Phoenicians Archivi

9 Dicembre 202010 Dicembre 2020 Redazione ArcheoMe 3 minuto di lettura

ARCHAEOLOGY | Nora, the fascination of an ancient Sardinian town

Nora stands on the peninsula that closes the Gulf of Cagliari to the south-west and was one of the major centers of Sardinia in Phoenician, Punic and Roman times; apart from the enchantment evoked by nature and the surrounding landscape, what is surprising is the sight of archaeological finds that testify to three thousand years of Sardinian history.

From the flowering to the decline

Thanks to its privileged geographical position within the commercial network of the ancient Mediterranean, it was inhabited since the Phoenician age (7th-6th century BC) and experienced a considerable development during the Punic phase (5th-2nd century BC). During the sixth century B.C., thanks to the domination of the Carthaginians, the city experienced a period of economic wealth due to the trade with Africa.

Sardinia becomes Roman in 238 B.C. After having entered in Rome’s political sphere, the city of Nora had a first phase of flowering in the second half of the I century B.C., when it became a municipium; the moment of maximum vitality was between the end of the II century A.D. and the following century. From the Severan age the town assumed its definitive urban structure, with the construction of a good part of the monuments that we still see today.

The slow and progressive abandonment occurred from the fifth century AD, probably due to the invasion of the Vandals, which led the population to move to safer areas of the hinterland, until complete abandonment in medieval times.

Currently, in the ancient Phoenician, Punic and then Roman commercial center we can observe the Phoenician necropolis, the housing complex and the Punic tophet.

Among the ancient paved streets in andesite, you can still admire one of the best preserved buildings of Nora, the beautiful theatre, built in the early first century BC. Impressive are the thermal baths, often decorated with magnificent mosaics dating from the 2nd to 4th century AD.

Various are the religious structures, such as the Punic Temple of Tanit, located on the hill which bears the same name, and the II-III century AD sanctuary of Aesculapius.

There are also numerous private houses, often equipped with water cisterns, built with walls in opus caementicium and africanum (a building technique invented by the Romans), sometimes particularly prestigious, such as the house with the tetrastyle atrium, with the III-IV century AD suggestive mosaics. Near the sea there is the forum, with its regular shape, which preserves bases of honorary statues of famous people.

The Stele of Nora

The Phoenician presence is testified by the discovery of the Stele of Nora, the most important and, in many ways, enigmatic epigraphic document in Phoenician characters found in Sardinia, among the oldest in the western Mediterranean.

It is a document of exceptional importance: if after 244 years of studies the content of the eight lines engraved in porous sandstone is still debated, it is evident that, behind those signs, the stele still hides its intimate truth. Exhibited in the National Archaeological Museum of Cagliari, it can be dated around the 8th century B.C. and bears an inscription in the Phoenician alphabet, on the interpretation of which scholars are still debating.

For some researchers the characters of the alphabet would not be only and purely Phoenician, but it would be a mixed Phoenician-Sardinian alphabet; however the data are still not completely reliable. In the stele, moreover, it is likely that there is the oldest attestation of the name of Sardinia.

We inform the kind readers that the column Archaeology in Italy will be published in the new bimonthly magazine ArcheoMe starting from February 2021… See you soon…

Tradotto da: https://archeome.it/archeologia-nora-lincanto-di-unantica-citta-sarda/

News

9 Novembre 20209 Novembre 2020 Redazione ArcheoMe 3 minuto di lettura

EMINENT FIGURES | Antonia Ciasca, The Mediterranean between Etruscans and Phoenicians

The November column

We would like to dedicate the November Eminent Figures column to the women who have made the history of archaeology and culture in Italy, starting with an archaeologist who, without a doubt, has left an indelible mark in her studies on the Phoenician and Punic Mediterranean.

Antonia Ciasca

Antonia Ciasca was one of the most prominent archaeologists in the Italian and Mediterranean panorama of the second half of the 20th century. Etruscologist and scholar of the Phoenician civilization, student of giants such as Massimo Pallottino and Sabatino Moscati, she left her mark on the history of the excavations on the island of Mozia in Sicily.

She was born in Melfi (PZ) on 21 March 1930 from Raffaele Ciasca (historian and Senator of the Italian Republic) and Carolina Rispoli (writer, essayist and novelist). Following the relocation of her father, a university lecturer, she attended schools first in Genoa and then in Rome, where she obtained her classical high school diploma.

Between Etruscans and Phoenicians

In Rome she graduated from the University La Sapienza, where she was a pupil of Massimo Pallottino and Sabatino Moscati and participated in the excavations of the Etruscan centre of Pyrgi (Santa Severa). Pyrgi, a very famous centre in which, a few years later, gold foils with bilingual inscription in Etruscan and Phoenician were found, is a first thin thread which, uniting the Etruscan and Punic worlds, brought the new Ph.D. Ciasca closer to studies on the Phoenicians.

She soon became assistant professor to Sabatino Moscati, at the time teacher of Semitic epigraphy, and with him began the path that would take her to the East, until she became one of the field archaeologists, in 1959, of Ramat Rahel’s archaeological expedition in Israel.

A youthful portrait of Antonia Ciasca with Palestinian kefiya (from http://www.lasapienzamozia.it )

Since 1963, for six consecutive years, she directed the excavations of the first Italian archaeological mission in Tas Silg (Malta): here she identified the sanctuary of Astarte, known by classical sources (Cicero speaks of it) as a well-known place of worship where the faithful from all over the Mediterranean landed.

The following year she became director of the archaeological mission in Mozia (TP), a site to which she dedicated a large part of her work. In Mozia Antonia Ciasca chose to start her research from a place that was a symbol of Phoenician and Punic civilization: the Tophet, the burial place of children and, according to some ancient texts, the place where infants were sacrificed to the god Baal Hammon. At the same time, however, he began to systematically excavate the inhabited area of the Punic city, starting the first discoveries concerning the urban planning of the island. A brilliant and methodical archaeologist, Antonia Ciasca published annually the preliminary reports of her researches in the field, showing that she mastered the stratigraphic method in a commendable way. Her devotion to work led her, in 1966, when she was only 36 years old, to take up, first in Italy, the newborn chair of Punic Antiquities at La Sapienza University.

A historical image of the excavations of the Tophet of Mozia

Mozia in the context of the Western Mediterranean

The studies and research in Mozia led the Lucanian scholar to participate in excavations and research in other Punic centres in the Mediterranean, in order to have a wider vision of the Punic culture that the Sicilian island was returning. In 1975 Ciasca went to Tharros (Sardinia), in the 80’s to Algeria and Tunisia, to Cap Bon and Ras ed-Drek; finally, in 1998 she resumed the research in Tas Silg.

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