Bithia

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Bithia coast

Bithia or Bitia was an ancient city on the south coast of the Italian island of Sardinia . She was mentioned by Pliny the Elder as Bitia and by Claudius Ptolemy as Bithia (Βιθία πόλις and Βιθία λιμήν).

The Phoenician foundation at the mouth of the small river with the current name Riu di Chia was inhabited for about 1100 years and was abandoned at the beginning of the 5th century. The few remains are below the medieval defense tower Torre di Chia , to the west of the tower between the beach Spiaggia della Colonia and the beach lake Stagno di Chia and on the island of Su Cardolinu in the east, just off the coast . The archaeological sites are located in the municipality of Domus de Maria on the Costa del Sud .

Research history

Location of the western necropolis
Grave goods from the necropolis

The location of Bithia was only in 1933 by Antonio Taramelli based on the neopunischen inscription Byt'n ( vocalized Bitan the temple of God) Bes below the Torre di Chia are identified that from the time of the Roman Emperor Caracalla comes. Before that, the sea had exposed parts of the Phoenician-Punic necropolis west of the tower on today's Sa Colonia beach during a storm in 1926 . Farmers found considerable amounts of ancient artifacts .

After the owner of the area, Count Piercy di Alliata, carried out excavations himself, he announced the discovery of the Soprintendenza alle Antichità , which was directed by Antonio Taramelli. The first investigations of the western necropolis took place from 1928 to 1932. In addition, a part of the Roman settlement and the Bes temple was discovered north of the Torre di Chia , in which a statue of the god from the late Punic period was found, which is now in the museum in Cagliari.

In the early 1950s, further excavations took place under the direction of Gennaro Pesce, who also included Taramelli's investigations in his publications. Further work in Bithia was carried out by Michel Gras, Gianni Tore and Ferruccio Barreca. In 1964, the territory was explored ( survey ) in collaboration with Giuseppe Lai, Vittorio Pispisa and Antonio Zara. They examined the archaeological remains on the small island of Su Cardolinu east of the Torre di Chia .

Because of the construction of a residential complex, an emergency excavation was carried out on the beach of Sa Colonia under Giuseppe Lai in 1974 . This was followed by several excavation campaigns in the Phoenician-Punic necropolis from 1976 to 1983 by the Soprintendenza Archeologica of the provinces of Cagliari and Oristano under the direction of Antonio Zara. They led to the identification of over 200 burials behind the beach area.

history

The area of ​​the settlement of Chia , on the coast of which Bithia was located, was already inhabited by humans during the Nuragic culture . This is indicated by prehistoric buildings such as the nuraghi complex Su Nuraxi de Baccu Idda , which is located about 1.8 kilometers from the coast in the interior of the island. From 1000 BC Phoenician ships landed more and more frequently on their trade routes in the western Mediterranean on the coasts of Sardinia, initially to protect against storms or to stay overnight. With the permission of the local tribal leaders, the first settlements were established, of which Karalis ( Cagliari ), Nora , Bithia, Sulki , Tharros , Bosa , Turris ( Porto Torres ) and Olbia were the most important. They quickly became important trading centers for the Phoenicians, who also exchanged goods with the Nuragic Sardinians.

The foundation of the Phoenician Bithia goes back to the last quarter of the 8th century BC. When the first settlement arose on the promontory of the Torre di Chia . The oldest finds, including an Etruscan double spiral, date from this period . The decisive factor for the choice of the location was the existence of an isolated hill at an estuary surrounded by the sea. It was easy to defend and the river provided a good landing point for ships and access to the interior of the island.

Spiaggia Su Portu beach with the estuary to the east and Su Cardolinu island

Since the development of the settlement was closely linked to the port at the mouth of the Spiaggia Su Portu beach , it is likely, but not verifiable, that it was formed during the first phase of colonization. Some nuragic graves in the necropolis indicate close contacts with the local population. A larger number of new residents settled in the second half of the 7th century BC. In Bithia, whose necropolis was a little further away from the Torre de Chia . Weapons as grave goods testify to the presence of warriors. Frequent conflicts between the colonists and the native nuragans cannot be deduced from this.

