Jane

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.

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!

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).

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

It’s just by the main road north of Sassari – this surely was a beacon of a place that every traveller in this corner of the island would have known in ancient times.

Just our luck then, that when we arrived, it was closed for maintenance – mostly strimming. But there was no way we were going to go away, so we promised the foreman we’d just walk around it. Of course once he’d driven off to get his lunch, we legged it up onto the top flat stony platform perhaps 10 metres from ground level.

I was so impressed with it. I thought of some of the world’s greatest step pyramids – Tikal in Guatemala and Saqqara in Egypt, though it was smaller and less steeply sided than both. Perhaps it started at a simple sacred stone platform, like the marae of the South Pacific, and was added to over the generations. It certainly looked like a monument which has been successively improved and added to over the ages – the massive square cut stele next to the sloping approach ramp, the flatcapped dolmen in the ‘moat’ area and that crazy bonkers mad pockmarked cosmic egg... (actually more of a giant lemon) all hinted at a place in use over many, many centuries, with additions made in memory perhaps of battles, new gods, revered leaders and so on.

There is so much here to ponder and I absolutely loved it.

I do like rock cut tombs. So it was inevitable that the necropolis of Anghelu Ruju, not far from Alghero airport, would thrill me. I didn’t really know what I’d be faced with as I entered this unassuming flat field, today sizzling in the afternoon sun; but I certainly didn’t expect quite such richness, variety, ingenuity and technical rock-cutting wizardry on such a whopping and obsessive scale.

All the tombs here, and there are more than 26 of them opened up in an area no bigger than a football field, are cut directly in the rock underfoot, sculpted with slopey-down entrance passages to reach the first of (often) many small burial chambers. Further chambers morph off from each other to create a rambling honeycomb of cells and passages connected by square cut openings just wide enough for person to squeeze through. Some traces of decorative carvings remain; bull’s heads, false lintels, circles and in one particularly large tomb two supporting pillars have been carved.

I imagined the paintings that I felt sure that must once have graced the walls of these cells – images of totemic animals, zigzags, stripes, and wiggly lines perhaps symbolizing water or light, stylised bulls, round discs signifying the sun, the moon and stars perhaps, rendered in ochres and umbers. It seems inconceivable that these tombs weren’t decorated.

How many more of these subterranean rock cut tombs are yet to be discovered? My best guess is ‘lots’ and they’re almost certainly not far away.

Fitz’s detailed description (below) says more than I possibly can.

If you go to Sardinia, this is a ‘must see’. In fact go to Sardinia just to see it. Budget airlines now go to Alghero.

This naturally occurring rock stands quite alone at the roadside.

We wondered if the locals had chipped bits off through the ages to make it appear more like a pachyderm. Whether it was the locals or if it was from the hand of the Great Sculpture in the Sky, they’d made a very good job because the elephantness is startling.

Ancient people also thought so, for there is evidence of this being a place they know and revered; square holes have been deeply carved into the base of it, perhaps for offerings.

It is now inhabited entirely by lizards. Watch out for the knife and tat salesmen in the layby.