Nuragic Hillfort Networks & Water Sanctuaries

Pre-Roman tribal Europe — Celts, Illyrians, Thracians, hillfort and chiefdom cultures.

1 chapter

-4000 - -1800

The Neolithic megalithic tradition shaped Sardinia's earliest ritual geography: rock-cut chamber tombs (Domus de Janas, 'fairy houses') and a unique stepped altar at Monte d'Accoddi whose closest parallels are Mesopotamian ziggurats. In July 2025, UNESCO inscribed 17 Domus de Janas necropolises on the World Heritage List, confirming their global significance. Climb the ramp at Monte d'Accoddi and you stand where pre-Nuragic communities gathered for seasonal rites on a platform unlike anything else in the western Mediterranean. The Domus de Janas tombs, carved into sandstone and decorated with spiral and horn motifs, reveal a funerary cosmology that persisted across two millennia. These are not ancestors of the nuraghi but a distinct, earlier worldview — one that already treated stone, water, and the underworld as sacred channels.

-800 - -238

Phoenician merchants founded coastal trading posts from the 8th century BCE, establishing cities at Tharros, Nora, and Sulci (modern Sant'Antioco) that became full Punic colonies after Carthage took control around 550 BCE. These settlements layered over or alongside Nuragic communities — Nora's earliest Phoenician inscription is the oldest in the western Mediterranean. At Monte Sirai, a Punic hilltop fortress above Sulci commands the coastal plain, its walls and necropolis still traceable. The Punic period introduced urban planning, written language, and new religious practices (Tanit worship, tophet sanctuaries) that coexisted with and reshaped indigenous traditions. Stand at Tharros on the Sinis Peninsula and you look over Punic-era streets, a tophet, and Roman reoccupations — a palimpsest of Mediterranean colonization that the sea is slowly reclaiming.

-238 - 456

Rome seized Sardinia from Carthage in 238 BCE and governed it as a province for nearly seven centuries, overlaying Roman urbanism on Punic and Nuragic foundations. The monumental thermal baths at Forum Traiani (Fordongianus) — Aquae Ypsitanae to the Romans — channel the same hot springs that still flow today, making them one of the best-preserved Roman bath complexes on the island. Roads, aqueducts (like the partially surviving one near Olbia), and forums restructured the island's connectivity. Roman Sardinia was also a grain supplier to the capital, and its interior remained restive — the mountainous Barbagia region takes its name from Roman descriptions of its 'barbarian' inhabitants. Walk the basalt-block streets at Fordongianus and you stand where Roman colonists bathed, traded, and administered an island that never fully surrendered its older identities.

456 - 1050

When the Vandals seized Sardinia in 456 CE, they ended nearly seven centuries of Roman rule and introduced a Germanic-African overlay that lasted until Byzantine reconquest in 534. The Byzantine period then brought Greek-rite Christianity, monasticism, and ecclesiastical architecture that shaped Sardinian religious practice for centuries. The 5th-century Basilica of San Saturnino in Cagliari is the island's oldest surviving Christian structure, its cruciform plan still legible despite later modifications. At Siligo, the church of Nostra Segnora de Mesumundu rises directly on the ruins of Roman baths — Byzantine-era burials with gold and silver grave goods attest to the transition from late Roman to early medieval Christian life. This long era of Vandal and Byzantine governance, followed by fragmentation as Byzantine power receded, set the institutional framework within which the Giudicati would emerge as autonomous Sardinian states.