Scientific interest in the site can be traced back to the writings of General Alberto Ferrero Della Marmora. During one of his frequent trips to Sardinia in the mid-19th century, he had the opportunity to visit the Gennacili complex, leading several excavation campaigns. A large part of the nuraghe was demolished in order to search for objects and artefacts in its foundations, but this was unsuccessful. This unfortunate result shows how far modern archaeology has come from the spirit of the 19th century exploration campaigns, which were mainly dedicated to the search for artefacts at the expense of the integrity of the monuments.

In his Itinerario dell’isola di Sardegna (Itinerary of the Island of Sardinia), the general reports that he came into possession of two bronze statues and some coins that he had secretly stolen from an area 100 metres downstream from the Seleni plain, known as Perda ‘e Froris. As is so often the case in areas densely populated with archaeological finds, this place was also full of mysterious supernatural powers in the local imagination. Canon Spanu tells us that Perda ‘e Froris caused terrible anxiety among the inhabitants of Lanusei. The reason for this fear was the improbable satanic dances that took place on the night of St John’s Day, as well as the violent thunderstorms that struck the town when attempts were made to desecrate these holy sites.

Once you leave the nebulous world of legends, however, you realise that the area around the nuraghe has been a constant target for grave robbers and treasure hunters over the centuries. Unfortunately, we only have to wait until 2007 before we can make arrangements to preserve the nuraghe. Thanks to several excavation campaigns funded by the Sardinia Region, the walls of the structure have been consolidated and subsequently secured.

The finds from these excavations testify to the great archaeological value of the complex, which was continuously inhabited for long centuries as part of a well-defined cultural system that extended in time even to where the first urban nuclei had already been built, due to a series of conditions that were extremely important for its permanence were favourable. Some of the artefacts from the Middle East also show us that the people who settled here had built up a dense network of contacts and relationships with very distant cultures.

Among the numerous rooms that the large outer wall housed, one room in particular caused great astonishment among the archaeologists. A beautiful trachyte basin was found in a large room characterised by a round seat. This was found in fragments and was therefore restored. There was a hole in the centre of the basin that prevented it from overflowing thanks to a hydraulic system consisting of a perforated clay basin placed under the vessel to ensure water drainage. This system makes the rotunda with basin of Lanusei unique.

They are truncated cone-shaped towers that are round at the base and consist of overlapping rows of large and medium-sized stones. If we look at them from the outside, we can see how their walls taper towards the top. Their walls consist of rings of stones that taper upwards until they end with a single stone. This special roof is called a tholos, a dome. Originally, many nuraghi were more than twenty metres high and contained three chambers one above the other. At the top was a circular balcony, the floor of which consisted of wooden planks resting on perfectly worked stones, which archaeologists call corbels. Its entrance, which almost always faced south, was two metres high and had a large square stone at the top, known as a lintel. Above this was a small opening, the so-called finestrella, which illuminated the interior and at the same time prevented the lintel itself from being weighed down too much by the upper rows.

Over time, further towers were added to the individual nuraghi. The number of towers ranged from a minimum of one to a maximum of ten, resulting in the so-called complex nuraghi. These towers, known as perimeter towers, had two superimposed chambers on the inside, while on the outside they were connected to each other by a wall called a bastion. In some cases, the towers were connected by long internal corridors. An enclosing wall, the so-called antemural, was also frequently built, The towers consisted of just one chamber. Between the main tower, known as the màstio, and the enclosing towers, there was often a courtyard with a water well. All these features are undoubtedly reminiscent of medieval castles. The surprising difference is that the nuraghi are almost three thousand years older.

The nuraghi could have several functions, depending on their location and size. The single-towered nuraghi on the mountain tops undoubtedly had a control function first and foremost. They were real lookouts to guard and defend the territory and its resources: fertile plains, waterways, metal deposits, etc. The complex nuraghi on the other hand, which were usually located in valleys or on small hills, most probably had a residential function. They were therefore the residences of the governors and their court and at the same time storage sites for food, especially grain. All nuraghi were always in visual contact to each other and thus formed a large capillary control system.

Those who built the nuraghi had an engineering expertise that was by no means a matter of course. The construction of a nuraghe was indeed very demanding and could take years. For this reason, perfectly organised work teams were formed, each with its own tasks and highly specialised personnel. At the head of each team was an architect who conceptualised the project and coordinated all the work. One part was responsible for extracting the stones from the quarries and transporting them to the construction site. Stonemasons worked here, cutting the stone blocks with stone or and more rarely with bronze mallets. Finally, the stonemasons carefully placed the blocks on top of each other, always under the watchful eye of the site manager and architect. It is assumed that large logs were used as rollers or carts to transport the heavy blocks, which were pulled by strong, robust animals such as cattle. At the construction site, the first base rows were erected. Once the walls had been built several metres high, a wooden scaffold was erected on the outside so that the stones could be moved even higher in order to place them further on top of each other.

