Making Landscape. Approaching the pre- and prothistoric taskscapes on the islet of Sant’Antioco/Sardinia.

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Constance von Rüden
• Subject Area: Prehistory and World Archaeology
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 497599429

Southern Sardinia during the Nuragic period was part of a wider Mediterranean seaborn web which is reflected in several material remains: the discovery of Mycenaean and Cypriote pottery, the identification of external influences in the metallurgical evidence and the increasing number of Nuragic finds in the Eastern Mediterranean. While it is well-known that southern Sardinia participated in this wider Mediterranean network, almost nothing is known about how the Nuragic population was indeed involved. It remains open to questions whether the inhabitants were actively shaping these networks or a rather passive consumer.As the latter has been often implicitly assumed, the study aims to illuminate the Nuragic involvement into the maritime world and seaborn interrelations through the investigation of the micro-region of the islet of Sant’Antioco. The high density of monumental Nuragic sites unquestionable speaks for the region’s key role during this period. A possible reason for this key role – as it is for the later Phoenician and Punic period - is the maritime character of the islet with its natural harbours in which Sant’Antioco clearly differs from other investigated microregions of Sardinia. The latter are mostly located in the mountainous inland and are considered as being typical for the assumed pastoral subsistence of the Bronze and Early Iron Age population. In contrast, the inhabitants of Sant’Antioco already took advantage of the maritime character in the Neolithic and Chalcolithic period as it can be shown by a seaborn network reflected in the jasper and obsidian distribution. The sea-orientation of the Nuraghe S’Ega Marteddu of Maladroxia, Cala Bianca or Porto di Triga support a similar assumption for the protohistoric period. Such a maritime landscape has never been systematically analyzed in Nuragic archaeology. Therefore, the aim of the project will be to fill this gap and to focus on this unique feature as part of a landscape- archaeological approach.As a landscape-archaeological study it aims to reach beyond the few and often fragmentary studies of coastal nuraghe or the mostly decontextualized listing of imported objects. Instead, the project has a rather holistic approach and investigates the inhabitant’s daily routines within the realm of subsistence economy and exchange as well as their involvement in more sporadic ritual, social or political activities. The analyzed taskscapes and their spatial layout will help us to trace the specific land- and seascape appropriation of the inhabitants and to carve out their possible perceptions and meanings. Such a contextual analysis has the potential to break the almost stereotype idea of the Nuragic population as mountaineers and herdsman, restricted to pastoral life and averted from the sea, which is often perpetuated in literature and touristic commercialization and which has partly entered narratives of local identity and marketing.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants