Latest Fieldnotes

In this little village is a strange little church, on the whole it seems like any other church but part of it is built over and incorperating an allee couverte. Other instances of this can be seen in Geurnsey, Spain, and Portugal, so their pretty rare.
Entry to the tomb is closed off by a big red gate but the key can be attaind from the local post office, as it was a sunday it was closed so we made do with looking through the bars and looking in the church.Inside the church you can see a statue of St. Michel slaying a dragon, and the upper surface of a capstone.
Within the tomb are 7 statues said to be found buried inside it when it was first explored centuries ago and now occupying space on a shelf, the statues are also said to be the seven sleepers of Ephesus.
One legend says the allee couverte dates from the beginning of the world.

Aubrey Burl called this place Pergal but as I saw the sign pointing down a footpath it said Pergat, I shrugged and walked the lane, Burl said it was 200m to the stones but it was barely 100m, he also said it was a lovely place and thankfully in this if anything he was underselling it.
The sun was out, flowers carpeted the floor, a stream runs by and the birds were singing as loudly as my children were playing.It was ideal.
There are three stones in a row, one head height one fallen and one monster reaching for the sky,apparently the third tallest in Brittany, if your in the area please make the effort to find this place you’ll be glad you did

This group of barrows sit on top of a hill on heathland south west of the village of Bere Regis. From it can be seen the nearby hillfort of Woodbury Castle to the east. Magic show nine barows on this site, on this visit I could only see two. The more westerly of them was a low bowl covered in bracken.
The most curious was a low round shape with a large sarsen on top of it. I haven’t seen this listed anywhere else, this stone is not local, this is heathland with sand and gravel pits on it. Also it’s on top of a hill, so someone had to lug it up here. I’m really not sure if this is ancient or not, caution is needed and more information/research is necessary to find out if this stone is modern or a genuine megalith. I have seen this stone refered to as the “Devil’s stone” and it was reputed to have been 11 feet in height in the past.

This seldom visited and moderately small Iron Age fort sits on the end of a promentary on the escarpment beneath the Ridgeway to the South and overlooking the plains around Swindon to the North. The nearest village is Wroughton about 3 miles East and the more famous Barbury Castle hill fort is about 3.5 miles away to the South-East. It can be reached by taking the A4361 South (Swindon to Avebury) then taking the turning to the right after passing the entrance to the Science Museum at Wroughton Airfield (on your left). There are limited places to park near Quidhampton Wood but it’s only about a miles walk through fantastic beech woods till you come out at this amazing site with steep valleys on both sides and staggering views all around. Touchingly romantic and you only have to share it with a few cows.

[From a comment posted by A R Cane]

In their wonderful book, Malta Prehistory and Temples, David Trump describes Wied Filep Dolmens as being “the most accessible” and as having “one of the biggest capstones” accessible and biggest, yeh, my kind of words.
Trump doesn’t lie when he states that Weid Filep is accessible, it’s right beside the road, trouble is you have to find the road. I spent a good part of half an hour driving in and around Mosta before I found the Dolmens. My tip is this, find the wadi on the outskirts of Mosta and head east along the road that parallels the steep valley. Take a look over your left shoulder and you should see a fort on the opposite hillside. Now wind your window down and listen. You should be able to hear the sound of dogs barking. So if you can see the sea, the fort and the wadi and hear the dogs then you are ‘in the zone’. The noise of the dogs barking is coming from the fort which is the Maltese police dog pound.
The dolmen are situated on the edge of Mosta and can be found on a raised limestone platform beside the road. The monuments have been walled-in presumably to protect them.
There are two dolmen , they are both sat on the same limestone exposure and it is possible to see how the stone has been quarried from behind the dolmen to create the large capstones. Trump states that the largest of the pair is 3.8m from end to end.
As impressive as the dolmen were it’s the setting that grabbed me. The dolmen are sat on a hillside overlooking a wadi with the beautiful Mediterranean Sea in the distance. A modern addition to this view is a huge limestone quarry, I guess some people could see this as an abomination but for me it’s just another sign of continuity of the use of the beautiful Maltese limestone. Only the scale has changed.

