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Updated: May 15, 2025
Considerable speculation has been indulged in concerning the purpose of the nuraghi. For many years they were regarded as tombs, a view which was first combated by Nissardi at the International Congress in Rome in 1903. Further exploration since that time has placed it beyond all doubt that the nuraghi were fortified dwellings. The form of the building itself is almost conclusive.
To the same effort at impregnability we may safely ascribe the fact that the staircase leading to the upper room did not begin on the floor-level of the passage, but was reached through a hole high up in the wall. Many of the nuraghi are surrounded by elaborate fortifications consisting of walls, towers, and bastions, sometimes built at the same time as the dwelling itself, sometimes added later.
Those of Aiga, Losa, and s'Aspru are among the most famous of this type. All the nuraghi stand in commanding situations overlooking large tracts of country, and the more important a position is from the strategical point of view the stronger will be the nuraghe which defends it.
Thus in simple and primitive types of building such as the dolmen it is most rare to find dry masonry, but in the advanced corridor-tombs of Ireland, the Giants' Graves and nuraghi of Sardinia, and in the 'temples' of Malta this technique is largely used, often in combination with the upright slab system.
The walls in one case stood high enough to show, from the corbelling of their upper courses, that the huts were roofed in the same fashion as the nuraghi themselves. Another village, that which surrounds the nuraghe of Su Chiai, was protected by a wall of huge stones. It is thus clear that the nuraghi were the fortified centres of the various villages of Sardinia.
These are the chief types of megalithic monument, but there are others which, though clearly belonging to the same class of structure, show special forms and are more complicated. They are in many cases developments of one or more of the simple types, and will be treated specially in their proper places. Such monuments are the nuraghi of Sardinia and the 'temples' of Malta and Gozo.
Either Sardinia was a continual prey to some piratical Mediterranean people, or she was divided against herself through the rivalry of the local chieftains. The second explanation is perhaps the more probable. Mackenzie seems to adopt it, and fancies that in the growth of the largest nuraghi we may trace the rise to power of some of these local dynasts at the expense of their neighbours.
Thus in Sardinia the round type was mostly kept for the huts and nuraghi, while the rectangular was reserved for the dolmens and Giants' Graves. Even here the confusion between the two types is shown by the fact that near Birori there are two dolmens with a round plan. Again, in Pantelleria the huts of the Mursia are rectangular, while the sesi, which are tombs, are roughly circular.
In general appearance and design the nuraghi recall the modern truddhi, hundreds of which dot the surface of Apulia and help to beguile the tedium of the railway journey from Brindisi to Foggia. The truddhi, however, are built in steps or terraces and have no upper chamber. Who were the foes against whom such elaborate preparations for defence were made? Two alternatives are possible.
The simplest manifestation of megalithic building, the dolmen, was up till lately thought to be absent from Sardinia, but the researches of the last few years have brought to light several examples, of which the best known are those of Birori, where the chamber is approximately circular in plan. The monuments, however, for which Sardinia is most famous are the nuraghi.
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