Olmedo

Olmedo area is particularly rich in archaeological evidence.

In the locality of Santu Pedru, close to the territory of Alghero, we find ten domus de janas, excavated since the 4th millennium BC.

They were underground burials used for a long time by people of different cultures that followed one another in Sardinia for over a millennium, from the time of Ozieri Culture up to that of Bonnanaro, on the threshold of the Nuragic era. Some of the tombs, in reality, were reused even up until the early Middle Ages.

The best known is undoubtedly the one called “tomb of the tetrapod vases” by Ercole Contu, due to the particularity of the several vases with four feet from the Beaker Culture that were found here.

This tomb (no. I) is also distinguished by its monumentality and size: it is in fact made up of 9 cells, to which a 16 m long dromos (corridor) gives access.

Even more complex is Tomb III, made up of 13 cells, spanning over 161 m². All the tombs are also decorated with numerous reproductions of architectural elements, such as architraves, frames, pillars, steps: they give us the appearance of the contemporary village huts, which we would otherwise not be able to know.

Not far from this place is perhaps the best-known site in Olmedo area: the fortified megalithic complex of Monte Baranta, in Su Casteddu area, on a trachytic plateau. It consists of a tower-enclosure, a cult area and a powerful defensive wall 5 meters wide, preserved for 97 meters, with a residual height of 3.75 meters. It surrounds the village huts only partially, protecting the open portion of the plateau, which on three sides is instead made safe by the rather steep walls.

Initially attributed by Ercole Contu to the Nuragic era, the first findings of ceramics, followed by regular excavations between 1979 and 1981 (and later again in 2012) allowed the complex to be ascribed to the Copper Age, precisely to the Monte Claro Culture. It is one of the oldest defensive structures found in Sardinia, as nothing of the kind is documented in the previous Neolithic phase, a possible sign of a significant socio-cultural change in the 3rd millennium BC.

Even during the Nuragic era the territory was densely inhabited, so much so that over twenty nuraghes are known today, including nuraghe Sa Femina, preserved within the modern town.

Instead, in Camposanto area there was a well temple in opus isodomum: its findings were published in 1933 by Antonio Taramelli, who reports that the temple was completely destroyed short time later. From this site come an extraordinary model of a four-lobed nuraghe, with a central tower (called mastio, which means keep), but also numerous other bronze finds such as a statuette of an offerer, a mouflon, an ox, seven daggers, a ship’s shaft ending with a nuraghe tower with a dove and five copper panels

The territory also presents significant traces of subsequent historical phases. Among these, near Nuraghe Talia, we note the thermal bath, probably belonging to a villa from the Roman Imperial era. It is a complex made up of four rooms, originally decorated with marble coverings and mosaic floors.

 

ph.credits: Gianni Careddu, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons