28/07/2024
Fascinating and different off the beaten tracks archaeological site.
Licensed Tourist Guides, Always!
🪧Egg shaped prehistoric tomb housed inside a Tafone.
📍Territory of Sant’Antonio di Gallura.
TAFONI (Rock shelters) are a landmark of the territory of Gallura.
In Paleolithic age tafoni were used as shelters, in later ages as homes, as storage rooms, as tombs.
Those destined to storage were usually mediums size Tafoni, with a very convenient northern exposure, which was indispensable for food preservation.
Tombs were put together in smaller, peripherals shelters, always integrated and then sealed with stone walls, perfectly cut and shaped.
Inside, remains of human skeletons, funerary objects, potteries were often found by archaeologists.
In the region of Gallura, bronze age nuragic people used to bury the dead in collective tombs, (better known as giants’ tombs) but also in tafoni.
This is a mystery to which, to this day, archaeologists couldn’t find a plausible answer.
No sign of power or social status was ever uncovered in any of the tombs of this two typologies. The only difference lies in the architecture of the graves, not in the rites or in the use.
The larger tafoni, with a southern exposure, were usually used as dwellings.
Dry stone walls were built, following the gait of the natural outcrop, meticulously closing and artistically creating living spaces that shaped the life of the people of this territory for thousands of years.
Stone walls were also built internally to divide the space in more rooms with such an accurate precision that still amazes archaeologists, scholars and visitors.
During the digging campaigns, pottery of every shape and form for everyday use were often uncovered, some still intact, some in the form of valuable shards. Food remains, tools in obsidian and flint, copper and bronze were also found.
During the golden age of Nuraghi, tafoni continued to be used as long as the round shaped structures with a wooden roof, (both were part of the village, which was build around the nuraghe) continuing in Iron Age, Semitic and Roman age till the middle ages and more.
We have knowledge of some families that lived inside Tafoni till the 60’s of the last century.
🎞️Abstract and Foto MC TheLifeOfATouristGuide