Buggibba/Quara is a typical Mediterranean tourist town. It has developed in a strip along the sea shore overlooking St Pauls Bay. The temple is in the grounds of a hotel called the New Dolmen. I drove up and down the seafront looking for this hotel but was unable to find it. I eventually parked the car and walked along the sea front. The hotel faces the sea but doesn’t open out onto the shore side road, its quite easy to find, just look for the biggest, ugliest hotel on the strip, and then march on in through the glass, marble and gold foyer, through the bar and out onto a patio area where you’ll find all of the usual suspects laying around the pool on their sun beds oblivious to the Megalithic wonder in their midst.

The temple has been incorporated into the hotel grounds and on the day I visited it was being used as a sanctuary/hangout for teenagers escaping from their over-oiled, overweight, g-string be-decked parents. The uprights and lintel of the temple entrance are present and give the temple an air of authenticity, but apart from that there are a number of low walls and a few large stones but it is difficult to visualise what the original structure must have looked like from these meagre remains.

It’s worth thinking about the closeness of the sea and the role it may have played in the choice of site for the temple builders. The sea is only a couple of dozen yards away from the temple. This part of the bay forms a natural harbour within a harbour. The view to the North West is interesting as it looks over to Saint Paul’s island and the coast beyond. This may be significant to the location of the temple when you consider that the wonderful temples of Hagar Qim and Mnajdra also overlook an island. However the temple entrance is orientated to face inland (south-south-west). This view is completely obscured by the hotel and town. Another indicator that the sea may be linked to this temple is the lintel stone with carved fish along it. The stone was discovered during the excavation of the temple and is now on display in the museum in Valletta.

Chun Quoit is a place i visit as reguarly as possible, my first being around 10 years ago at the tender age of 7/8 years.
It is a beautiful place, peaceful and quiet.
recently i walked up over Kenijack Moor, past the Hooting Carn and crossing the road headed up the hill towards Chun Quoit.
As i approached, the top of the Comlech stood out in silhouette against the lightening sky, the sun was just beginning to slowly make its way towards the horizon.
As i drew closer, the view took my breath away, as it always does, away over fields, rough heather and gorse, down towards the sparkling sea. I stood for a moment and took in the atmosphere, the sun has sped up now and is turning the clouds pink and gold, a beautiful sunset in the making.
I took a few moments to walk around the Quoit, noticing new details from the last time i was here.
I stop again as i finish a full circle, the light is becoming more golden by the minute, i take out my sketch pad and quickly sketch in the basic tonal values for reference later, thinking all the while that i’ll never be able to capture the essence and atmosphere on paper anyway!
I finish drawing and sit watching the sun finish its descent, the breeze is getting up and is getting cooler, two birds fly over, late home, calling as they go.
it is getting cold now, i turn, take one last look, and start on the long walk home.

From Port William head out on the A747 toward Monreith for about a mile or so and Barsalloch point is hard to miss. This is a Historic Scotland site and as such comes complete with small car park, info board and neatly trimmed steps to the fort itself but is well worth inspection if you are in the area. The fort has steep natural defences on the coastal side and two substantial horseshoe shaped ramparts and deep ditch to landward. The fort commands outstanding sea views on a good day and is an excellent spot to sit a while.

Car parking is available at the Laggan Wolftrax centre. Leaving the car park head toward Laggan Bridge along the main road for a few hundred yards. Just after passing a row of white Forestry Commission cottages on your left you will see a forestry track leading up towards Black Craig follow this as it winds up the hill to the fort (it is signposted). Of the fort itself there is some impressive walling still standing and plenty of stuff for the imagination, although the up-down nature of the inside of the fort is a bit harder to get to grips with. The best bit, as with all hill forts is the view and Dun-Da-Lamh is no exception.

