page_title: Nuragic civilization
section_title: Giant's graves
hierarchical_section_title: Nuragic civilization / Culture / Religion / Giant's graves
caption_attribution_description: English: domus de janas in Arzachena-Li Lolghi Français&#160;: domus de janas d' Arzachena-Li Lolghi
context_page_description: The Nuragic civilization, also known as the Nuragic culture was a civilization or culture on the second largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, Sardinia, which lasted from the 18th century BCE up to the Roman colonization in 238 BCE. Others date the culture as lasting at least until the 2nd century AD or possibly even to the 6th century AD.
  The adjective "Nuragic" is neither an autonym nor an ethnonym. It derives from the island's most characteristic monument, the nuraghe, a tower-fortress type of construction the ancient Sardinians built in large numbers starting from about 1800 BCE. Today more than 7,000 nuraghes dot the Sardinian landscape.
  No written records of this civilization have been discovered, apart from a few possible short epigraphic documents belonging to the last stages of the Nuragic civilization. The only written information there comes from classical literature of the Greeks and Romans, and may be considered more mythological than historical.
context_section_description: The so-called "giant's graves" were collective funerary structures whose precise function is still unknown, and which perhaps evolved from elongated dolmens. They date to the whole Nuragic era up to the Iron Age, when they were substituted by pit graves, and are more frequent in the central sector of the island. Their plan was in the shape of the head of a bull.
  Large stone sculptures known as betili (a kind of slender menhir, sometimes featuring crude depiction of male sexual organs, or of female breasts) were erected near the entrance. Sometimes the tombs were built with an "Opus isodomum" technique, where finely shaped stones were used, such as in the giant tombs of Madau or at Iloi.
caption: Giant's grave at Arzachena
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