The Ancients - Sardinia: Mysteries of the Bronze Age

Episode Date: March 23, 2023

Shrouded in mystery, the Nuragic culture was an enigmatic Bronze Age Civilisation that lived on the Mediterranean island of Sardinia. With their name deriving from the Island's iconic fortress-like Nuraghe monument - they have not only defined Bronze Age history, but even the very land from which they originated. But why were the Nuragic so obsessed with building these fortresses, and what can we learn from them?In this episode, Tristan is joined by Fitzwilliam Museum curator, Dr Anastasia Christophilopoulou, to unravel the mysteries of ancient Sardinia. The builders of the nuraghes left no written records, but new discoveries have shed light on the civilisation and its people. So who what can we learn from the archaeology, and is it possible to find out where they went?Anastasia is the curator of the new Fitzwilliam Museum exhibit Islanders: The Making of the Mediterranean.Senior Producer was Elena Guthrie. The Assistant Producer was Annie Coloe. Edited by Aidan Lonergan.

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like the Ancient ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. It's the Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and in today's episode, well, this is a topic that I've been secretly wanting to cover for quite some time now. An extraordinary, mysterious Mediterranean Bronze Age civilisation that lived on the island of Sardinia. It was called the Naragic civilisation. Now, in the north of Scotland today, you have these Iron Age megastructures called brochs, these massive dry stone towers. And on Sardinia, you see something quite similar. You see

these tower-like dry stone structures dating to the Nuragic period, dating to the Bronze Age, which are called Nuragi. We don't think that they are related to the brochs, but it's a fascinating similarity in how these two areas of the prehistoric world at different times. The Brochs are the Iron Age, the Nuragia the Bronze Age, but they were creating similar massive megalithic structures. Today we're focusing in on the Nuragic civilisation because currently at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge they have got ongoing a brilliant new exhibition all about island civilizations from the ancient Mediterranean. These civilizations include Nuragic Sardinia but also Minoan Crete and the peoples that dwelled on the island of Cyprus. Get this, there is a group of artifacts known as the Terracotta Army of Cyprus. These figurines,

they are extraordinary. This exhibition brings together all of these different artefacts from places varying from Sardinia to Cyprus, shining a light on how these island communities, they weren't isolated, they were connected with the much wider ancient Mediterranean world. And in this episode, we are interviewing this exhibition's senior curator, Dr Anastasia Christophilopoulou, and we're focusing in on the Nuragic Bronze Age civilisation of Sardinia. So without further ado, to talk all about the mysterious Nuragic civilisation of Bronze Age Sardinia, here's Anastasia. Anastasia, it is wonderful to have you on the podcast today.

Thank you very much. We are recording this in the exhibition room itself in the Fitzroli Museum for this Anastasia, it is wonderful to have you on the podcast today. Thank you very much. We are recording this in the exhibition room itself in the Fitzroelian Museum for this remarkable new exhibition all about these islands. And these islands in the Mediterranean, some 4,000 years ago, they weren't isolated, they weren't on their own, they were connected with a much wider Mediterranean world. Exactly. That was the main argument that pushed us to develop this project and then the show. We wanted to portray how small island communities, whether they are formed in small clusters of islands or very large islands, such as the ones we decided to work on here, Sardinia, Cyprus and Crete, were ever connected

and very different in shaping their own identity, their cultural practices, their architecture and material culture. Now you mentioned Sardinia, we're going to focus largely on Sardinia today. And this was home to this extraordinary, as if I'd say, some people call it a lost civilisation during the Bronze Age. Yes, it is fair. It is a civilization of the past. You know, it obviously no longer applies today, although we archaeologists really like to see how remnants of ancient civilizations continue to affect our life and our beliefs today. And for Sardinia, this is pretty much very true. There were many cultures that developed in Sardinia over a long period of

time, starting from the Neolithic cultures. We have excellent objects from the Monte Claro period here, again a very early period. But then of course the real marker of the first really important culture of the island was the Nuragic civilization, which lasted for nearly 1,800 years, up until the Roman colonization of the island. If you visit Sardinia today, you will see that the island is still dotted by hundreds of monumental towers called Nuragic monuments that are so visible throughout the landscape of the island island as well as when you approach the island from the sea sometimes and they are really important markers of the distinctive culture. Well you mentioned the nuraghi so let's talk about those first before we go into the

