The site of Tanca Manna, a single-towered nuraghe built on a granite outcrop and a village, is situated in the modern town of Nuoro. Interventions on the site undertaken in 2005 worked on the conservation of the tower and identified several huts from the village that originally covered a large part of the Su Nuraghe quarter. The ancient settlement grew up in a position that was strategic for the control of an important transhumance route leading to the valleys below.
Four huts emerged in the excavation area. They were rectangular, with an apsidal back wall, elliptical or sub-circular in plan. Structures 1 and 2 were situated on the northern slope of the granite outcrop occupied by the nuraghe tower and structures 3 and 4 were in the immediate vicinity of the nuraghe.

The huts may have had double or single pitch roofs. Numerous finds were recovered from inside the structures including tile fragments, either plain or with combed decoration, jars with thickened rims, carenated bowls, spindle whorls and a truncated pyramid shaped loom weight. These objects of everyday use document an intense domestic activity linked to an agro-pastoral economy and the practice of spinning and weaving.
The earliest phase was documented by jars decorated with vertical cordons placed below the rim, of the Sa Turricola type, otherwise known as “nose” vases, boiling vessels with an internal ridge to house a lid and to prevent the boiled liquids from spilling over, a wall sherd with an elbow-shaped handle, and a foot from a Bonnanaro Culture tripod.

Although the huts were unusual in plan, the architecture showed typical characteristics of the Late Eneolithic period, recognisable in the organisation of the internal spaces with raised sectors that probably served for storage of perishable dry foodstuffs such as cereals and other products that had to be kept dry. The levelled floors with flat slabs and patches of the original beaten clay surface that insulated the hut interiors were preserved.

The settlement is rendered extraordinary by its early foundation date, sometime during the transition between the early Bronze Age and the initial horizon of the middle Bronze Age (Sa Turricola phase, 1700-1600 B.C.) coinciding with the formative period of the nuragic civilisation. Although this chronological horizon is attested within the settlement, it is scarcely documented throughout Sardinia and in particular in the territory of Nuoro, where it only finds partial correspondence in the nuragic complex of Talei at Sorgono.