Su Cardolinu island with sand bank as access

In the last quarter of the 7th century BC A tofet , an open-air sanctuary, was built on the island of Su Cardolinu, east of the river mouth, just off the coast . Here, the remains of stillbirths cremated in clay pots or of children who died in the first years of life were buried in crevices in the rock. The urn pots were covered with a plate or a bowl and protected with stone slabs. This practice of child burial ended with the Punic conquest of Bithias, which took place in the second half of the 6th century BC. Is dated.

"Box-like" grave on the Spiaggia della Colonia beach

From 540 to 510 BC The North African trading metropolis Carthage tried to get Sardinia under their control. During this time there were clashes between the increasingly numerous Phoenician colonists and the native Nuraghi. The conquest of Bithia by the Punians was followed by a temporary occupation of the territory. This manifests itself in some typical North African, so-called "box-like" graves made of large stones. The dominion of the Punians was mainly concentrated in the south and west of Sardinia. The unoccupied mountainous northeast of the island was later called Barbària or Barbagia . The numerically not very significant Punic presence in Bithia lasted until the second quarter of the 5th century BC. From the middle of the century no graves or other remains are known, which speaks for the presence of only a few residents or the abandonment of the settlement.

Remnants of the peribolus

Gradually there was a Punic resettlement from North Africa. On Su Cardolino was created in the first half of the 4th century BC. In the place of the Phoenician Tofets a sanctuary with Peribolos . The remains of these buildings can be seen on the northwest side or at the north end of the island. A structure in the middle of Su Cardolino can hardly be seen how humanly worked it. In contrast, the coastal road from Karalis and Nora via Bithia to Tegula and Sulki, which passed north of the island, is still used today as a hiking and cycling path on the section from Pinus Village to Chia. It is known as strada romana because it was developed in Roman times.

The period from the 6th to the 4th century BC Chr. Was marked by the conflict Carthage with the Greek colonies in the western Mediterranean, such as Massalia (Μασσαλία), Nikaia (Νίκαια), Alalia (Ἀλαλίη) and Syracuse (Συρακοῦσαι). At the sea ​​battle of Alalia (between 540 and 535 BC) the Punians were allied with the Etruscans from mainland Italy. After several defeats in the 5th century BC BC, both Carthage in Sicily and the Etruscans on the mainland, several treaties (see first , second and third Carthaginian-Roman treaty ) delimited the spheres of interest between Carthage and the emerging Roman Republic . However, a conflict in Sicily led to the first Punic War , which ended with the defeat of Carthage and, including the subsequent mercenary war, weakened the city considerably. This made it possible for the Romans in 238 BC. BC to occupy Sardinia as well as Corsica. Carthage gave up the island and was after two further wars against Rome in 146 BC. Chr. Destroyed.

Remains of the wall of the Acropolis
Bes statue from Bithia

Unlike the cities of Caralis, Nora and Sulci, Bithia does not seem to have achieved great importance in the Roman province of Sardinia et Corsica . Parts of the Roman settlement were discovered on the north-western slopes of the hill on which the Torre di Chia now stands on the remains of the Acropolis of Bithia. They are dated to the 3rd and 4th centuries AD. Even from this area, only 8% of the fragments are identified as Roman, compared to 58% as Phoenician-Punic (with 24% unidentified and 10% mixed finds). This is also where the Temple of Bes stood, whose late Punic statue of God and Neopunean inscription from the time of the Roman Emperor Caracalla (211–217 AD) indicate that Punic was still present in Bithia under the rule of Rome. The place seems to have had a certain autonomy and to have been ruled by sufets in Punic tradition.

The decline of Bithia went hand in hand with the decline of the Roman Empire . At the end of the 4th century or in the early years of the 5th century AD, economic structures deteriorated gradually and then very quickly. After the sack of Rome in 455, the Vandals occupied Caralis and the rest of the Sardinian coastal cities in 456. Whether Bithia still existed at that time can no longer be determined. In the 16th century, the limestone blocks of the Bithias Acropolis were used to build the Torre di Chia to protect the Sardinian coast from pirate attacks from the barbarian states of North Africa. Today the settlement of Chia on the site of the old Bithia is a holiday resort in which there is hardly any evidence of settlement in antiquity.