The existence of the two tombs was already known in 19th century literature. However, we had to wait a century before a stratigraphic excavation began in the 1990s, which began with the two monuments and then investigated the entire complex.

The renamed Seleni I tomb is dated to the Middle Bronze Age. Its construction method, so-called orthostatic blocks carved with extreme care, involved the “knife-like” insertion of the blocks into the ground and the use of a ribbed stele that served as the final element of the tomb. The building, originally covered by a mound at the back, reached a length of 11 metres and a width of 7.80 metres.

Seleni II, on the other hand, which was built in the so-called row construction method, is 12.30 metres long and 4.95 metres wide. This monument, which is more modern than the previous one, dates to a period that can be attributed to the Late Bronze Age and was most likely built in an expansion phase of the whole complex and used continuously until the last Bronze Age.

As the name partly suggests, these are actually graves, but no giants were buried inside them: these were in fact collective graves for people of normal size. They can be regarded as family graves or graves of a particular clan. Inside the passageway, the deceased were laid out with their backs on the stone slab floor. They were then accompanied along the corridor by grave goods consisting of clay vessels, bronze weapons and jewellery. Each grave could contain hundreds of bodies of the inhabitants of the nearest village, men and women of all ages and social classes.

The tombs of the giants mainly consist of two parts, a front and a back. The first part consists of a façade with a huge sculpture in the middle, sometimes up to four metres high, a so-called centred stele, at the foot of which a small door is attached. To both sides of the stele are large flat stones arranged vertically to form a semicircle called an exedra, at the foot of which are benches. Rituals were performed and prayers said around the exedra. The second part is the sometimes more than twenty metres long corridor whose walls were built from large stones driven into the ground. Boulders of the same shape and size were placed on top of the walls to form the so-called flat roof.

The same arc is also traversed by the moon and contains two important directions in particular: that of the sunrise at the winter solstice and that of the moonrise further south, when it reaches its “southernmost lunistix“. In contrast to the sun, which celebrates the solstice once a year, the peak of the moon is only reached every 18.6 years. The case of the two magnificent tombs of the giants in the forest of Seleni is almost paradigmatic in this respect. Assuming that the horizon was clear of the forest in ancient times, the tomb of Seleni I is not far from the rising sun at the winter solstice, while the tomb of Seleni II is aligned (more precisely than the previous one) with the moon at the southern main lunistix.

Magli, G. The Science of Stars and Stones, Mondadori, 2023Zedda, M., Hoskin, M., Gralewski, R., & Manca, G. (1996).

Orientations of 230 Sardinian giant tombs. Journal for the History of Astronomy, 27(21), S33- S54.

The statuette is very special and almost unique. She wears a long robe that reaches almost to her feet and resembles other female figures found in Sardinia. Although it is difficult to assign a specific interpretation, it is now identified as the depiction of a priestess. The model appears to be that of a barefoot worshipper whose right hand is raised to chin height and opened in a gesture of greeting or prayer. The left hand holds a hemispherical bowl that is almost level with the left hand. This bowl is directed at an angle towards the inside of the figure, as if she is trying to to pour out the liquid it contains as a sign of an offering. It is therefore thought to be a libation in honour of the worshipped deity. The offerer wears a peculiar cone-shaped headdress, which originally seems to have had a more pronounced brim; this detail can be recognised by a probable interruption in the head.

Undoubtedly original, if not unique, is the eye-catching and voluminous ruff that encircles the neck up to the chin and is probably made of leather or fabric. This particular garment seems to make the figure almost rigid and impaled, but its splendour seems more than worthy of a high representative of the priestly class or a woman of the ruling class. The worn tunic, on the other hand, appears simple; the artist who made this statuette even pays more attention to the depiction of the cloak. It falls from the shoulders to the bottom of the garment, covering the arms but leaving the forearms visible. The cloak appears to be precious in the upper decoration, which is adorned with a spiked band in the shoulder girdle. What stands out last but not least is the disproportionately large head, which with its angular contours almost seem to deform the facial features.

This is particularly evident in the cheekbones and the accentuation of the eyebrows and nose. In the neck, however, the herringbone pattern of the hair is easily recognisable. The eyes are strongly accentuated, while the mouth line and the ears are only gently emphasised. The style of the face is similar to other anthropomorphic bronzes of the Nuragic civilisation, in which the expressionist deformation taste of certain figures is evident.