The 5000 years old Temple of Monte d'Accoddi stands in the centre of Nurra, in the territory of Sassari. It was discovered in the mid-20th century, digging into a small hill rising up in the middle of a plain hiding a pyramid altar perhaps dedicated to a female deity, carved in a granite stele alongside the monument. The altar is the superimposition of two phases, that of the ‘red temple’, in the final Neolithic period (3500-2900 BC), and the following ‘terraced temple’, in the Aeneolithic period (about 2700 BC).
In the first phase, several villages of quadrangular huts were part of a ceremonial hub, including a Domus de Janas necropolis, an elongated menhir, an enormous slab with 7 holes (perhaps used to tie up victims) and boulders of spheroidal stone. All the stones served a specific purpose in the sacrificial rituals.
At the end of the final Neolithic period, a platform in the shape of a pyramidal trunk was built, above which stood a rectangular room. Of the sacred area remain the floor and remnants of a perimeter wall. Around 2800 BC, the structure of the ‘red temple’, abandoned for about two centuries, was buried under earth, stones and limestone marlstone, in turn ‘covered’ with large blocks of stone. A new large terraced pyramidal platform was built, with sides longer than the previous one and accessible from a ramp. Around are the remains of a village, where ceramics were found almost intact.
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