Just before the summer I went to a talk given by Professor O’Brien on the prehistory of the Dunmanway area. While the first half of his presentation was a steady trot around the expected topic, he spent the rest of the time speaking about his excavation at Clashanimud, a townland that he ventured to translate as ‘the trench of the timber’. It’s possible that some folk memory remained into historic times of this massive wooden construction.

I’ve included the newpaper report from August in the miscellaneous section below, as a reasonable summary of his findings. On visiting the site myself in early June I found access to be easy, with a parking spot just up the hill from the entrance at the eastern side.

On the SS133 from Palau, about 3km west of the town and about 1.5km from the junction of the SS133 and SP123, there’s a turn down the side of the Vecchia Gallura restaurant signposted “zona archeologica”.

TME mentions a sign to “Tomba di Gigante S’Aiacciu” which later turns into a sign for “Li Mizzani” – these are in fact two separate tombas. See palau.it/tombe.html.

To get to Li Mizzani, it’s about 4km from the main road – take the left fork as signposted, and go uphill, then downhill, then uphill again – carefully! It’s narrow and winding, and precipitous in places, and you’ll be needing first gear!

Eventually we found the sign to the right to the tomba, and parked there to walk down the slope and through the gate, to the left away from the church, and through another gate – where we found quite a few parked cars. It’s about 350 metres in total from the signpost to the tomba.

Through a small gate, then to the left a few paces .... well, we obviously weren’t going to get the place to ourselves, as we’d had at many of our other stops, but we weren’t expecting it to be quite so busy!

Maybe a Saturday thing, maybe an equinox thing, maybe just local custom ...

There were a couple of people laid out on one side of the funeral corridor, one laid in the corridor itself with his head through the portal in the stele, and people sat either side of the stele; as more people arrived, they formed a queue sat on the bench seat around the esedra.

Someone asked if I wanted to join the queue – but I just wanted to take photos and wasn’t entirely sure what was going on. Beardy meanwhile sat quietly right at the far side of the esedra. Every so often, the person under the portal would move on, and the next in the queue would take their place – all had come prepared with roll mats or doss bags to lie on.

Beardy was convinced the lady sat waiting was giving him the evil eye and, being unable to check out the tomb properly, we didn’t stay over long. A strange experience – still, interesting to see the site being used for something.

Not much to add in the way of fieldnotes, except to say that Merrick’s bluestone is probably the spotted dolerite type. Above the tomb is ankle-breaking rock and heather, the view is of course magnificent. I walked up from the lane, along the path past a small derelict schoolhouse. Glyn Daniel who gave the name ‘earthfast’ to this localised crop of tombs, goes on to say that they come from the sub-megalithic group which existed in western France, Wales and Ireland; he plays around with terms such as primary, demi-dolmen, or half-dolmen. They do seem original ‘cave’ tombs, giving them a somewhat primitive feel. But like Carn Llidi tombs they hide themselves from view in a jumble of rocks and are often difficult to find.
Not far from here are are the Garn Wen tombs, there are three in a row (SM 948 390) sadly you won’t be able to find them for they are covered safely in a thick vegetation of nettles and brambles.
Safely, because they back on to council housing, and the area in front of the cromlechs is used for a motorcycle track and tipping.
At Garn Wynda I had jammed the car key in the door lock but deciding not to panic had managed to work out how to unjam and vowed there and then NEVER to lock the car. Arriving at the council estate I asked the road sweeper, how to get onto the coast path, giving me instructions he warned me not to leave anything in the car and to lock securely (did not). But coming back to the car three children who had been watching me intently, yelled back to their mother, ‘Mum she’s back in her car‘
So if you really want to find these three take a sickle. ;)

It’s well hidden in the greenery at the top of the outcrop overlooking the village and tomba. So well hidden, you can barely make it out. But peering through the bushes, you can see bits of its walls, and right on the top of the peak, climbing through the undergrowth, we found a way into the short-due-to-landslides corridor of the nuraghe.

The path from the tomba leads you into a wooded area – and then all of a sudden, there’s the village.

