di Manuela Orrù
A stone stuck in the ground, this is "Perda fitta" and it is not easy to know how long it is planted there. If he could relate what he has seen, a lifetime would not be enough to hear the rivers of words with which he would flood our incredulous ears. In its seraphic and imposing fixity it has crossed the millennia, seeing woods, forests, villages disappear accompanied, in this long journey of time, by the distant stars, moon, sun, stars that mark the seasons of men. Behind it, towards the west, the reassuring gaze of the majestic mountains make it feel less of the solitude it has experienced since it was abandoned by those populations who venerated it when history was not yet born and the sense of the sacred extended into everything that surrounded.
Marine reef granite is this Perda, which has known seaside landscapes, golden sunsets fading away on the horizon, cradled by the lapping of the gentle waves of calm and lashed by the billows on stormy days. She lived a sea rock life with her sisters, western cliffs of an ancient island, in the middle of a great blue-green water. The screeching of the seagulls, the roar of the sea breaking on the coast were the sounds she knew and which, together with the scents of myrtle and mastic, juniper and cistus, accompanied her in that distant time. And it was stone together with other stones, walls that emerged from ancient and deep oceans following great and shocking cataclysms, which with tectonic thrusts raised them to the warm light of the sun and the icy brightness of the moon.
One day men and women arrived on that cliff overlooking the sea, lit fires, sang, danced, in the moonlight they placed their hands on those rough boulders, looking for something that could represent what they had dreamed of, and they saw it, they recognized it , and separated her from her sisters. We have always been told that stones feel no pain and do not cry. But she is not just any stone... she was chosen, in her we recognize a primordial figure, a progenitor, a Mater, the Earth.
We are in prehistory, in a time called the Neolithic, a new time for stone, therefore a stone worked with ever greater skill and skill, which extends from 10.000 BC to 3000 BC Almost seven thousand years of human history which in Sardinia begins around 6000, subdividing into three fundamental phases that will take their respective names from the places where the first discoveries took place: the oldest is that called BONU IGHINU, followed by that called SAN CIRIACO and concludes with that called CULTURA DI OZIERI or SAN MICHELE. Unfortunately we know very little about the Neolithic civilizations of Sardinia, on their social organization and their cultural development we can only make conjectures and comparisons with other Neolithic populations of the European continent. We recognize these three cultural phases from the discovery of ceramic artefacts, from the treatment of the dead and from the processing of stone into sacred representations.
In the first phase called Bonu Ighinu, the Neolithic populations lived mainly in caves, where they also buried their dead, the villages were still few and above all in the western part of the island.
In the second phase known as San Ciriaco there is a multiplication of human settlements which extend inland from the western coast, increasing the number of villages which are built above all near high ground (cuccurus and bruncus). The characteristics of this phase are recognized in the manufacturing of the pottery which is found throughout the island. The ceramics appear sturdier and larger and attest to a use for the conservation and transformation of food. These people certainly knew agriculture, they practiced it, but the gathering of wild species is still widespread together with the breeding of sheep and goats and an ever increasing number of cattle. In these first two phases there is also a continuity in the symbolic manifestations, in the anthropomorphic statuettes attributed to the Mother Goddess, all characterized by the posture and by a particular cylindrical headdress.
Between 4000 and 3500 BC the Culture of Ozieri or San Michele develops, which spreads throughout the island and represents the highest moment of Sardinian prehistory, developing on an autochthonous population that came from the two previous cultural phases but testifying at the at the same time an openness to cultural stimuli coming from the Mediterranean basin. And it is in this phase that we witness the excavation of thousands of small funerary caves, the domus de janas, settlements, menhirs, megalithic complexes and dolmens that represent the liveliness and vitality of this evolving civilization, the cultural and symbolic wealth still to be discovered , as well as the great demographic increase that will lead them to occupy the whole island, from north to south, from west to east.
The people of the Culture of Ozieri are the ones that interest us, because they have embarked on the journey in search of that stone to transport to their villages, to be planted in a land where they can put down roots and from that same land draw the strength, the fecundity that generates and regenerates, which defeats death and consoles with its presence.
And here begins the journey towards the plain, towards su Cuccuru, which we call Cibindía. It will certainly not have been an easy journey, there are mountains to overcome, forests to cross, perhaps rivers to ford, but nothing can stop them, because what moves them is a feeling that we today, men of 2000 AD, cannot understand. it is a feeling far away in time, hidden in the stones that cannot speak, but which for those who know how to listen tells of a profound sense of the sacred recognized in everything that surrounds them.
