Bronze figures of the nuragic culture
The bronze figures of the nuragic culture ( Italian: bronzetto sardo or nuragico - Sardinian : brunzìttu sardu or nuraghesu ) were, according to the prevailing opinion, mostly between the 9th and 6th centuries BC. Newer theories suggest that the production of the bronze statuettes started much earlier. Around 500 of these up to 40 cm high statuettes have been found in Sardinia so far . 125 come from the well sanctuaries of Santa Vittoria near Serri , Forraxi Nioi and Abini near Teti , they were also found in graves, nuraghi , settlements and workshops.
How the art of bronze casting found its way to Sardinia using the lost wax technique is unclear. The Etruscans also made bronze figures at the same time. From the 14th century BC There were trade contacts with the eastern Mediterranean, especially with the Mycenaean culture of Greece and the copper-rich island of Cyprus . Sardinia was itself rich in copper , silver and lead .
- Bronze figures of the nuragic culture
Sardara
Sardara
Serri
Teti
Urzulei
According to current research, the figures were mainly used as votive offerings . Together with talismans, weapons and other bronze donations , they were placed in sanctuaries. They were often cast with lead in natural cracks in the rock or in holes drilled in stone blocks.
The representations
- Archers, javelin throwers and swordsmen with shields, superhuman warriors who are difficult to interpret with various armaments, greaves and horned helmets or caps from which beaver-tail-shaped rags hang forward.
- Men and women with pointy hats reminiscent of the clothing of Etruscan priests and older Anatolian models. Male figures with wide cloaks and shepherds' crooks, the right hand raised with a splayed thumb adoring. Ladies in long dresses often also with wide cloaks, similar to those of men.
- People who carry offerings. Women and men who serve bread or jars, carry a wicker basket on their head or a lamb on their shoulders or drive a beef in front of them. A mother holding the dead son in her arms, another who asks for recovery for her sick son, a healed person who holds up his unneeded crutch.
- Competitors like the famous wrestlers of Uta
- Musicians who play on two or three-part reed flutes, not unlike Sardinian musicians today on their " Benas " and " Launeddas ",
- Animal representations (foxes, dogs, deer, mouflons, cattle, pigs and wild boars. Extremely rare sheep or hybrid creatures like the enigmatic Centaur von Nule , who seems to live on in Sardinian folk tales as the evil, demonic bòemuliàke).
- Liturgical objects such as candlesticks, models of nuraghi and shrines as well as long, narrow votive swords, some with attached deer figures, which hide a deeper meaning.
- Miniature bronzes of everyday objects (axes, wicker baskets, jugs, etc.).
- Talismans , here the nuragic daggers or stilettos with kinked crossguards stand out.
- Ship models with ring eyelets for hanging and bull, ram or deer heads as bow figures. They are often richly decorated with birds and other animals.
Votive ships
Of the votive ships ( Italian Navicella nuragica ) mostly without cargo or with dogs and birds as well as a large bow figure, around 80 are known; 10 of them were found in Etruscan tombs on the Italian mainland. They are commonly found in the 8th or 7th century BC. Dated.
interpretation
The interpretation of the figures is very contradictory. However, similarities are unmistakable. It is noticeable that not only sacred objects, figures of gods, rulers or priests were made. The artists of the Barbaricino group in particular took great pleasure in portraying the common people, which was alien to the Phoenician and early Greek artists. This suggests that nuragic society was not aristocratic. Representations of women show that even within families, equality tended to prevail, whereas in the art and culture of the Phoenicians or Greeks, apart from goddesses, women played a minor role.
Styles
There are three different styles of characters:
- The statuettes of the aristocratic-looking Uta group, named after the main place where they were found on the Monti Arcosu near Uta, stand out with their cylindrical heads, board-shaped upper bodies, often slender limbs and almond-shaped eyes.
- The figures of the related Abini group, named after the sanctuary of Abini near Teti (in the Barbagia), are decorated in a more oriental-style and less rigorously traced back to basic geometric shapes - apart from the round eyes, which are also characteristic of the statues of Monte Prama .
- Popular statuettes made much more amateurishly like the victim. They impress with their naive presentation and occasionally look like caricatures. In order to interpret them as expressions of the people of the Barbagie of Central Sardinia, they are connected to the so-called Barbaricino group.
Barbaricino style on the one hand and Uta / Abini style on the other are plausible opposites, which still have to be proven, because you can just as easily assign each style to its epoch and look for contemporary parallels.