A collection of recently excavated huts, with some impressive sizeable chunks of stone being used in their construction, are on the lower part of the slope, and climbing further up, we found a tower – now know to be the southerly one of two.

If anyone is up at Black Howes in the coming months, please note that heather burning has rendered the main mound truly black (and howe), along with half of the second mound. The structures are, as a result, much clearer than I’ve seen them before, and more kerbstones are evident. Interesting stones are also newly in view on the small burnt-off area south and west of the Howes.

The tomba reminded me, mainly due to its state of preservation, of Moru, the first one we’d visited. There’s no stele, and no capstones; the tallest stone, at the entrance to the funeral corridor, is probably no more than 60cm high. But it does give a really good idea of the foundations and structure of a tomba.

There’s a post and rail fence around it, but gates are provided.

This site is signposted off the SP90 from Santa Teresa to Capo Testa, with a left turn taking you away from the cape into the Santa Reparata area. Down the winding road, and then at the cross roads you are directed to the left – then a T head with no signpost. We went right initially, and rather than wander aimlessly, I pulled up and used one of my stock phrases I know I need to learn any language.

“Scusi, io non parlo Italiano. Dove è la tomba di gigante, per favore?”

Hand gestures and the phrase “non-asphalto” informed us that we need to turn round as we should have gone left, and up the hill, and then taken the track to the site.

We did this, and 180 metres or so from the main road, we looked at the left fork we should take, and decided to park and walk – of course seeing a few cars stopped further down the bumpy and sandy track. Just over 400 metres later, we spotted the concrete roof of some strange building on the left, and took a track to the right towards the tomba.

Free and open access to the area – no facilities.

On the SS133 about 2km north of Tempio.

There’s a large car park on the main road by the signpost, though it is possible to drive up the track and park at the site itself.

There’s a cafe and toilets (50 cent coin required, with proper disabled facilites), and slides and a roundabout for kids. The walk from the ticket hut (tickets 2½ euros each including an information leaflet and loan of a big torch!) has been thoughtfully laid out as a nature trail with the plants labelled, and wide steps or a gentle slope to reach the nuraghe itself.

It’s set on a granite outcrop, and shows both styles of nuraghe building – the corridor and tholos.

Through the ESE orientated entrance into the corridor, there are tholos rooms on either side. Both are dark, but we’d been loaned a powerful torch, and there was another one left just inside the entrance (which has an impressive lintel); the room to the left has a niche, and we found a colony of bats resting there.

Along the corridor and up some stairs takes you to a semi circular room open to the sky, with further stairs to the left leading up to the terrace level, where there’s the remains of another room, with storage silo, and fantastic views where you can spot if you know where to look many other nuraghe in the locality.

On the SS127 about 5km east of Tempio, and directly opposite a sign “Nuchis 1”, is the signposted turn to Pascaredda. Follow the track over the unmaned railway crossing and keep to the left fork as signposted. About 800m from the main road, there’s a large parking area, but we took the sharp right turn before it, and parked 250m or so further on, just before the riverlet mentioned in TME (OK for small cars, and there’s space to turn round just past the stream).

Free and open access.

We strolled up the path, with buzzing of thousands of insects filling our ears and butterflies and dragonflies flitting around, over the bridge and to the rear of the tomb.

A stunning spot! The trees are cork oaks and had had their bark stripped for the autumn harvest. Of the stele, only the bottom half is left; the 10 slabs on either side mark out the esedra, and a missing capstone lets you climb into the funeral corridor itself, and the sides of the corridor are buried with the earth bank rather than being exposed stone as we’d seen at other sites.

Again the granite had a pink tinge as we’d seen at Coddu Vecchiu and at the back of the funeral corridor, there’s a shelf, as we’d seen at Li Lolghi.

We visited and photographed this site on the 21st of September 2007 and couldn’t have had a better start of Autumn.
The stone, probably not in situ, lies along the most eastern bend in the Highburn, just opposite Highburn House camp site, west of Wooler.
Humbleton Hill makes a nice décor for this stray find.

