Articles by Riccardo Cicilloni

For about ten years this research team has been experimenting with techniques of spatial and visual perceptual analysis using GIS on the Nuragic landscapes (Middle and Late Bronze Age) of different areas of Southern Sardinia. Over time, various field campaigns have been developed on the monumental complexes built by the Nuragic communities. Towers, fortresses, villages, tombs of giants and sacred wells suggest a marked attention to the display of a message of power, strength and monumentality by the human group studied. An aspect often emphasized by these researches is the relationship of monuments with mobility and with the routes and strategic points of the territory, often verified through matches of different Least Coast Path Analyses (LCPA) that cross the territory by connecting different patterns of points. However, the real efficiency of the paths predicted by the GIS has never been directly tested on the ground. The paper presents the result of field analyses conducted by our group of archaeologists on the paths resulting from the GIS analysis in the Marmilla territories: travel times, energy expenditure and the real possibility of a path to actually cross a given territory are provided. Working with the LCPAs is still to be explored, however it remains a valid tool for territorial research, if an analysis unrelated to preconceptions and with a holistic evidence framework is carried out.

The territory of Sarcidano is very important for the study of the settlements of the Nuragic population in the central-southern Sardinia (Italy), as the archaeological evidence of the late phases of Bronze Age and Early Iron Age shows. In particular, the great sanctuary of Santa Vittoria at Serri stands out on the homonymous plateau and exercises a control of the surrounding territory, corresponding in whole or part to the territories of the Serri, Escolca, Gergei, Isili, and Nurri municipalities. In this work, we experimented with an analytical procedure not yet widely used in the study of settlement processes in the Bronze and Iron Ages: that of Spatial Autocorrelation Techniques. The advantage of this approach lies in the fact that it not only shows spatial relationships, but does so on the basis of different values connected to the spatial data. Results showed that the Nuragic monuments were built near routes of passage so as to control the valleys below the basalt plains. This demonstrates the existence of a specific and organized approach for exploiting and monitoring the landscape, in which settlement choices depend on functionality criteria, with both nuraghi and villages having a key role on the strategic control of the territory.

The authors analyze, as a sample-area, the region that includes the municipality of Mogoro, in central-western Sardinia, with the objective to reconstruct, through the study of the settlements and their relationships, some economic and social aspects of the human groups of nuragic culture that inhabited this area between the 18th and the 8th century BC. The territory is located at the foot of Monte Arci, along the Mogoro river that runs through the southern part of the plain of the Campidano of Oristano. The area has been intensively investigated from the half of the past century; an in-depth stratigraphic investigation was carried out since 1994 near the nuragic site of Cuccurada, the main center of an articulated territorial system including a rich network of monuments related to the nuragic civilization. The results are illustrated through various research methods: GIS, with the application of spatial analysis tools, and multivariate analysis (cluster and principal components analysis) that allowed to set out new hypotheses on occupation and populating dynamics and to identify among pre-historical monuments one or more homogeneous and distinguishable groups, resulting from a database in which geomorphological characteristics are recorded. A hierarchical organization and a specific criterion for exploiting and monitoring the landscape have been developed, in which settlement choices depend on functionality criteria, having nuraghi and villages a key role on the strategic control of the territory.