How long will that trip take? Maybe months, which they'll have measured in moons, and who knows what hardships and difficulties they'll have had to endure and overcome. But behind them are the villages, the elderly, the women and the children who are waiting for them. La Jana, the priestess, said that their journey is guided by her, the deity, in the ceremony before departure she spoke in a voice of thunder and they know that she will guide them.
Here are the villages! The smoke from the fires fills the air, familiar voices call them, it's a day of celebration and the moon will illuminate their enterprise. Finally home, they saw them arrive and the songs begin, the meat of the sacrificed animals is roasted and all the communities will strengthen the bond of union by dividing the common meal, with songs and dances around her, the stone that will be driven into the sacred ground . Facing the rising sun, eleven cups will be carved vertically on its front, perhaps to represent as many breasts, symbols of fertility and life, which guaranteed the precious nourishment for the new born. On the upper part, two small hollows are perhaps to indicate the eyes, other barely sketched cup marks surround the well-defined eleven. Here it is, it's finished, the craftsman has finished his excavation work, he has followed the indications of the priestess, the stone is as they imagined it, as perhaps they dreamed of it, with an austere grandeur, to represent the essentiality of the pregnant womb of the earth that brings well-being and food for all, men and animals. That cliff stone has become Sa Sennora. In a time when life was precarious, when the risks of dying were certainly greater and surviving was a daily effort and effort, perda fit represented a fixed point, an anchor to hold on to in difficult moments of difficulty, a mother to invoke and to thank.
The term Mother Goddess is generally intended to indicate a female divinity of a primordial nature, in which fundamental aspects of human life are embodied: fertility and the generation of life, the earth in its ability to produce food and water, the mediation between divine and the human. Since the distant Paleolithic, human populations shared a system of beliefs that have found representation in the numerous statuettes, mostly female, found throughout continental Europe and in both the eastern and western Mediterranean basin. We find the same symbolic representations throughout the system that revolves around human life: tombs, temples, frescoes, reliefs, sculptures, paintings, ceramics.
The main aspect of this cult is its strongly tied to the land. In fact, the Earth has always embodied the feminine and sacred aspect of divinity, because she generates plants, produces fruits and allows life to perpetuate itself. In its dark and humid aspect, it recalls the womb and therefore the womb in which life is generated. And hence the other important aspect of the cult of the Great Mother, the one linked to fertility, the prosperity of the fields and the cycle of the seasons. And, in addition to life, the Goddess had a strong bond with death and the underworld: in fact, the cycle of the seasons follows the paradigm of death and rebirth, i.e. the seed needs to die to generate a new plant, which at the end of the cycle will give more seeds.
In Sardinia, 133 statuettes of various types, materials and chronologies were found: 126 are female, 5 appear to be male. They come from tombs, caves and shelters, villages, sanctuaries. The data shows that these figurines had a funerary purpose and in any case linked to the sacred. It follows that also in Sardinia, in harmony with what happens in Europe and in the Near East, the cult of the Mother Goddess is unequivocally attested, who represented a primordial divinity, parent and nurse, the one who could alleviate the traumatic event of death and ensure life, regeneration, beyond death itself. Even the menhirs, known in Sardinia as Perdas Fittas, were representations of that cult. We can find them in many areas of the Sardinian territory, often in megalithic circles, near burial sites, or isolated, up to 5 meters tall to evoke the male phallic power, or less slender and enriched with cups, spirals and lozenges to recall the female matrix.
Let's go back to our Perdafitta of Cuccuru Cibindía, in the municipality of Serramanna. It is difficult today to understand and know the context in which it was a point of reference for those distant peoples in time. The territory has undergone enormous upheavals, atmospheric events, intensive crops and the high human presence have changed the landscape and places. Today Perdafitta is located in a luxuriant orange grove, on private property. The millennia have also changed men, we are not women and men of the Neolithic and it is very difficult to find that thought linked to the cyclical time of life, to the earth and its seasons. And the sacred has disappeared, nothing surprises us anymore because we have found a rational and scientific explanation for everything.
Then maybe we just have to admire this beautiful carved stone that has been able to resist merciless excavations (they wanted to test its depth, eradicate it), human indifference and millennia, which however still, for those who know how to look at it and feel it, exudes a difficult to explain, awakens forgotten emotions and sensations, unleashes that thrill of the heart that we feel when we see a loved one. Maybe all of this is true, maybe not.
May each of us experience this encounter bringing home the memory of a forgotten dream, the desire for a memory that does not emerge, the silence of a stone that will be silent forever.
Manuela Orrù – March 2021