I was half way between Carnedd Rhys Goch and Tomen y Gwyddel when a farmer turned up in his Land Rover (Groooan). He started off with the obligatory “hey what you doin the path is over there” but when I told him what I was doing he soon warmed up and even gave me a lift on the back of the 4wd cowboy style (which was fun) over to the cairn . Apparently someone from some such place came just a week ago ? He laughed when I told him I was into stones and ancient places, and proceeded to lament the modern farmers lot (Diddums)
The cairn was like he said” not much to look at” half a metre tall partly grass covered and over shadowed by a small plantation.
The funny thing about the place were the half dozen or so standing stones built into or next to the fences .
Most perplexing.

There is only one way to get here as the road ends at the bottom of the valley. Through the small village of Pandy and look out for a carpark on the right. Walk up the small lane that bends to the left and keep going till it turns into a footpath. the cairn can be seen from a distance due to the pillar of stones on it. There are at least four big stones on it’s circumfrence . 75 yards to the N.W is a small standing stone, both stone and cairn are said to be associated with the poet Rhys Goch.

L’Elefante is exactly what it says it is, an elephant or at least an elephant shaped rock. If you approach it from the north it is an upright elephant and from the south it is an elephant sitting down either way it is unmistakably an elephant. I had passed this rock a few days before and dismissed it as a tourist curiosity, one of hundreds of bizarrely-shaped rocks that litter the island.

Two things changed my mind about this, one was the road sign which said Domus de Janus and the second was a brief reference in Margaret Guido’s excellent ‘Sardinia’ book.
L’Elephante couldn’t be easier to visit as it is on the kerbside next to a major road; there is also a handy lay-by opposite the rock. The rock is perched on the margins of the road on a hillside overlooking the coastal plain from Castelsardo to the north, the views are beautiful and include a nice view of the Nuraghe su Tesoru.

To tell you the truth I wasn’t expecting too much from this site but what a shock I got. The rock itself reminded me of a large red cinder, there’s that colour again!, but it wasn’t until I got up close to it that I realised that there were a number of chambers carved into it, I was even more surprised when I climbed through one of the carved portals into the chambers and was confronted by two great crescents carved into the walls of the chambers.

One thing I should warn you about is that you have to run the gauntlet of a group of old men selling tourist trinkets at the side of the road, there is even a man with a donkey, donkey rides on a main road?..hmmm No grazie. Two things struck me about the hawkers, one, they seemed to be mainly selling knives, two, none of them would have looked out of place in the Godfather part 2, wrong island I know but that’s how they looked, all that was missing were the shotguns.

If you are travelling around the north of the island I would definitely recommend that you call in on L’Elefante. The nearby medieval seaside town of Castelsardo is very picturesque and a good place to stop and have a drink and something to eat.

The name means ‘Red Angel’. This ‘red’ thing is starting to nag at me.
The site was discovered in 1903 by a workers quarrying the local sandstone. 37 tombs have so far been discovered’ almost all of the literature uses the words ‘so far’. The site is well signposted and situated next to main road. There is a car park and an entry fee is required.

All there is to see when you enter the site is a low grassy hill surrounded by rich farmland and close to a large river, the Riu Filberta. This area is known as Fertilia. The remains of the quarry are visible along with a few loose rocks and one small standing stone. The locations of the tomb entrances are given away by little information boards above each tomb. The board tells you the tomb number, gives a plan of the tomb and provides you with a little information about the tomb. The tombs have been dated by the finds discovered within them to the Oziere culture of approximately 3300-2800BC. The tombs were later reused by different cultures including the Beaker culture.