artefacts that you've got here because I have a particular fascination some would say an obsession with large prehistoric dry stone structures like the Brochs in Scotland and it feels like these are very similar. These are massive stones, is it dry stone as well? Great, almost roundhouse-like structures. Exactly, I'm really happy that you mentioned that because I also have a fascination with megalithic structures. It was part of what urged me to study prehistoric and early Iron Age societies in the Mediterranean. So yes, these are massive drywall structures, they are megalithic structures, they are polygonal, which means that they're not squared, the blocks of rock that they were using to form them are not squared,

and they were pieced together by pointing the angles of the ashlar blocks. It is, as a technique, although it's slightly different for every island, it is something that connects all these islands together. So you have polygonic masonry and megalithic structures present in Cyprus, in Crete and in Sardinia during the long period of the Bronze Age, which mostly covers the second millennium BC. So these towers, they're basically parts of the communities of Nuragic Sardinia. They were places where one could take refuge when there was a threat coming to the island, but also places of everyday living. They are characterized by round structures, and in many cases it's not a solitary one.

There are some that are on their own, but in many cases you have a lot of these round structures together forming a community. How interesting. So centres of communities, very much like the Baroque in Scotland then. It's so interesting to see those parallels. Well, if we therefore focus in on Nuragic Sardinia, we've got archaeology like these massive towers, we've got the artefacts as well all around us today. Are these the main sorts of objects that archaeologists like yourself have to learn more about this Bronze Age culture? Do we have any literature surviving from them? Yes, so archaeologists go about trying to discover

ancient civilizations by piecing together architectural evidence, material culture evidence, as well as, of course, you know, the stories that are sometimes told through the iconography of objects. Sometimes a depiction in an object can tell you a very particular aspect of life in ancient world. That's not so much the case with the Nuragic civilization, at least not in pottery, but also any remnants of an ancient script or a language. These are really important. And in the past, archaeologists actually tended to focus too much on that.

When there was an example of an ancient script, it would help us date that culture and period of time very quickly, but also provide associations as to where that language was known, to what spread around that cultural milieu. Sardinia is an interesting case because, unlike the other big cultures of the Bronze Age Mediterranean, it doesn't seem to have a very distinctive script, at least one that is obvious in material cultural evidence when we excavate those sites. So you don't have inscriptions, you don't have a pottery with this language. There are some very few examples of what looks to be a script that might have been used by the Nuragic people, whether that is a local one or it is one that was imported,

for example, and adapted from an island such as Cyprus or another land, we don't know. So we tend actually to think of the Nuragic culture as one that doesn't possess a script. I would not say it doesn't possess a language because, of course, people definitely spoke a a language but when you're investigating an ancient language from the archaeological point of view you cannot hear that language your only evidence is what the written evidence exists. For the Minoans for

example we know they were using a different, a whole group of languages. They were using Linear A, which is a very particular script, still undeciphered. Linear B, which has been deciphered and was the focus of another project here a few years ago. And we know now it was a very early form of Greek. So these are scripts that correspond to languages that we can understand. That's not the case with Enuragic. We're still looking for evidence of what written language they might have been using. Well, let's go back to the ancestors

of the Nuragic culture, almost. When we were walking around the exhibition before we started recording, you pointed out the pottery that we've got just behind us here. What do we know, therefore, about pre-Bronze Age Sardinia, the people of Stone Age Neolithic Sardinia, I guess the first farmers of this island? Exactly, this is a very formative period for the

island and a very important one in which we see a series of smaller cultures that emerge, develop and then disappear or are then formed into a new one. One of them is the Monte Claro culture, appear or are then formed into a new one. One of them is the Monte-Claro culture, several of them during the Chalcolithic and Neolithic periods, so starting as early as four and a half thousand BC. And I think what's really important about these small cultures is that the way they try to form stronger communities and stronger ties between each other in the island, which we know is quite inaccessible. It's a very mountainous island. It's not an island that you can travel very easily from one side to the other. But also in the way they try to manipulate resources more efficiently, metals, clay, as well as natural resources. I think the biggest invention that happens during those times

is a more effective exploitation of farming, which is, again, an evidence that happens across all of these three islands. We call it an evolution of farming in Crete and Cyprus. And we see there examples. So our objects here in the show display evidence of how this intensified effort might have been providing evidence into objects that store food, that store liquids and grains, and how these were carried around the needs of a settlement.

