The Archaeological Superintendency of Sardinia is undertaking a watching brief on electricity cable laying and the relaying of a road surface in the centre of Posada. The town, situated on a limestone spur which in antiquity overlooked the eastern Sardinian coast, dominates the last stretch and mouth of the river of the same name.

The earliest evidence collected on the site dates to the middle Neolithic period and was constituted by impasto bowls which, found inside natural cavities in the rock, were presumably part of funerary assemblages. In the Bronze Age, a corridor type nuraghe was built on the highest part of the outcrop, whilst the huts of a nuragic village, whose occupation continued into the Iron Age, stood on the flanks of the hill, arranged on flat terraces. The excavations that are presently underway have produced archaeological material which continues to delineate, in this indigenous context, a substantial Phoenician, or in any case Levantine, presence relating to a sea port that would have provided access to commerce with the rich agricultural and mining countryside inland. On the basis of the co-ordinates given by the geographer Ptolemy, it is probable that this was the site of Feronia which according to Diodorus Siculus, was part of the Roman attempt to deduct a colony in Sardinia in 378-377 (or 386 B.C.) when the island was already part of Carthage’s domains. On the other hand there was certainly a settlement of Punic date here, as attested by finds in various parts of the historic centre, of material datable to between the end of the 4th and the 3rd century B.C. The site was also settled in the Roman period when the whole of the plain lying behind was intensely occupied.

In the 12th century on the limestone spur of Posada the Judges of Gallura built a castle which obliterated the remains of the corridor nuraghe. Later, the medieval ‘borgo’ grew up on the flanks of the spur, overlying the nuragic village and the Punic and Roman settlements.