The S’Urachi Project: cultural exchange and daily life around a nuraghe in the historical period (San Vero Milis, Sardinia)

The nuragic complex of S’Urachi, situated on the north side of the Gulf of Oristano on Sardinia’s west coast, offers the possibility of investigating contexts, apparently well-preserved, dating from the Iron Age, if not the Final Bronze Age, until the early Imperial period. Thus, over one thousand years of prehistory and history are present in a geographical position of primary importance for colonial, commercial, and cultural exchanges.
For these reasons an international interdisciplinary project lasting several years has been set up to investigate the nuragic monument.

Research aims and activities
The project, run by the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World (Brown University, USA) and the Museum of San Vero Milis, has the following research objectives: – a detailed study of cultural exchanges between the inhabitants of traditional nuragic and Sardinian culture on the one hand, and traders and migrants who came from elsewhere on the other, through the analysis of domestic contexts and craft working across the centuries; – the analysis of the paleo-environmental and geo-stratigraphic evidence in order to obtain absolute dating and direct evidence of diet and agricultural activities during the first millennium B.C.; – the contextualization of S’Urachi and the related territory of the Campidano di Milis and the Sinis in the first millennium B.C.

2013 campaign
This was the first season of fieldwork and concentrated on two areas outside the external enclosure wall surrounding the nuraghe.

The first, area D (12 × 15 m), was situated up against this external wall, south-east of the nuraghe, between towers 1 and 7. The second, area E (10 × 10 m), extends east of the complex in correspondence with towers 2 and 3.
This entire area had been excavated in 1948 by Giovanni Lilliu, who dug a large irregular trench around the nuraghe in order to expose the external enclosure wall.

The 2013 excavations were limited to exposing the archaeological levels immediately below the surface layer of eroded material in order to check the actual situation with respect to Lilliu’s intervention. It was clear that both areas had been touched by the 1948 excavations which had removed several layers. In fact, in area D a number of walls came to light that delimited rooms associated with late Punic materials (3rd-1st century B.C.), while in area E a zone of dumps and perhaps craft working activity, or more generic production activities, were uncovered. The finds from this area dated to the 5th century B.C.