If we go, therefore, to the Bronze Age and the emergence of Nuragic culture in Sardinia, we enter into the new exhibition here and one of the first objects that I noticed and is right at the forefront is this incredible figurine, this bronze figurine of a boat. Please describe what this object is because it is just so extraordinary just to look at. Yes, this is actually one of our top objects in the show, but also one that for us, and us I mean the entire group of curators and archaeologists who work together, and these are also our collaborators in Sardinia, in Cagliari, in Crete and in Cyprus, believe that it's such a symbolic object. It is an avicella, a boat, made out of rhodes.

It is quite small, about 15 centimeters long. It is very delicately made, and it displays a central mast, as well as a number of peripheral columns that look like nuragic towers. These are also topped by birds. And we think this is a symbolism relating with trading and seafaring that the island was experiencing in quite importantly during the late Bronze Age.

This is a late Nuragic object. So it comes from the later periods of the Nuragic civilization, what corresponds in other parts of the Mediterranean to the Iron Age, so beyond 1000 BC. It's not a very, very early one, but of course the same type of boats and seafaring must have existed before. So we think that symbolism of trying to depict the Nuragic towers as part of the form of the boat, is related with its act of dedication.

You know, this figurine of a small replica of a boat was produced to be dedicated in one of the important sanctuaries of the late Nuragic period in Sardinia. That particular one comes from the Sanctuary of Oroli, where, again, many different types of figurines, humans and animals, were deposited. So maybe it was a dedication by the seafarers in order to influence the gods' good fortune during their travels. The birds have also quite a lot of symbolism because we know that ancient seafarers would actually observe the movements of the birds before they approached the land. If it's a hazy day, if it's not a very clear day

in terms of skies, then you would watch the movement of the birds because that can guide you towards the coast. So again, it is probably a symbolism related with them coming back home. So that's interesting. So first of all, these bronze figurines in the exhibition, do they mostly or all date to this later period in Uragic culture? And do we think they're almost always used for ritual, for some sort of ceremony? Most of the bronze figurines we have on display here, the famous archer, the mother with the dead child,

different types of soldiers and heroes. They mostly relate from the late Bronze Age Nuragic period, so around 1200 BC, but all the way down to the Iron Age, so even up until 800 BC, so crossing into the first millennium. It is interesting because the long Nuragic period is a culture that is more or less uniform with no major changes happening in the Iron Age, unlike what happens in Cyprus and in Crete when there's a completely different structure when you cross the first millennium BC. We have the destruction of the palatial regimes and the large states of the Bronze Age and new community formations from the Iron Age, but that doesn't

seem to happen in Sardinia where the nuragic structure of culture continues all the way until the coming of the Phoenicians during the 8th and the 7th century and of course then the Roman acquisition of the Phoenicians during the 8th and the 7th century and of course then the Roman acquisition of the island. We'll get to the Phoenicians and Romans in time I promise but it's so interesting because I've got to ask now therefore what sorts of archaeology defines the Nuragic culture before we get to this later period then before we get to the bronze figurines? So during the early period of the Nuragic culture, what really defines the culture is the formation of these monumental buildings, both in terms of the towers as well as the

communities that are closely knit together. We have, I think it's over 3,000 monuments of Nuragic towers now discovered in the island and some of them are not completely still excavated. But then of course, really important cemeteries and burial sites that are again constructed in a megalithic way, underground tombs that are dug in the rock. They seem to have played such an important role

in forming community spirit and in passing down generations the importance of this civilization. Up until today it is impressive when we were visiting our colleagues in Sardinia and we spent a lot of time going around some of these monuments with them, which was excellent because they could really explain and give us the breadth of their experience, we were told that there are still festivals, community festivals that happen now in rural Sardinia around the remnants of Nuragic Towers. So you could see how close

the connection between the local communities now and their ancient heritage continues to be. Absolutely. Well well we'll go away therefore from the towers we'll go back to the bronze objects on display here at the exhibition and you mentioned it in passing a few minutes ago because alongside the boat at the start you've also got one of the most extraordinary items I think one of the most recognizable figurines from the whole Newagic culture, which is the warrior.

