, which today stands next to the ramp9. The boulder, made of sandstone and carved with small cup-marks was also a cultic object. It probably served as a marker of the sacred place. Close to the omphalos was another spheroidal stone, made of quartzite. Their geometry, sought through careful stonework, expressed beliefs about the cyclical nature of the cosmos and life.
For all this evidence, the cult complex of Monte d’Accoddi marks perhaps the highest stage of the pre-Nuragic civilisations10. To date, archaeologists do not know of another similar construction in Europe or the Mediterranean area. The Nurra Sanctuary had a great sacral significance and attracted worshippers from all over Sardinia.
The village of Monte d’Accoddi
Near the sanctuary of Monte d’Accoddi, archaeologists have discovered the remains of several dwelling settlements, which existed over time. The earliest evidence dates back to the time of the San Ciriaco culture (3500-3300 BC), when the altar did not yet exist, but the cultic centre consisted at most of only the menhir and a few lithic slabs for sacrificial offerings. An extensive domus de janas necropolis attests the frequentation of the area in this period.
However, the most evident archaeological evidence belongs to the late phase of the sanctuary of Monte d’Accoddi. They are referable to the Filigosa facies, and its peculiar evolution named Abealzu (c. 2700 BC)11. All that remains of this village are the foundations of several single-row huts with dry stone walls. Famous among them is the Wizard’s hut, with a trapezoidal floor plan, so called because of some curious objects found inside it, such as shells and a bovine horn tip. The dwelling has yielded hundreds of archaeological finds in stone and terracotta, offering insight into the daily habits of the Abealzu Sardinians. The different rooms housed a fireplace, on which there was still a tripod, a pantry and some weaving tools.
The sanctuary of Monte d’Accoddi was occasionally frequented in the Bronze Age, when the ancient rituals were no longer practised. We find evidence of a different use of the area in the burial of a child, attributable to the Bonnanaro culture (1800 BC), the last guardian of the axis mundi, a sacred place now lost.
Samuele Corrente Naso
Notes
- E. Contu, L’altare preistorico di Monte d’Accoddi, Guide e Itinerari, 29, Carlo Delfino editore, Sassari 2000. ↩︎
- G.Lilliu, Simbologia astrale nel mondo prenuragico, in Atti dei convegni Lincei, 2001. ↩︎
- Ibidem note 1. ↩︎
- Ibidem note 1. ↩︎
- A. Moravetti, Gli altari a terrazza di Monte d’Accoddi, in Darwin Quaderni. Archeologia in Sardegna, 2006. ↩︎
- S. Tinè, Monte d’Accoddi e la cultura di Ozieri, in La cultura di Ozieri. Problematiche e nuove acquisizioni, Ozieri, gennaio 1986-aprile 1987, ed. Ozieri, 1989. ↩︎
- Ibidem notes 1 and 5. ↩︎
- Ibidem note 2. ↩︎
- Ibidem note 6. ↩︎
- Ibidem note 1. ↩︎
- Paolo 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. ↩︎