I’m not sure if you are allowed to climb down into the tombs. I couldn’t see a sign prohibiting it so I crawled through a number of them. Crawling through the chambers was a little scary, some of the chambers had props supporting the ceilings so I tended to avoid these, I also tried not to think about the dead snake my son had found the previous day. I was unable to stand up in any of the chambers; which to me would indicate that they were not used for ritual activity on a regular basis. The chambers did not seem to follow a uniform layout.
“In plan the tombs naturally vary, but not infrequently a large burial chamber with smaller chambers radiating from it is reached by a long passage sloping down from the entrance steps: the passage too may have chambers leading off it. Others are much simpler. The chamber themselves may be oval or rectangular in plan, and have round or flat ceilings”. Sardinia. M.Guido

One common feature of the tombs and chambers was the rectangular door with the carved recess; which was also a feature of L’Elefante and reminded me at the time of carved entrances I’d seen in Maltese temples. Many of the doors also had a carved lintel. In one of the tombs there were carved stone pillars which I presume were there as architectural feature rather than structural supports. In another tomb, whose roof had collapsed, was a carved bed. The lintels, pillars and carved bed lead you to think that design of the tombs may have reflected features found in the houses of the Ozerei people who created the tombs.

There are two sets of carvings that make this site really special. One is a set of carvings depicting 5 Bulls heads ,or protomi turine, situated above the entrance to a tomb with a 6th on an adjacent wall. The second set of carvings is within tomb XXVII. This carving consists of a pair of crescents over a set of concentric circles enclosed within a rectangular box; there are two of these carvings facing each other on opposing walls. There is much speculation as to the meaning of these carvings, the depiction of bulls heads outside of one of the tombs strengthens the arguments that these carvings are stylised versions of the bulls head and are linked to a bull cult others suggest that they may represent high–prowed ships. Unfortunately my camera packed up as I was photographing this carving so the images I have are a little rough.

When the tombs were excavated they yielded many grave goods including metal axes, beads, marble idols and many other objects, the most interesting of which to me, was a flat axe and an awl that were found to have come from the British Isles, probably Ireland.
Anghelu Ruju is a beautiful site and well worth a visit.

This site was on the top of my list of Sardinian sites to visit. Who could resist a site that has been described as ‘one of the most puzzling and interesting monuments in Sardinia’, ‘the only Ziggurat in the Mediterranean’ and ‘an important monument to megalithic architecture unique to the western world’? A Ziggurat is defined as a “temple tower, either stepped in tiers or spiral, symbolizing the mountain peak where the gods dwelt and where the skies met with the earth.” Ziggurats are thought to represent a cosmic axis, a bridge between heaven and earth.

To reach the site I once again had to drive across the top of the island. I managed to get through Porto Torres without losing my wing mirrors or enraging the locals and found myself heading towards Sassari. You know how it is when you’re driving along the road and all of a sudden you pass the place you need to be? Well this is what happened to me. The site entrance is situated on the busy 131 dual carriageway, I had managed to find the site but I then spent 20 frustrating minutes trying to back-track on myself. I don’t know how many Sardinian traffic laws I broke but after a period of frenzied driving, which took me into the outskirts of Sassari, I managed to get to finally get to the site.

There is a car park and a site reception/ticket office. Once you’ve purchased your ticket you walk along a long path to the site. I had driven for two and a half hours to reach Monte Accoddi; my level of anticipation was so high that I almost ran down the path to the site, definitely a case of ‘mad dogs and Englishmen’. After passing through a set of gates you enter the site from the south and walk along the eastern side of the monument. The man in the ticket office told me to report to the guide, so I headed down to the porta cabins at the bottom of the site.

When I arrived at the cabins the guide was showing an Italian couple around a small exhibition so I waited patiently and used the time to look at the surrounding landscape to see if I could spot any distinctive landmarks. The day I visited was extremely hot and the heat haze had reduced visibility. All I can really say about the surrounding landscape is that the monument is situated on a flat fertile plain with mountains in the far distance. The guide finished with her Italian couple so I asked her if I could look around the site. Her English was quite poor but 100% better than my Italian. She managed to explain to me that I was welcome to walk around the site as I pleased but I couldn’t walk up to the platform of the monument as there was work taking place. Nay problems!