Take it away. First of all, I know there are several different depictions of these warrior figures. So how are they depicted in these figurines? Yes, so warriors and heroes are some of the most striking images of Nuragic figurines. We were so fortunate to borrow a very distinctive type, one that shows a warrior with holding two shields and having four eyes as well as four hands. So it is a creature that crosses between, you know, the human and the mythological side. We don't know exactly what this multiplication of shields and eyes means, but it is a type that was repeated a lot during these depositions in the Enuragic

sanctuaries. We also have excellent figurines of archers that are very slender and very elegant, and they really make you think of contemporary art, contemporary art in bronze. They really don't look ancient. You know, people have been thinking of them as resembling Giacometti or Brancusi they're very interesting forms and unique almost plank like figurines. Because this is such an interesting part of the Nuragic story because it seems with the Bronze Age whether you're in Ireland and the masses of swords they found from Ireland or of course Bronze Age Troy, the Homeric heroes of that time. Does it seem that the Nuragic culture, it seems to have been portrayed as a warrior society, as a warrior culture? Do you think that the archaeology reflects that?

Yes, so the material culture reflects that but it also reveals different sides from what has been narrated as the main story of the Nuragic civilization. It was obviously a culture that relied a lot on big men, on important people and heroes, on a fighting culture, you know, which was obviously engaged in warfare with people around the island, but also specific types of figurines and objects here on display reveal unique identities of how what was going on on a family and community level, which is really important because no society, even the most warfare of those, can survive by solely being ascribed one role. So we have an excellent example of a mother, a sea tit, holding a child in her lap,

which looks fully dressed. The child is in small scale to depict a baby, you know, a small human, but he's fully dressed and it's actually his body is a micrography of a grown-up man, a soldier. We think the pair depicts this emotional scene of a mother mourning her dead child in what looks to her like a baby but is a fully grown up man. We think this is a unique expression of sentiment in such an early prehistoric society. It's a very poignant little figurine for something so small. When you explain the backstory behind that particular one, away from the warfare, it does strike you, doesn't it?

That idea that this is a warrior society, but also you see the consequences of that with how it is affecting people at home in the communities. Yes, yes, it does, yes. So it really gives you a glimpse of how everyday life was also filtering in expressions of material culture and art, which is sometimes difficult for us modern people to understand. Because let's face it, what we are left with is only one tenth of the original material

culture that was used during those times. But also a lot of the things we see and we might appreciate them as art was actually functioning objects of this culture so we don't know whether they considered you know these dedications in these sanctuaries to be an artifact something related with art maybe for them it only had the purpose to be dedicated in order to gain the sympathy of the gods and turn their lives around into a better situation. And do we know anything about the sanctuaries in which these figurines were found in? Do we know anything about the deities that these figurines were being offered to? We actually don't know much about the gender of these deities so we can't really

ascribe them. Before the period where the island becomes heavily influenced by the Phoenicians, we don't know whether we're talking about male or female deities. But we know that the structure of these sanctuaries is interesting and peculiar, so a lot of the cult must have been performed outdoors, which is again a connecting element with the other islands, with Cyprus and Crete. But also we know that there were sacred wells, so the circular formations were, you know, either libations or depositions of these, a lot of these figurines were found excavated there, so they probably were deposited along those wells.

along those rails. I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb and on my podcast Not Just the Tudors from History Hit I try to make sense of everything that baffled our early modern ancestors. Like, what do you do with your waste? If you put your dunghill up against your neighbour's wall

you're going to cause rising damp. Would Henry VIII ever consider executing his wife, the Queen of England? Anne Boleyn? I'm not even sure if the Boleyns took it seriously, because why would they have any reason to suspect Henry VIII would really get rid of his queen? And why do men grow beards? During puberty, the male body heats up,

and a smoke rises in the body, pushes out the hair in the face. So the beard is actually a form of excrement. In other words, not just the Tudors, but most definitely also the Tudors. Twice a week, every week. Listen and follow on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Before we get to the Phoenicians, one last question, because another object you've got is this massive copper oxide ingot. The Bronze Age, copper and tin making bronze, with Sardinia, is this a main source of copper production or of tin production during the Bronze Age? How is it interlinked with the Bronze Age trading world, with the trading of bronze? Yes, so the trading of copper and bronze really actually defines what we call the Bronze Age.

