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Excavation

  • Nuraghe Punta ‘e Onossi
  • Punta ‘e Onossi
  •  
  • Italy
  • Sardinia
  • Province of Sassari
  • Florinas

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Credits

  • The Italian Database is the result of a collaboration between:

    MIBAC (Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali - Direzione Generale per i Beni Archeologici),

    ICCD (Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo e la Documentazione) and

    AIAC (Associazione Internazionale di Archeologia Classica).

  • AIAC_logo logo

Summary (English)

  • In 1991, close to the nuraghe known as Punta ‘e Onossi, situated in the locality of the same name, a “serrato” denarius from the mint of Rome was found in association with pottery of Republican date. This modest find is evidence of the reuse of the nuraghi in the Roman period. Stretches of a secondary road, still to be investigated, passed by the monument.

    Description of the coin

    Rome mint, 81 B.C.
    Denarius of A.POST. A.F. S.N. ALBIN
    Obv. Bust of Diana facing right, draped, with bow and quiver on the shoulder; above, a bucranium.
    Rev. A rock on which there stands an altar with fire and, to the left, a bull; to the right a figure wearing a toga with aspergillium; legend a post af sn albin.

    The magistrate who minted this coin may have been a nephew of Sp. Postumus Albinus, a consul in 110 B.C. The image clearly refers to a sacrifice to Diana, which, in Roman religious ideology, was closely linked to the concept of Rome as the capital of the world. The bucranium shown above the head of Diana has this precise meaning and from Livy (Liv. I, 45, 4) we know that, following the sacrifice, the bull’s skull was hung on a wall in the temple. Another coin issue also attributable to this magistrate shows a figure wearing a toga, holding an eagle in one hand and the fasces lictoriae in the other, an image seen by some scholars as a reference to civil and military powers.

    This issue may refer to the movements of troops at the command of L. Philippus, legate of Sulla, who, having driven the praetor Q. Antonius Balbus from the island and slain, then began to occupy the region.

  • Francesco Guido - Soprintendenza per i beni archeologici di Sassari e Nuoro 

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