POZZO SACRO DI SANTA CRISTINA

This archaeological area includes the remains of an important Nuraghic village made up of huts, but of which only the bases remain. The roofs were made of branches. The particular attraction of this site lies in the extraordinary remains of a sacred well. Built in large squared blocks, it has crossed the millennia to reach us almost intact. The temple of water is constituted of a vestibule, of a staircase going down to the underground chamber and of a room topped by a false pierced dome called tholos. The temple, erected around the year one thousand BC, was a place of gathering for the Nuraghic populations who dedicated a real cult to water. At the time of the Carthaginians, this temple was dedicated to the cult of Demeter and Persephone, thus to fertility. The shape of this sacred place is indeed compared to that of the female sex, and one can foresee the possibility of a cult of the sacred female in the Nuraghic period, just as there are other places of the same period whose architecture recalls the male sex. The archaeologists wonder. At the time of the equinoxes, in March and in September, the sun comes to strike the surface of the water by the staircase and by the hole drilled in the tholos. Standing at the entrance of the underground chamber at precisely noon on September 21 or at 11 am on March 21, the sun casts two shadows simultaneously on the water. A unique phenomenon that makes this place an ancient astronomical observatory of primary importance.