Time position
Finds of nuragic bronze statuettes in datable Etruscan tombs showed the period between the 8th and 6th centuries. Century BC This is where the widely accepted doctrine of the late 9th century BC was based. And the beginning of the so-called geometrical epoch as the starting point for the production of the nuragic statuettes. Accordingly, it would have been the Phoenicians who provided the nuraghi with the stylistic suggestions. Phoenician influences are only recognizable in the Barbaricino style and not even there. They are unique pieces that are either imported from the Syrian-Palestinian region or come from the Phoenician regions of Sardinia. While the closed leg posture of striding representations is typical for the Phoenician statuettes, based on the Egyptian model, the bronze images of Sardinia are almost without exception with legs apart.
The fact that many stylistic features of the Uta / Abini group appear to be significantly older than the Phoenician western trade (from 1050 BC) made one suspicious. The horned helmets, the beardlessness of the nuragher, the plaited braids and the circular eyes of the abini figures, as well as the realistic animal bronzes, draw attention to Cyprus and Asia Minor , where horned helmets are an attribute of deities. The deer representations in all their variants reveal direct suggestions from the Anatolian region. In the past it was assumed that one or the other bronze smith from Luristan (in the Zagros Mountains of Iran) or from Urartu (in the Armenian highlands) had looked for a new field of activity in Sardinia. The similarities between the animal bronzes from Luristan, Urartu and Sardinia can just as well be based on a common old tradition that extends to the deer standards of Alaca Hüyük (Central Anatolia) and thus up to the 3rd millennium BC. Can be traced back. This shows how daring stylistic comparisons are as long as the age issue is not clarified.
The problem with dating lies in the fact that no bronze statuette was unearthed on Sardinia in a context that would allow an incontestable chronological classification. In this situation, respected archaeologists expressed in 1986 that the end of the 9th century BC At least for the bronzes of the Uta / Abini style, it does not mark the beginning, but essentially the end of a development. What had previously been regarded as stylistic elements of the orientalizing epoch (8th / 7th centuries BC) was derived directly from Eastern suggestions and was significantly earlier, to the last centuries of the 2nd millennium BC. To date. This meant that the nuragic bronzes were inherited from the Etruscans as antiquities and only ended up in the tombs centuries later. This is indicated by an early Etruscan grave that was discovered in Cavalupo near Vulci in 1957. The double-conical Villanova urn from the end of the 9th century BC. BC contained a nuragic bronze figure of a priest-king with a pointed hat and a large, arched long shield (today in the Museo di Villa Giulia in Rome). The complicated statuette of the Abini group is extraordinarily mature in style and technique and should be placed more at the end than at the beginning of Nuragic bronze art. In any case, on the Italian mainland such statuettes evidently had the nimbus of exotic high-tech products, because bronze smiths there achieved a skill comparable to that of Nuragic only on the threshold of the 6th century BC. BC Even in Greece the first, but much smaller and coarser bronzes did not appear before the 8th century BC. Chr. On. In Sardinia, however, there are increasing excavation findings that indicate that nuragic small bronzes were found in the 11th / 10th centuries. Century BC Were manufactured. Even during older excavations, parts of bronze statuettes were repeatedly found together with fragments of Cypriot ox skin bars , which were finally found in the Aegean in the 11th century BC. Came out of use. From this it had been concluded that this type of bar was in use for much longer in Sardinia - although it seemed specifically tailored to long-distance trade with the Aegean Sea. These questions are currently being discussed.
See also
literature
- Manlio Brigaglia (Ed.): Sardegna archeologica. Carta stradale. Istituto geografico De Agostini, Novara 1983 (map 1: 250,000 and 64-page guide).
- Francesco Cesare Casula: La storia di Sardegna. Volume 1: L'evo antico. Delfino, Sassari 1994, ISBN 88-7138-063-0 .
- Lavinia Foddai: Culture zoomorfe. Studi sulla bronzistica figurata nuragica (= Catalogo sardo. 6). Documenta et al., Cargeghe 2008, ISBN 978-88-95205-31-1 .
- Giovanni Lilliu: Sculture della Sardegna nuragica. Edizioni La Zattera, Cagliari 1966.
- Rainer Pauli: Sardinia, history, culture, landscape. Voyages of discovery on one of the most beautiful islands in the Mediterranean (= DuMont documents. DuMont art travel guide. ) 7th edition. DuMont, Cologne 1990, ISBN 3-7701-1368-3 , p. 146.