The monument itself is stunning, although the site itself could do with a good tidying-up. Basically you have a rectangular platform of 36 x 30m aligned north-south and faced with a dry stone wall construction using large, un-worked, limestone rocks, this is then surmounted by a smaller, three stepped, platform faced with smaller, more closely packed stones also in a dry stone construction. There is a 30m long, trapeze-shaped, ramp that leads from the south to the first stage and then a set of 14 steps leads you to the top platform. The top platform is 9-10m higher than the surrounding land. The site faces north and I am told that on a good day you can see the coast and the Golfo Dell Ainara from the top.

My first impression of the monument when looking up from the base of the ramp was “bloody ‘ell, it looks like a ziggurat”, not that I’d ever seen one in the flesh. My second impression was of the asymmetry of the structure, with the ramp leading up the right hand side. On closer examination I realised that the right hand side of the top platform had been destroyed.

When I first saw a picture of Monte Accoddi, I was stunned by the sight of a large, cup marked boulder. Having stood at the foot of the monument and taken in it’s size I made a beeline for the boulder. There are two boulders, one large, one small and both cup marked. The larger boulder is cracked, two ideas immediately came to mind, an omphalos and the cosmic egg. I sort of discarded the omphalos idea due to the stones position in relation to the monument and the fact that there were two stones, I guess you can’t really have two omphalos (what’s the pleural of omphalos?) in the same place. The egg idea lingered. There are a number of creation myths around the world that feature the cosmic egg, the seed from which the world was born. Another idea that came to mind was that there were two stones here, one substantially larger than the other. The larger stone is a reddish colour the smaller one whitish grey. Could they represent the sun and the moon? I love days like this.

I eventually managed to tear myself away from the boulders to have a mooch around the rest of the site. A little further along the eastern side of the monument is an amazing large flat stone known as the sacrificial table. The stone has a number of perforations around it’s margins which could only have been man- made. It is these perforations that have led people to suppose that they were used to tether the living sacrifices to the stone. I don’t know whether any evidence of sacrifice has been found but the stone could certainly accommodate a fairly hefty victim, man or beast.
From the stone I carried on around the margins of the monument where there is ample evidence of other buildings in the form of low walls.

The rear of the monument is a good place to have a look at how the monument was constructed with most of the stonework still intact, there is also a small ramp. However this is also the area that lets the site down badly. It is being used as a dump for construction materials and debris.

Whilst I was looking at the small exhibition in the site cabins I noticed a picture and illustration of a carved stone that had been interpreted to be a crude carving of a female figure, possibly a goddess. I had presumed that this stone had been carted off to Sassari Museum for safe keeping. I was deeply shocked and saddened to find this stone lurking amongst a pile of large drainage pipes and site rubbish. The stone was cracked and chipped in two places and the cracks looked recent. I later mentioned this to the site guide but she just shrugged.

The western side also has evidence of structures surrounding the main monument and to balance the sacrificial stone, on the eastern side of the ramp, is a large standing stone. Whilst looking at the stone I was struck by the strange asymmetry of the monument and wondered if the standing stone, sacrificial table and ‘egg’ had some form of alignment or were just placed there with little or no thought of their symmetrical relationship to the ramp and the main monument. Perhaps this trio of stones predated the monument. The standing stone itself is beautiful, it is made of limestone and has a number of large holes caused by weathering, these holes have been occupied by snails who have secreted a sort of natural concrete which partially fills many of the smaller holes.

I conclude my circumnavigation of the site back at the base of the ramp. Unfortunately I wasn’t allowed to walk up the ramp to the platform but to be honest with you I didn’t mind. I didn’t need to climb to the top of the platform to understand that this site was extremely special and unique. There are elements of the site that suggest that the early Sardinians may have been influenced by the cultures of the near and Middle East.

If you are lucky enough to visit Sardinia I would recommend that place this site on the top of your list. The discovery sort of the broken carved stone put a bit of a damper on my visit to Monte Accoddi.

Monte Accoddi is a world class archaeological site, and from what I saw, it deserves to be treated with a lot more respect that it is currently receiving. Happily this is not the case with the other Sardinian sites I had visited. They had all been well cared for and many were manned by enthusiastic and helpful guides.