It is one element of evolution of the societies that really made them more developed and more progressive. So copper was mined a lot in Cyprus, at the Trolldos Mountains, around a whole range of mountains, in many different sites, up until the modern times, actually. Copper was still extracted up until the 1950s in Cyprus. But it was also mined in smaller quantities in Sardinia and other parts of the Mediterranean. At some point, the Cypriots would become really skilled in not just extracting this material, but also organizing the whole trading industry behind it. And the best way to actually move this heavy material was to create these ox hide ingots that look like an overstretched

skin of a cow that could be carried by two people, one carrying each side with two handles. And they are a standardised, in a way they are a coin, they are a standardised way of carrying and selling the weight of a very important resource. So they weigh a bit between 28 to 32 kilograms each, massive slabs of metal, really heavy, and they were traded all over the Mediterranean. So the two ingots we were able to borrow here are really important for us because one is coming from Crete,

from the island of Crete. The other one comes from the island of Sardinia, but we know they are both made out of Cypriot copper. So they had the same, you know, route of travelling all the way to these islands. So this is telling us also what sorts of objects were being imported into Nuragic Sardinia at that time too. Exactly. And we always have to think, you know, we sometimes we stumble upon big and important obviously materials such as these, but we always have to think, you know, sometimes we stumble upon big and important obviously materials

such as these, but we always have to think that these boats would be going back to their origin carrying different types of materials. So, you know,

boats that were depositing copper ingots in Sardinia might have been going back to Cyprus with, you know, trunks of wood, with things that the island did not have, with local stone, with other precious materials that were very important for the Cypriots and

they did not possess them. Or foodstuff, maybe not olive oil because olive oil was also produced in Cyprus, but maybe other types of grains and foodstuff that were not available in Cyprus. Right, well let's go into the first millennium BC. The Nuragic culture is still there and thriving in Sardinia, but talk to me about the arrival of these new people, the Phoenicians. Yes, the Phoenicians are a very important episode in the development of the whole of the Mediterranean, a type of culture and people for which we might not know what we know about their origin, but we don't know exactly how they evolve after that. But they do seem to affect the development of communities in Cyprus, in other parts of the southern

Mediterranean, North Africa, of course, and Sardinia. So in Sardinia, their presence becomes really important after the 9th century. And that's because they will go on to establish really strong trading points. Two of the most prominent ones are Tharos and Nora, the cities of Tharos and Nora. These are big trading communities. And it seems that the establishment of the Phoenician people is a peaceful event. We're still in the long presence of the Nuraghi culture in the island. It doesn't seem to be a colonization episode, so the Phoenicians are not coming and taking over and then there is no further evidence of the Nuraghi culture. The Nuraghi culture will continue during those times, but these big trading centers will actually establish stronger communities

in the island and will bring on their own traditions. So different types of architecture, different types of burials, different types of sanctuaries, with some really distinctive elements of identity that we see throughout the Phoenician presence, all the way from North Africa, where they established themselves, to the islands of Sardinia and even to Cyprus, including some very dark episodes of evidence of how these religious beliefs and, well, cult practices might have been performed. Well, we can't leave it there. We've hinted at that. So talk to us about these slightly more darker practices that seem to be associated with the Phoenicians coming to Sardinia. Yes. And again, you know, it's a set of knowledge for which we don't have 100% of evidence, but there is strong evidence that in some cult sites of the Phoenician presence,

particularly in Sardinia, as well as in Northern Africa, they may have been performing child sacrifices. There are these large sanctuaries, particularly around the community of Pharos and Nora, as well as one in a little inlet which is just outside Sardinia, where these large open-air sanctuaries contained a massive amount of burials of child remains. That's, of course, very curious because, of course, that massive amount of child burials is not something that could be happening naturally. There are written evidence in the Phoenician culture, as well as later cultures talking about these customs, that narrate child sacrifices in the name of the Phoenician gods. And the remnants of these child sacrifices were then buried into very particular urns, ceramic vessels, one of which we have here on display in the exhibition. So this is an evidence that we cannot ignore. Exactly what was happening and what is the story behind the

accumulation of these child burials, it could be that the result of the actual sacrifices was a far smaller number and then other children who died out of natural causes were also buried in these cult places so we cannot distinguish between the two but it is an episode that connects you know the glamorous and important trading culture of the Phoenicians with a darker aspect of their society. Absolutely but I mean we've got to keep on the Phoenicians a bit more because they are so extraordinary and you know they've highlighted that darker aspect of their society. Absolutely. But I mean, we've got to keep on the Phoenicians a bit more because they are so extraordinary and you've highlighted that darker side of them too, potential darker side.

