Древние башни Сардинии: Нураги

Ancient type of tower common in Sardinia

The nuraghe, or nurhag, is the main type of ancient megalithic edifice found in Sardinia, Italy, developed during the Nuragic Age between 1900 and 730 BC. Today it has come to be the symbol of Sardinia and its distinctive culture known as the Nuragic civilization. More than 7,000 nuraghes have been found, though archeologists believe that originally there were more than 10,000.

Natively, the structure is called a nurhage (, nuˈraːɡe; plural: Logudorese Sardinian nuraghes, Campidanese Sardinian nuraxis , Italian nuraghi). According to the Oxford English Dictionary the etymology is "uncertain and disputed": "The word is perhaps related to the Sardinian place names Nurra, Nurri, Nurru, and to Sardinian nurra 'heap of stones, cavity in earth' (although these senses are difficult to reconcile). A connection with the Semitic base of Arabic nūr 'light, fire, etc.' is now generally rejected." The Latin word murus ('wall') may be related to it, being a result of the derivation: murus–*muraghe–nuraghe. However, such theory is debated. An etymological theory suggests a Proto Basque origin by the term *nur (stone) with the common ak plural ending; the Paleo Sardinian suffix ake is also found in some Indo European languages such as Latin and Greek. Another possible explanation is that the term nuraghe came from the name of the Iberian mythological hero Norax, and the root *nur would be an adaptation of the Indo European root *nor.

The typical nuraghe is situated in areas where previous prehistoric Sardinian cultures had been distributed, that is not far from alluvial plains (though few nuraghes appear in plains currently as they were destroyed by human activities such as agriculture, dams, road building etc.) and has the outer shape of a truncated conical tower, thus resembling a medieval tower, with a tholos like vault inside. The structure's walls consist of three components: an outer layer (tilted inwards and made of many layers of stones whose size diminishes with increasing height: mostly, lower layers consist of rubble masonry, while upper layers tend to be of ashlar masonry); an inner layer, made of smaller stones (to form a corbelled dome of the bullet shaped tholos type, and where ashlar masonry is used more frequently); and an intermediate layer of very small pieces and dirt, which makes the whole construction very sturdy: it stands only by virtue of the weight of its stones, which may each amount to several tons. Some nuraghes are about 20 meters (60 ft) in height, the tallest one known, Nuraghe Arrubiu, reached a height of 25–30 meters.

There is no consensus on the function of the nuraghes: they could have been rulers' residences, military strongholds, meeting halls, religious temples, ordinary dwellings or a combination of any of these things. Some of the nuraghes are, however, located in strategic places – such as hills – from which important passages could be easily controlled. They might have been something between a "status symbol" and a "passive defence" building, meant to be a deterrent for possible enemies. Nuraghes could also have been the "national" symbol of the Nuragic peoples. Small scale models of nuraghe have often been excavated at religious sites (e. g. in the "maze" temple at the Su Romanzesu site near Bitti in central Sardinia). Nuraghes may have just connoted wealth or power, or they may have been an indication that a site had its owners. Recent unconfirmed theories tend to suggest that Sardinian towns were independent entities (such as the city states, although in a geographical sense they were not cities) that formed federations and that the building of these monuments might have depended on agreed on distributions of territory among federated unities. They were not tombs of princes and their families, as was mistakenly believed by taking as an argument the discovery of human remains there, but of strata of a later age than the Nuragic, that is, Carthaginian and Roman. Neither were they monumental temples, which today are known to be of different shapes and types, even for prehistoric island times, likewise burials (domus de janas or "fairy houses"; tumbas de sos gigantes or "tombs of the giants"). In 2002, Juan Belmonte and Mauro Zedda measured the entrance orientations (declinations and azimuths) of 272 simple nuraghes and of the central towers of 180 complex ones. The data revealed clear peaks corresponding to orientations pointing to the sunrise at winter solstice and to the Moon at its southernmost rising position. These alignments remained constant throughout the history of nuraghe. The most common declinations revealed were of around −43° for the earlier nuraghes, shifting to just −45½° for the later. Zedda has suggested that the target is likely a star, quite possibly Alpha Centauri.

This type is distinguished by the restorations made in later times, supposedly because of a change to the protonuraghes design, or for other needs.

This is considered to be the predominant type of nuraghe, and it represents the most diffused typology. The only buildings widely accepted as being related to nuraghes are the torri (plural of torre) from southern Corsica and the talaiots from Menorca and Majorca. Of the 7,000 extant nuraghes, only a few have been scientifically excavated.