After 15 years of research at Carbonia’s Nuraghe Sirai, we are going to offer to visitors within 2015 an exceptional site for a scientific interest and for its appeal too. Excavations have until now brought to light the fortress (ca. 625-550 BC) founded near the Nuraghe in the last quarter of the seventh century B.C.; they have revealed a unique settlement typology, that is an 1,5 ha wide fortified settlement, built in order to protect craftsmen production activities, resources and produce.
The most important records are: the finding of highly specialized raw materials processing activities, as glass production, which is without parallel in Nuragic and Phoenician Sardinia, and also metal and pottery working; utmost important is the evidence of an integrated community of Phoenician and Nuragic people in SW Sardinia that has been finally demonstrated: an integration process is evident in the common settlement planning, with new and hybrid architectural building, in qualitative and quantitative data in material culture and also in the archaeometrical data about a new hybrid tradition in pottery production, which is beyond both Nuragic and Phoenician traditions. The uniqueness of the site has recently (2012) been acknowledged by the “Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei”, with an introduction by Professor Mario Torelli. The Municipality of Carbonia, which is the concessionaire of the archaeological research is now undertaking a new challenge: the excavations of the proper Nuraghe, thanks to the partnership of the “Provincia di Carbonia –Iglesias” Institution and the “ATI Ifras s.p.a.” Company: we expect to discover the real function of Nuraghi, the sets of cultural patterns in the Bronze Age and their developments in the Iron Age.