Settlement of Cuccureddus

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Sanctuary of Cuccureddus

The settlement of Cuccureddus is an archaeological site on the south coast of the Italian island of Sardinia . It is located at the mouth of the small river Riu Foxi in the municipality of Villasimius in the province of Sud Sardegna . The finds indicate a settlement in Phoenician and Roman times.

location

The archaeological site is located on the top and on the slopes of the westernmost hill of the small range of hills Cuccureddus , which stretches from the coast of the Mediterranean Sea in the west above the Spiaggia di Campus beach to Via delle Aquile in the east. The nearest settlements are Mandorli, which consists almost entirely of hotels, 390 meters to the northwest and Campulongu 1,100 meters to the southeast. At the highest point of the range of hills in the east, 500 meters from the settlement of Cuccureddus , stands the Nuraghe Cuccureddus I , a prehistoric tower from the Nuragic era . Another nuraghe , the Nuraghe Cuccureddus II , is located 320 meters south-east on a promontory directly on the coast. Below the settlement of Cuccureddus opens Riu Foxi , which the plane Piana di Santa Maria north of Cuccureddus irrigated. The center of the township of Villasimius is 2.6 kilometers to the east.

history

Campus Beach

In the 9th to 8th centuries BC The Phoenicians founded colonies on the south coast of Sardinia , such as Sulki , Bithia , Nora and Karales , which settled in the middle of the 8th century BC. As stable trading centers. The area of ​​Villasimius lacked the hinterland and the corresponding connections to the Campidano or the valleys of Sarrabus for such a foundation . Not until the middle to the end of the 7th century BC A settlement, a so-called Emporion , was established at the mouth of the anciently navigable Riu Foxi , probably the first safe stop on the trade route from the Italian mainland to the Iberian Peninsula and North Africa . Campus beach on the north side of the Gulf of Carbonara offered a sheltered harbor with an adequate supply of fresh water.

Southwest side of the hilltop

The hills of Cuccureddus were already a place of strategic value in the times of Nuragic culture . So the Nuraghe Cuccureddus I was built on the easternmost, highest hill to control the area. The Phoenicians established their settlement on the slope of the westernmost hill, sloping towards the sea, above the harbor at the mouth of the river, to which stone stairs led down. Amphoras and seals that were found during the excavations give indications of the economic character of the base . The settlement's necropolis has not yet been located, but it could have been nearby on the southern slope of the hill.

On the top of the hill a sanctuary was built, which was probably dedicated to the goddess Aštart and in which ritual prostitution was practiced by female hierarchs . In the immediate vicinity of the remains of the sanctuary there were vessels, in addition to Phoenician also Greek and Etruscan , which originally contained fragrant ointments. In the rubble of the sanctuary lay a clay, phallus-shaped gargoyle for draining rainwater.

Rooms on the hill

According to today's reconstruction, the building of the sanctuary consisted of 0.52 meter wide natural stone foundation walls on which there were walls made of clay bricks dried in the sun. The walls were plastered, inside with plaster, outside waterproof with lime ash and pieces of terracotta. Above the clay floors, the ceilings were made using wooden beams, twigs and a thick clay bed. Around 540/530 BC The sanctuary and the settlement were destroyed by fire. There are suspicions of an attack by the Carthaginians . The fire preserved some parts of the sanctuary's building, which consisted of pressed raw clay and, when burned, give clues to the building materials.

After the destruction in the 6th century BC Until the Roman conquest of Sardinia in 238 BC. The settlement of Cuccureddus was uninhabited. In the 2nd century BC There was a new settlement, the sanctuary was rebuilt and a wall was built around the hill. The Phoenician goddess Aštart was identified with the Roman goddess Juno . From Roman times there are many votive offerings that represent body parts, such as ears, arms, hands, breasts and legs, in pairs or individually. Some are painted or engraved with characters. Presumably it was hoped that the corresponding parts of the body would be healed when the votive offerings were given.

Decorated lead bands
Roman coin

Other finds from Roman times are coins, bronze mirrors, decorated lead bands, including one with an inscription, in Latin  FELICISSIM [A] , and parts of statuettes from which the head of a veiled woman and a lion's head protrude as a fragment of a lion's cloak by Herakles Melkart . Of the more than 300 coins found, the oldest dating from 150 BC. Most of them date from the 4th century AD. In particular, imperial coins from the time of Constantius II are common. This points to a busy visit to the sanctuary in the middle of the 4th century before it was abandoned in the 5th century, from which the last coin of the Cuccureddus settlement comes.

From 1983 to 1987 systematic excavations took place at the sanctuary of Cuccureddus . They were under the direction of Piero Bartoloni and Luisa Anna Marras . The first phase of exploration of the settlement ended in the early 1990s. Parts of the finds are exhibited in the archaeological museum of Villasimius in a room specially set up for the Cuccureddus site . In October 2017, the first of several planned new excavation campaigns took place under the direction of Michele Guirguis . Roman coins, amphorae and ceramic remains were found again.

literature

  • Luisa Anna Marras: Cuccureddus. L'insediamento fenicio . In: Atti della Accademia nazionale dei Lincei. Class di scienze morali, storiche e filologiche . tape 8 , no. 42 , 1987, pp. 225-236 (Italian).
  • Luisa Anna Marras: L'insediamento di Cuccureddus e il territorio di Villasimius nell'antichità . In: Paolo Bernardini, Rubens D'Oriano, Pier Giorgio Spanu (eds.): Phoinikes b Shrdn. I Fenici in Sardegna: nuove acquisizioni . La Memoria Storica, Cagliari 1997, p. 77-79, 187-188 .
  • Piero Bartoloni, Sandro Filippo Bondì, Sabatino Moscati: La penetrazione fenicia e punica in Sardegna. Trent'anni dopo (=  Memorie dell'Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei . No. 9.1 ). Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Rome 1997, ISBN 978-88-218-0510-3 ( digitized version ).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ L'insediamento fenicio e romano di Cuccureddus. Museo Archeologico di Villasimius, accessed November 19, 2017 (Italian).
  2. ^ A b Massimo Botto: I Fenici nel Mediterraneo centro-occidentale. Le aree dell'espansione coloniale. Cuccureddus. Treccani, 2004, accessed November 19, 2017 (Italian).
  3. ↑ a b c Villasimius, Porto fenicio di Cuccureddus. Regione Autonoma della Sardegna, 2017, accessed November 19, 2017 (Italian).
  4. ↑ Is cuccureddus, l'antico porto fenicio. villasimius.com, accessed November 19, 2017 (Italian).
  5. ↑ Chiara Blasetti Fantauzzi, Salvatore De Vincenzo: The Phoenician colonization in Sicily and Sardinia and the problem of the emergence of power in Carthage . In: Kölner and Bonner Archaeologica . No. 2/2012 . LIT Verlag, Münster 2012, p. 15 ( digitized version [accessed November 19, 2017]).
  6. ↑ Elisabetta Valtan: Villasimius, Sito archeologico de Is Cuccureddus, scavi archeologici ripresi dopo trent'anni. Il Sarrabus News, October 24, 2017, accessed November 19, 2017 (Italian).
  7. ↑ Francesca Pitzanti: Villasimius. Dopo 30 anni, la nuova campagna di scavi nel sito di Is Cuccureddus. Sardegna Reporter, November 4, 2017, accessed November 19, 2017 (Italian).

Web links

Commons : Settlement of Cuccureddus  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 39 ° 8 '  N , 9 ° 29'  E