But also the centre, the capital of Sardinia today, Cagliari, that has its roots in Phoenician times, does it? Or potentially before then? Yes, Cagliari was mostly established as a Phoenician settlement during the 8th century and it will become again an important trading point. It is a place where it's also interesting to see in Cagliari, we see that quite evidently, how the Phoenicians also facilitated connections and trading between other people as well. A really interesting set of Attic 5th century pottery has been excavated in cemeteries of Cagliari, which means that the

Phoenicians were the traders who were importing and connecting Attic potters and communities in Greece, in mainland Greece, with Sardinia during what we call the classical times. Cagliari then became, of course, a Roman colony. But before that time, we see different sites being accessed and inhabited by the Phoenicians. There's a very important site around the lagoon of Cagliari that was, again, part of the Phoenician expansion. When we see, let's say, with some of these other empires in ancient history, when they go to far-flung places and they meet the local populations, the local cultures, they sometimes almost mix together local beliefs and their beliefs, like kind of create hybrid deities and so on and so forth.

Do we see that at all in Sardinia, when the Phoenicians are, they have more of a presence, they're going more inland, they're having these interactions with the Nuragic culture? Do we see any places where we can really clearly see almost a mixing, a combination of their different cultures together? Yes, and hybridization is actually one of the core themes of this show. Again, it's something that we looked at in detail across all the three islands in sardinia one example of that is actually what i mentioned before the presence of greek material culture and greek you know products such as vessels pottery and other things

that seem to be imported or adapted after greeks in sardinia. Another interesting element is the adaptation of deities such as the goddess Astarte, very important early Anatolian and related with the Phoenician world goddess, seems to be imported as a cult in Sardinia, as also during after the 9th and the 8th century BC. after the 9th and the 8th century BC. And you can see the expansion of these, you know, hybrid identities and beliefs in other places as well. In Cyprus, you know, the most important later goddess of the island is Aphrodite, but a very early form of Aphrodite during the Iron Age is Astarte.

And that has again to do with the same movement and connections between these islands and the Phoenician world. Well, it also begs the question, therefore, as we reach the Iron Age and the coming of the Romans, what ultimately happens to the Nuragic culture? So the Nuragic culture is a culture that is in a way omnipresent up until 2nd century BC, when the island becomes occupied by the Roman forces. So it's an omnipresent culture that doesn't end when other populations move into the island. And that's, again, something that makes Sardinia distinctive and different from, for example, Crete,

where there is a very distinctive end in the Minoan culture. When the Mycenaeans come, the palatial administration and the way the island is governed changes holistically, and then during the classical period, you have completely different types of cities and communities being born that have nothing to do with the formations of the Bronze Age. is being born that have nothing to do with the formations of the Bronze Age. In Nuragic Sardinia the culture continues in a way undisturbed between 1800 BC down to the second century BC and then throughout the time you have of course all these influences, Phoenician, Punic, Romans coming into the island but the end of that long cultural phase is really the second

century BC. It's so interesting how you have these waves of different people arriving in Sardinia and the Nuragic culture enduring those various different peoples arriving. And quickly going back to that warrior aspect of the Nuragic society, which we highlighted earlier, of course, only one part of the Nuragic culture. One of the other things in the exhibition that we noticed was the weapons. Like what sorts of weapons were these people using? And if we think that largely these occupations

were more peaceful, at least with the Phoenicians, do we know when they would have been using these weapons? Are we thinking of conflict between various different groups within the Nuragic culture? It's an interesting question because we don't have a very strict answer in a way. So we assume that there might have been polemic episodes between the different communities, their own communities in Sardinia, or there might have been hostile episodes related with the Nuragic people facing threats from the sea or from mainland Italy. The types of weapons that we display here are characteristic of the three islands

