Statues of Iron Age gladiators discovered in Sardinia

Italian archaeologists have discovered the torsos of two new Iron Age limestone statues of boxers in the Monte Brama cemetery in Cabras, Sardinia, the Italian culture ministry said on Saturday.

Culture Minister Dario Franceschini said it was ‘Exceptional discovery’ Capable of shedding new light on the Iron Age culture (circa 950-730 BC) whose tombs and statues have been excavated at the Monte Brama archaeological site during numerous excavations over the years. 1970.

The bare torso and fragments of other statues have been identified as depicting boxers, due to the armor covering their bodies. The ministry said the two statues are similar to two others that were discovered a few meters away in 2014, and are currently on display in a local museum.

Archaeologists working in the southern part of the vast cemetery, discovered by farmers in 1974, have discovered an extension of a funerary corridor on the north-south axis, where tombs dating back to 950 BC were discovered. – 730 BC. GC

While small and medium-sized fragments are extracted and inventoried, “It will take a long time to free the two trunks, the heavy and broad, from the sediment and prepare them for recovery in good safety conditions,” explained the head of the Ministry of Culture for Southern Sardinia Monica Stuchino.

The site belongs to the nuragic culture that has developed in Sardinia for centuries since the Bronze Age. This culture is characterized by the narcissus, the mysterious stone relics that dot today’s Sardinian landscape and whose initial function is still unknown.

Thousands of larger fragments and pieces unearthed over the past decades at the Monte Brama site have been assembled to reconstruct the two-meter-high statues, which have been identified as statues of fighters, archers or gladiators. Archaeologists still do not know exactly what their job is.

It is not known where these statues of giants were originally before they were broken in antiquity, perhaps by the Phoenicians, Carthaginians, or groups of Nuragic populations who fought among themselves, researchers put forward various hypotheses. These fragments were scattered over and near the graves.