Marinaru Figurine (SS)

The card was edited by Elvira Visciola

Marinaru Figurine (SS)

The card was edited by Elvira Visciola


The figurine made of marble is almost intact, it has chips on the back of the neck and on the lower end in the left corner and the arms are missing from the height of the shoulder to the elbow. In planar geometric style, it represents the prominent element of the grave goods of a deceased person buried in a curled up position; It has a rounded head with a striped nose that fades towards the forehead and is arched on the back. The bust has a trapezoid pattern with the arms folded at the waist, even if they are missing the style can be read. The lower end ends in a rounded appendage. A peculiarity is the presence of six vertical incisions on the upper part of the left shoulder which constitute a sort of decoration, similar to the one carved on the back of the Portoferro statue.

Historical notes

The discovery of the necropolis occurred by chance in August 1953 following agricultural activities on the land owned by Mr. Angelo Chessa; The archaeologist Ercole Contu, who at the time was excavating at the nearby site of Monte d'Accoddi, was informed of this and therefore entrusted the task to the young archaeologist Maria Teresa Amorelli of the University of Rome. The small necropolis included four domus de janas hypogea dug into a limestone plateau. Amorelli undertook the excavation in September of the same year, with many difficulties given that the hypogeum was almost entirely underground and above all initially no important materials emerged, reasons which led Amorelli to give up the task when only the northern sector of the compartment “d” of the tomb. At this point the work was resumed by Ercole Contu who superficially collected fragments of vases attributable to the Monte Claro culture, a fragment of green lithic hatchet and some flint and obsidian tools. Under the first layer he found a first dolichocephalic human skull and a second in the innermost part of the cell, near two rounded limestone stones together with some decorated vases of Campaniform culture. In the underlying layer he found the bone remains of a third inhumed person lying on his right side, also with a dolichocephalic skull, together with Campaniform culture vases with a precious dot-imprinted decoration; a little further down he found the figurine. Due to the preciousness of the material found and in homage to Amorelli's "little luck", Contu named the hypogeum after her. The necropolis was subsequently re-interred and is now marked only by an accumulation of stones and earth that obstructs it in the middle of a cultivated field; it is therefore inaccessible.

CARD

Name

Marinaru Figurine (SS)

Subject

Female figurine

Timeline

Archaeological investigations have made it possible to ascertain that the necropolis was used at the time of the first Ozieri culture, reused by a human group of the Monte Claro Campaniforme culture and violated in Roman times. The figurine is dated to the sub-Neolithic in harmony with the Abealzu-Filigosa culture, around 2800 BC

Location of discovery

Found inside the Amorelli Tomb in the hypogean Necropolis of Marinaru, near the municipality of Porto Torres - Province of Sassari.

Region

Sardinia

Environmental context

burials

exhibits exhibited

Exhibited in the Giovanni Antonio Sanna National Archaeological Museum of Sassari in Via Roma 64, tel. 079-272203

State of conservation

Ottimo

Dimensions:

Height cm. 12,5 max width at the shoulders cm. 7,7 and max thickness at the breasts cm. 1,3

Legal condition

State property

REFERENCES

  1. Mario Masia (edited by) – Sassari in Prehistory. From the Neolithic to the Nuragic age – Editrice Democratica Sarda – Sassari 2011;
  2. Giovanni Lilliu – Art and religion of Prenuragic Sardinia – Carlo Delfino editor – Sassari 1999;
  3. James Paglietti – “The small female statuary of Neolithic Sardinia” - in The Sign and the Idea. Prehistoric art in Sardinia – Cagliari 2008.