in the long period of the Bronze Age and up to the classical period. In Sardinia, they really favoured the so-called... We have daggers and swords and blades, and a very characteristic type is the so-called gamma-shaped, because it looks like a Greek gamma type of small-sized swords. And you also have amazing replicas and dedications of really small, you know, tiny weapons that were used as tokens dedicated at sanctuaries in Iron Age Sardinia. So if we go away from Sardinia for a moment, because as we've highlighted already,

the exhibition, it highlights just more than just Bronze Age Sardinia. If we go to the other end of the Mediterranean, we'll go to the eastern end in Cyprus, you've got these extraordinary objects on loan here in the exhibition. What is this Cypriot terracotta army? Yes, so this is a really distinctive context excavated in the 1930s in a place called Aiea Iridi, which sits in the northern part of the island, where over 2,000 clay-made, mould-made figurines of all sizes and shapes, so tiny ones between 10 and 15 centimeters to over life-size ones, so around two meters tall, of men, women, animals, mythical creatures,

centaurs, and anything else that portrays really the whole span of life, and as well as the religious beliefs and symbolic beliefs, one would have expected in a sanctuary of the 7th century BC in Cyprus. We call it affectionately the Terracotta Army of Cyprus, but it is really interesting that it is a very complete representation of all types of profession, men, women, people dressed in, you know, very particular dress, tunics, long dresses, people in helmets, mothers carrying their children, people carrying their pets. That is a unique representation of the society of the time. It is an extraordinary find, isn't it? It must be such a pleasure to have it here on display.

Yes, we're really delighted because for the first time a very big selection of these figurines has been allowed to travel from the Cyprus Department of Antiquities into Cambridge. Anastasia, this has been brilliant. Lastly, with this exhibition and in general, why is it so significant to highlight the importance of these islands in ancient history, not just Sardinia, but also Crete and Cyprus too, from the Bronze Age down into the Iron Age? Yes, so what we really want to do here was to divert attention from what we think are a set of overstudied centres of power and influence, as well as art dissemination in the ancient world. Athens, Rome, Carthago,

major cities in Anatolia are of course very important episodes of the history and the archaeology of the ancient world, but a lot of what forms the core of Mediterranean identity was something that was happening in the islands and around the sea. And it is these connections that we wanted to portray here. Islands in archaeology, as well as in anthropological theory, have been in a way portrayed as laboratories of isolated phenomena and behavior. And that's really not true when you look down into the everyday life, how creative they were, how they were able to manipulate resources, and how they were able to circumstances that makes part of the Mediterranean identity and spirit and we think this is an omnipresent phenomenon even in today's world. Brilliant. Well Anastasia this has been absolutely fantastic. Last but certainly not least,

tell me a bit more about the exhibition here at the Fitzwilliam Museum. How can people come and see it? Yes, the exhibition is open every day, apart from Monday when the museum is closed, from 10 to 5 o'clock, and on Sundays from 12 to 5 o'clock. It is free, and we want to stress that because it is a very large and expensive and difficult-to-achieve project that is one of the large exhibitions

that are still free in the UK. So we want to encourage people to visit and it is associated by a large program of events, lectures, talks, seminars, as well as more academic oriented events. We're having a large conference happening on the 28th to the 30th of March, as well as a projection of a unique documentary that we produced as part of this project in London and Cambridge in various locations. And all these events, together with family events, handling events, one of our film beliefs was sensory events oriented around the project, are all available through our website from the Fitzwilliam Museum between now and the 4th of June

when the exhibition concludes. The 4th of June. Well, Anastasia, it just goes to me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast today. Thank you so much for inviting me. Well, there you go. There was Dr. Anastasia Christoph-Filippoulou

talking all about Bronze Age Sardinia, the Nuragic culture and the larger exhibition currently ongoing at the cambridge area it's got such an incredible array of artifacts all gathered together telling the story of these island civilizations from the ancient mediterranean world whether that's cyprus and its amazing terracotta army of figurines to crete to narragic sardinia so i really do hope you enjoyed the episode now last things for me, you know what I'm going to say. If you're enjoying The Ancients and you want to help us out, we know what you can do.

You can leave us a lovely rating on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts from. It greatly helps us as we continue to grow the podcast and to share these amazing stories from our distant past with you and with as many people as possible.

But that's enough from me and I'll see you in the next episode.