Jane | Blog

It was our final day in Sardinia and we wanted to return to Coddhu Vecchju to enjoy the morning light on the stones.

Tombi di giganti are aligned south-south-east, towards the morning light, which I suppose is symbolic of life and rebirth. This is certainly the case in ancient Egypt. The tombs' grave corridors point north-north-west, towards evening and sunset, perhaps symbolic of death. So to get the best modeling light on the stones (for painting and photography) you need to be there late morning, so the sun is high enough to cast shadows and reveal the carving and sculpting.

At Coddhu Vecchju the carving is not deep at all (not like those more southerly stele we'd seen) so we needed all those shadows. And I wanted to see the pink granite sparkle in the sun.

There's a small peep hole about the size of a football directly above the well at ground level through which light passes. Apparently, when the moon shines over it at one point in its 18.6 year cycle it completely fills the hole. (Sound familiar, Callanishistas?) I managed to suppress my horrible small girl urge to spit through it and listen for the splash at the bottom.

To get down to the well you pass through a trapezoid-shaped hole and decend down into the ground on a stone staircase. The steps and the corbelling is so fresh and crisp that you feel it could have been built yesterday, though Julian in TME says that this is original stonework. If he's right, then this is truly astonishing. Likewise the beehivey conical corbelling leading up from the well to the peephole at ground level – incredible stonework. It really does look modern.

I descended down the crisp, steep staircase (suppressing further girlish urges, this time to kick out my feet and sing "New York, New York") about 3 metres below ground level to the water. Down there it was refreshingly cool; perhaps 10degC lower in temperature, but then it was 35degC outside.

Though I'm not big into wells, this one's a must-see.

We pressed on to Mura Cuada tombi di giganti in the midday heat, which is right by a railway line. If you do follow Julian's instructions to reach it, as Sals says, DO NOT walk on the railway line! Trains run on this line. We walked just to one side of the track out of the way of any passing rolling stock. Julian is spot on with his '355 paces' though.

What a surprising place it is; less of a tomba di giganti and more of a Menorcan naveta with arms! This tomba has no stele; instead it has just an entrance hole in the front wall, which forms a very curved forecourt.

Moth squeezed inside, but I was not wearing clothing suitable to join him in there. He said he could easily stand up and it was exactly like a naveta.

The thick stele is cracked and broken vertically so that only one side of it remains up with the top arch curling over like Hokkusai's tsunami wave or a giant F.

Most of the tomb section is gone, though there is a lot of rubble under hoof and one or two stones lurking higgledy piggledy in the grass. Some of the tomb material seems to have been assimilated into the wall beside the lane.

Like at Imbertighe the forecourt area seems to have been constructed like wall from big blocks of stone rather than a line of standing slabs

I'd noticed at nearby Figu that the stele (or what was left of it) seemed chunkier than the stele at tombi further north. At Imbertighe this regional stylistic difference was confirmed to me. The stele here was chunkier too – bigger, thicker, deeper and with far deeper carving. The depth of the carving was about 9". Up north, you're lucky to get an inch.

Imbertighe still had its curved arms. Like Figu, these were constructed from big blocks rather than a line of slabs. Not much of the tomb remains – through the deep meadow grass we detected a few stones, but nothing grand.

It lacks flanking slabs and only has a little rubble each side and vestiges of tomb material behind it. It's that whopping stele, standing there all alone in the field which struck me.

Like Imbertighe and Figu I could see that thickness of width in proportion to its height again, (in Bainzu's case 3.24ms high).

There are six standing stones, conical and pointing out of the ground like bullets and all absolutely round in section. Quite phallic. And the best bit is that three of them had small breasts carved on them.

And the more I looked the sillier these (no doubt once serious) fertility totems became. At one moment they were froglets from the Clangers, the next they we giant mudskippers poking their fishy heads up. I loved them; I'd seen nothing like them before and they left me wondering about a whole bunch of questions which I've long given up thinking about other monuments for lack of answers. In the case of these betili, questions like: were they painted or perhaps anointed with liquid – milk, blood or something else, like the Shiva lingam are in India today. Were they dressed or decorated at ceremonial times? How were they used? And so on…

Intriguing!

High on a hill at the back of the town of Silanus in the grounds of the chapel of San Lorenzo are five more of these short bullet shaped standing stones. One stands in front of the chapel and four clustered behind. So randomly placed are they we felt they were originally more.

None of the stones had breasts or froglet eyes, like at Tamuli, and one had been broken off half way down. But one has a huge slit carved long its top – deliberately made - and looking very phallic. We both felt that this slit carving was original. After all if you were a 16th century xtian, looking to destroy the nasty pagan stones, you'd hardly go about doing so by making it even more cock-like would you?

We wondered why the betili were here, so high above the town. Then as we returned to the car I found out why – I could hear the sound of running water. There was a spring.

Walking through bushveldt on a sandy track from the car park we could hear the tinkle of bells from a herd of goats grazing near the tomba.

The monument is wonderful with an intact covered grave corridor running out behind and lots of nice slabs forming the forecourt. I was intrigued by the stele – cut in the classic way but with wonky asymmetry in the top arch. The cat flap is less archy than others I'd seen, and more squared off – but that wonkiness at the top was also reflected in the shape of the aperture – leaning slightly left. A New Labour construction perhaps I wondered as I sat and sketched it and a party of German tourists filed past.