  • Archaeological site of Bithia

  • "Chapel" on Su Cardolinu

  • Acropolis stairs

  • Walls of the Acropolis

  • Parts of the necropolis

literature

Phoenician pottery from the necropolis of Bithia
  • Piero Bartoloni: La necropoli di Bitia - I (=  Collezione di Studi Fenici . No. 38 ). Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Rome 1996 (Italian, digitized ).
  • Giovanni Tore, Michel Gras: Di alcuni reperti dall'antica Bithia (Torre di Chia-Sardegna) . In: Mélanges de l'école française de Rome. Antiquité . tape 88 , no. 1 , 1976, ISSN  0223-5102 , pp. 51–94 (Italian, digitized ).
  • Hans-Georg Niemeyer : Bitia. In: The New Pauly (DNP). Volume 2, Metzler, Stuttgart 1997, ISBN 3-476-01472-X , Sp. 703.
  • Giovanna De Murtas (Ed.): Guida Archeologica della Provincia di Cagliari . Carlo Delfino editore, Sassari 2010, p. 14–15 (Italian, digitized [PDF; 905 kB ]).
  • Carlotta Bassolini, Fabio Nieddu, Stella Santamaria, Roberto Sirigu: Nuove ricerche a Bithia (Domus de Maria). La ricognizione archeologica . In: Quaderni . No. 24/2013 , 2013, ISSN  2284-0834 , p. 283-302 (Italian, digitized ).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Pliny the Elder , Naturalis historia 3.85 ( online ).
  2. ^ Claudius Ptolemy , Geographike Hyphegesis 3,3,3 ( online ).
  3. ↑ a b c Piero Bartoloni: La necropoli di Bitia - I (=  Collezione di Studi Fenici . No. 38 ). Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Rome 1996, p. 25–27 (Italian, digitized ).
  4. ↑ Francesco Cesare Casula: The History of Sardinia . Carlo Delfino, Sassari 2000, ISBN 978-88-7138-325-5 , pp. 11-12 (Italian).
  5. ↑ a b c Mauro Salis: Pula and surroundings . Patrimonio culturale Sardegna, Cagliari 2011, p. 12-13 .
  6. ↑ a b c d e f Piero Bartoloni: La necropoli di Bitia - I (=  Collezione di Studi Fenici . No. 38 ). Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Rome 1996, p. 29–31 (Italian, digitized ).
  7. ↑ a b c d Michele Guirguis: C'era una volta BITHIA. Focus Sardegna, accessed October 8, 2017 (Italian).
  8. ^ A b Francesco Cesare Casula: The history of Sardinia . Carlo Delfino, Sassari 2000, ISBN 88-7138-325-7 , pp. 12-16 (Italian).
  9. ↑ Lisa Dell, Petra Grom, Inés Richter: Hiking Guide Sardinia . 2nd Edition. Reise Know-How, Bielefeld 2016, p. 68 ( digitized version ).
  10. ^ Mauro Salis: Pula and surroundings . Patrimonio culturale Sardegna, Cagliari 2011, p. 37-38 .
  11. ↑ Carlotta Bassolini, Fabio Nieddu, Stella Santamaria, Roberto Sirigu: Nuove ricerche a Bithia (Domus de Maria). La ricognizione archeologica . In: Quaderni . No. 24/2013 , 2013, ISSN  2284-0834 , p. 299 (Italian, digitized ).
  12. ↑ Francesco Cesare Casula: The History of Sardinia . Carlo Delfino, Sassari 2000, ISBN 88-7138-325-7 , pp. 21 (Italian).
  13. ^ Domus de Maria, Torre di Chia. Regione Autonoma della Sardegna, 2017, accessed October 8, 2017 (Italian).
  14. ↑ Marco Puddu: Why not? L'archeologia scomoda . Pubblicazione Autoprodotta, 2017, p. 92-94 (Italian).

Web links

Commons : Bithia  - collection of images, videos and audio files
  • Gennaro Pesce: Bithia. In: Enciclopedia dell 'Arte Antica. Treccani, 1959, accessed October 8, 2017 (Italian).

Coordinates: 38 ° 54 '  N , 8 ° 53'  E