CARBON
Villa Sulcis Archaeological Museum
The new Villa Sulcis Museum presents a museological path which, starting from prehistory, describes the changes in the archaeological landscape in the Sulcis area up to the late Roman age. Renovated in 2008, the set-up has a great didactic imprint, aiming at understanding the finds through the punctual reproduction of the context in which they were found or the environment in which they were used.
Museum of the Palaeoenvironments of Sulcis
It is a naturalistic museum dedicated to the Geology and Paleontology of the Sulcis-Iglesiente area. The exhibition itinerary, strongly designed for teaching, is organized chronologically from rocks and fossils of Cambrian (540 millions of years ago) up to the remains of Homo Sapiens. Visiting the Museum is an excursion through time through geological eras, discovering the evolution of life, of the geography and environments of the past on Earth, with particular attention to the events of South-Western Sardinia.
Archaeological area of Monte Sirai
Monte Sirai dominates an extraordinary landscape from its plateau and includes at least 40 siti, which arose from the Neolithic to the end of the Punic age. Its strategic position, dominant on the fundamental road axis of the ancient via Sulcitana, and access to mineral deposits, explains its foundation by the Phoenicians and its restructuring by the Carthaginians, which have given the site the most marked historical imprint. The settlement is characterized by a widespread and articulated topography over different areas of the plateau and includes three large sectors: the upper town, the necropolis and the tophet.
Nuraghe Sirai
The archaeological area includes the Nuraghe Sirai fortress (625-550 a.C. ca.), and the homonymous Nuraghe (XIV- IX sec. a.C.), incorporated within it: a polylobed complex of which a substantial part of the elevations can be appreciated. It is a unique settlement for its typology (a fortified village), it is surrounded by mighty oriental-type embankments and shows the result of the integration of the community that lived there, from the mixed architecture of buildings to hybrid ceramics. The inner village is heavily dedicated to craft activities: recent excavations have brought to light the first furnace for the production of vases known in the Phoenician settlements of Sardinia and the first complete workshop of the Phoenician period found in the West and the oldest in the entire Sardinian archaeological area.
Urban park of Cannas di Sotto
The park was built around the extensive domus de janas necropolis, accomplished – on a travertine hill – from the Final Neolithic (3700 a.C. ca. on). The necropolis is particularly interesting for its extension, for its location and for the typological variety of the tombs. Between the 26 small caves identified so far, Indeed, interesting architectures are frequently found, the result of extensions and alterations of various eras. On the top of the hill there is a multifunctional space, built inside the ancient settlement of Medau Sa Grutta, superimposed on the prehistoric necropolis. Inside the Medau, a reconstruction of the interior of a Neolithic hut was made with all its accessories, set up according to the findings made in the area.