page_title: Giants of Mont'e Prama
section_title: Archers
hierarchical_section_title: Giants of Mont'e Prama / Archers
caption_attribution_description: English: Sardinia - Nuragic warrior- Cagliari - Museo Archeologico Nazionale
context_page_description: The Giants of Mont'e Prama are ancient stone sculptures created by the Nuragic civilization of Sardinia, Italy. Fragmented into numerous pieces, they were found by accident in March 1974, in farmland near Mont'e Prama, in the comune of Cabras, province of Oristano, in central-western Sardinia. The statues are carved in local sandstone and their height varies between 2 and 2.5 meters.
  After four excavation campaigns carried out between 1975 and 1979, the roughly five thousand pieces recovered – including fifteen heads and twenty two torsos – were stored for thirty years in the repositories of the National Archaeological Museum of Cagliari, while a few of the most important pieces were exhibited in the museum itself. Along with the statues, other sculptures recovered at the site include large models of nuraghe buildings and several baetylus sacred stones of the "oragiana" type, used by Nuragic Sardinians in the making of "giants' graves".
context_section_description: The fragments have, up to now, allowed restoration of five statues for this iconographic type.
  Archers show more variation than boxers, despite their much smaller number. The most frequent iconography represents a male warrior dressed in a short tunic. A square pectoral with slightly concave sides is worn on top of a tunic. In some cases the tunic reaches the groin, in other instances the genitals are left exposed.
  Beyond the pectoral, other elements of the panoply are represented, such as gorger and helmet. The different fragments of upper limbs often show the left arm furnished with a brassard holding a bow, while the right hand is extended forward like in the typical gesture of salutation commonly seen in Sardinian bronze statuettes.
  Legs are protected by peculiar greaves with notched borders, hanging by laces underneath the tunic; a leg guard shows a figure-of-eight outlined in its back, while a sandal is occasionally depicted on a fragmented foot.
  Depiction of weapons is extremely detailed. In analogy to bronze figurines, the quiver is sculpted on the back, in a very refined way.
  It is furthermore evident that there are two types of bow:
  a heavy one with a quadrangular cross-section and cross-ribbed;
  a lighter one with circular cross-section, possibly pertaining to a mixed weaponry.
  Nuragic soldiers comprised in fact archers, swordsmen and warriors bearing a mixed weaponry, consisting of a bow and a sword. Bow and sword may be outstretched at the same time, such as in the "Uta-type" bronze figurines (from Uta, the findspot), or the sword may remain in the scabbard while the archer is shooting an arrow.
  The quiver-scabbard pair is visible in at least one statue and finds parallels either in the "Uta" and in the "Abini-type" bronze figurines (the latter named after their finding spot, the Nuragic sanctuary of "Abini" in Teti). Archaeologist Giovanni Lilliu stressed in particular the similarity between the crescent-shaped hilt of the Mont'e Prama statue and the one held by the archer of Santa Vittoria di Serri, wearing the same loincloth, trimmed in the back like a tailcoat, as the Monte Prama boxers.
  Archers' faces are similar to those of the boxers, with the hair gathered up in braids coming down at the face sides. The head is protected, up to the nape, by a calotte-shaped, crested and horned helmet, with the ears left free.
  Several fragments show that the horns are slightly curved and bending forward, of uncertain length and pointed at the end (different from the warriors); furthermore there are traces of a support, obtained from the same stone, joining the horns approximately at their half-length.
  The bronze figurine most similar to the archers of Mont'e Prama appears to be the archer from "Abini".
caption: Nuragic bronzetto: warrior with shield and sword.
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