As we'd exited the S131 on our way to Thomes earlier, I'd seen a single forlorn sign to Lotoni tombi di giganti, but hadn't seen any other signs. Typical. When I mentioned it to Moth, he said he'd found some information on Lotoni, but it was sketchy and in a bad comedy English translation from Google. Lotoni is pictured on page 440 of TME, but that naughty Julian Cope gives no instructions on how to find it. We only knew roughly where it was. So we headed roughly in that direction. And found it!

Someone at one time had once given a toss about this site, there was the remnant of an information board, but the toss had been taken back. It was in a very sorry state. Overgrown, horribly overgrown, and now fenced in with barbed wire, a wooden pallet and some dry thorny branches leaning up against the place which obviously used to be the way in. So I tore down this rudimentary barrier, stomped a hole big enough to squeeze through the rusty barbed wire and waded in through the tangled low bushes. And to show that someone does care and did visit, I spent a moment stomping down tall weeds in the forecourt by the stele.

Like Pascaredda, Lotoni's stele lacks an upper arch and has a very low cat flap, too small for even a toddler to crawl through. But even lacking these features this is a good tomba – good for surviving in the face of this cruel neglect, good for its stones are still up – and big, too! Despite the feeling that Lotoni is forgotten, even trespassing on its own property, I liked it here.

So close to its show-site and glamorous neighbour just up the road, Thomes, it is very sad to think that this labour of love by its builders could be so badly neglected.

Despite having both Julian's and Sals' instructions on how to find it, we drove round in circles for some time, unable to find the right road, but knowing we were close. I was on the point of giving up but Moth wanted one final push trying to find it from Loiri. Eventually, we did find the lane signposted by a hilltop castle.

It's almost the most remarkable monument on the island but lacks its stele which was stolen in the early 20th century for a garden ornament and is now lost. With a 28' chamber and hugely wide forecourt lined with an original low seating area directly in front of the forecourt stones it feels very theatrical – like a stage- and hints at the way people might have used the space. Perhaps participants in the forecourt ceremonies sat around within the space rather than watching from the outside.

I liked the way the airport was so close – you know, ancient and modern… I liked seeing the planes landing and taking off through the space between the stones where the enormous stele should be. And there's no doubt that the stele would have been enormous, my guess is at least 12' tall if it was in proportion with the rest of the site.

Campo Lontano proved hard to find. Very hard. Julian gives no instructions as to how to find it on page 440 and 441 of TME where he shows it. We had only Moth and Sals's desk research to go on: a Google Earth print-out and some notes translated from Italian to English by google.

From Florinas, the sat nav took us down blind alleys and eventually impassable farm tracks and after a long frustrating detour around some mountains we finally found a road sign to it, just west of Banari and Siligo. However road signs, we had learned, can take you up more blind alleys or only point you half the way then leave you stranded, so we weren't counting any pollo.

We drove up the steep, narrow, rutted farm track narrowly avoiding tearing off the hire car's undercarriage or scratching the bodywork (drivers of a nervous disposition, don't try this lane!) until we reached a junction. Which way? There was no sign. We left the car where it was and walked down the left hand fork only to be stopped by a wire fence which had been erected across the track. Not this way, obviously. So we tried the other way which took us up to a farm building. We could hear some sheep bells and there were two cars parked: "Buen Giorno!" we called out. After a while a tiny brown man in a dirty vest appeared from the barn and we pointed to the monument on the map. He pointed in a vague direction eastwards and after a conversation entirely in English on our part and Italian on his, managed to work out it was in a field (campo) 100 (cento) metres beyond the white rocks (roccia bianco) that we could see.

It was hot, there was no shade and it looked like it was about 1200ms away, but we'd come this far and couldn't give up now, so we walked along the track which ran parallel to an enormous rocky cliff above which a couple of eagles soared.

A farm truck passed us. A younger man leaned out and indicated that it was in the meadow beyond a big tree he pointed to o the road ahead of us. As indeed it was. Shaded under a large fig tree.

This is no ordinary monument - Campo Lontano (which means 'far field') is amazing as it combines the skill of rock cutting with the construction of a freestanding tomba. It is entirely carved from an above-ground naturally occurring large rocky outcrop. It looked like it had been partially shaped – the same shape as the internal structure of Molafa which we had seen earlier in the day. The front of the tomb was cut to the same shape too – using all the elements seen in a tomba di giganti's stele in fact: catflap, square base, arched top and mullion. The cat flap was too small to squeeze through, but peering through I could see the tomb has been cracked open at the back, so I whizzed round and climbed it.

Internally, it feels like a Menorcan naveta – a small room tall enough to stand up in and wide enough to stand arms outstretched. At the end with the cat flap a low bowl or shallow receptacle had been carved on the floor – for liquid offerings perhaps?

This is a remarkable monument in every way – the closest thing I've seen to it before is the freestanding rock cut tombs in Lycia, Turkey which (I believe) are of a later date.

Yes, it was worth the hours it took to find it and the sunburned shoulders.

We'd not so far encountered any dolmen of such really hefty proportions in Sardinia.

Julian's instructions in TME coupled with new brown road signs helped us find it easily. It's an absolute whopper, constructed simply with four massive slabs each more than foot thick on a natural bedrock foundation. It's lost its back end but that allowed yellow rays from the setting sun to illuminate the chamber and shine out through the catflap. Very picturesque.

The western slab, I noticed bulged out at the front portal end. Precisely the same place on the inside had been cut into a little platform or bench making a very handy seat. In fact, just right for sitting, lighting up a small cigar and considering all the miraculous places we had seen to today.

As we began our drive back, a beautiful leveret leapt out on to the road in front of us and stopped long enough for us to admire it, before leaping back into the tall grasses.