Making Landscape
Approaching the pre- and protohistoric taskscapes on the islet of Sant’Antioco/Sardinia.
Project management: Prof. Dr. Constance von Rüden
Research Background and Approaches
While Sardinia’s participation in a wider Mediterranean seaborn web is well-known, the way the Nuragic population was involved is rather unexplored. It remains open to question whether the inhabitants were actively shaping these networks or rather passive consumers. As the latter has been often implicitly assumed, the study aims to illuminate the Nuragic involvement in the maritime world and seaborn interrelations through the investigation of the micro-region of the islet of Sant’Antioco at the South-western coast of Sardinia.
Distribution of Nuragic settlements on the islet of Sant’Antioco.
The inhabitants of Sant’Antioco already took advantage of the maritime character of the islet in the Neolithic and Chalcolithic periods as can be shown by a seaborn network reflected in the jasper and obsidian distribution. In the later Nuragic period the sea orientation of the Nuraghe S’Ega Marteddu at Maladroxia, Cala Bianca, or Porto di Triga supports a similar assumption for the protohistoric period. Such a maritime landscape has never been systematically analyzed in Nuragic archaeology. Therefore, the project aims to fill this gap and focus on this unique feature as part of a landscape-archaeological approach.
Excavations at the Middle Bronze Age site at Crisionis.
As a landscape-archaeological study, the project investigates the inhabitant’s daily routines within the realm of subsistence economy and exchange as well as their involvement in ritual, social or political activities. Through remote sensing, geomorphological investigation, survey, excavation, experimental approaches and underwater investigations the project reconstructs the communities’ taskscapes and their spatial layout to trace the specific land- and seascape appropriation of the inhabitants and to carve out their possible perceptions and meanings. It hence has the potential to break the almost stereotypical idea of the Nuragic population as mountaineers and herdsmen, restricted to pastoral life and averted from the sea, which is often perpetuated in literature and touristic commercialization and which has partly entered narratives of local identity and marketing.
Work in Progress
Discussion of the findings (Leonhard Tölle, Yvonne Schmied)
Documentation of the findings (Tim Klingenberg)
Geomorphological investigations in the bay of Maladroxia (Team EnReco)
Collecting Clay Samples (Nadja Melko)
Publications related to the Project
Constance von Rüden – Tim Klingenberg – Marie Usadel. 2023. Grutt’i Acqua and its Hinterland. Some preliminary insights into the exploration of the microregion of Sant’Antioco. In: 2023, Mauro Perra - Fulvia LoSchiavo, Proceedings of the Fifth Festival of the Nuragic Civilization (Orroli, Cagliari). Cagliari: ARKADIA EDITORE. Academia Link
Constance von Rüden. 2022. Making Landscape. Exploring a Praxeological Approach to Landscape Archaeology. In: Tobias Kienlin – Richard Bußmann (eds), Sociality - Materiality – Practice. Bonn: Habelt, 163-178.
Marie Usadel – Francesco Corgiolu. 2021. Der Brückenbauer. Intervista con Dario Siddi.
EX NOVO Journal of Archaeology 6, December 2021, 197-206.
Frank Gfeller – Marie Usadel – Nadja Melko. 2020. Vom Sediment zum Gebrauchsgegenstand - Eine experimentell-archäometrische Fallstudie an Rohstoffen und nuraghischer Keramik der Insel Sant’Antioco. Experimentelle Archäologie in Europa 21, 161-174.
Academia Link
Social Media
Szenen einer Grabung - Ein Morgen, sechs Jahre später (ASMR) YouTube-Video
unterUns – Landschaften und Klanglandschaften
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