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Letters from Sardinia
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Sept. 15, 2007— The ship
they call the City of Nurri Accodulazzo...
 ...as
you can tell by the paddle wheel. However, one, that's
not the real name of the boat (I'm not sure it has one);
two, the small paddle wheel is a fake—it is just dragged
through the water rather than actually driving the boat;
and, most importantly, there was no Dixieland band—a
group of Sardinian folk singers would have been out of
character. (I can't tell you how out of character! I
would have thrown myself into the paddle-wheel.) The
owners of this small pleasure craft, however, wanted to
create a "Mississippi" experience in the least likely of
places—an artificial lake in the middle of a
Mediterranean island, Sardinia.
Actually, the Sardinian landscape is deceptively like
the southwestern US in many places and a lot of places
are remote enough to give you a feeling—not at all an
illusion—of isolation as you go along the 20 km length
(12 miles) of Lake
Flumendosa, the third largest of such lakes on
Sardinia. As a matter of fact, only one lake—Barras—on
the island is natural; the others are formed by taking
advantage of the many rivers that flow down from both
sides of the watershed in the Gennargentu massif, the
peaks of which are at about 1800 meters. Lake Flumendosa
is fed by the major river of that name as well as by
secondary sources. The lake was created in the late
1950s by the damming of the Flumendosa near the Nuraghi
archaeological site of Arrúbiu above the town of
Escalaplano about one-quarter of the way up the island
from Cagliari. The entire area is rich in these ancient
Nuraghi ruins, many of
which have yet to be excavated properly—and probably a
number of which have yet to be even found.
The lake is quite deep for most of its length,
approaching 100 meters near the dam. Along its length
the lake is about 200-300 yards wide in most places,
adding to the impression that one is paddle-wheeling
along a river. Occasionally, there are side channels,
which give a fjord-like look to the whole affair. At the
dam, the overflow is channeled into a second lake below
Flumendosa, Lake Mulárgia, also fed by other
sources. That water, in turn, is channeled down towards
the reservoir for the city of Cagliari at the southern
tip of the island.
Lake Flumendosa was not created as a resort. To my
knowledge, I am in the only hotel on its banks—at least
in this area. There is one other “port” at the town of
Villanuvatolo. The lakes in Sardinia were created to
manage water resources, including hydroelectricity. The
“pleasure people”—who provide hotels and
paddle-wheelers—claim it took them years to get
permission for such things. The access road from the
mountain road down to the lake is horrible and adds to
the 19th-century flavor, unfortunately. Adding to the
isolation is total lack of internet access! (How did
Mark Twain survive?) But there is satellite TV with at
least 6 Arabic language stations including All-Dubai
Sports All the Time! I actually spent a half-hour
mesmerized by a direct transmission from Mecca in Arabic
with pilgrims somberly parading around the Kaaba. Kind
of like watching St. Pete’s with extra headgear. I think
I just said said something blasphemous.
[Also see "Lakes
of Sardinia"]
Sept. 24, 2007—
 We are
almost at the northern tip of a peninsula on the
island of Maddalena—where it says “P. Abbatoggia” on the
map. The land mass on the right—where it says “M.
Arbticci” is actually another island, Caprera, the home
of Garibaldi. There are a number of smaller islands to
the north and east as you move into the infamous
Boniface Straits—infamous because of the wind. Beyond
that, not visible on this map is the French island of
Corsica. “Hah!” says my wife. It’s really Italian and
wound up in the hands of the French only through
political skulduggery back in the 1700s. The weather has
been (until today) clear enough to see Corsica quite
clearly and I am guessing that it is not more than 20-30
miles away. If I had Google earth at my disposal, I’d
check (1 degree of latitude equals 60 nautical miles, I
think). Anyway, it looked like this at dawn yesterday
(photo, below). The zoom on the camera makes Corsica
appear closer than it is to the naked eye. The building
is a lighthouse on a nearby island, then Corsica looming
in the background.
 Below is
a photo of one of the two boats that this chapter
of the Italian Touring Club owns. (That is where we are
staying, at a “village” of the touring club. All you do
is eat. Oh, you also hurt yourself in the sea. I did
that—cut my leg on a rock. The sea is full of what they
call in Italian “mucilagine”, obviously related to the
English word “mucilage," a word I recall from bottles of
glue. Here it means slimy sea vegetation. They
tell me it comes from Japan. Yucky stuff—which I have
nicknamed “Neptune Snot”. Here’s the boat. The rigging
is called a “Latin sail.” I don’t know why, since it’s
an Arab invention.
June 3, 2009
 We
went back to Sardinia for four days, to a place I had
never been and not really heard of—the island of St. Antioco.
(The lower and larger of the two small islands off the
southwest tip of Sardinia—photo, right). It turns out
that it is the fourth largest Italian island (after
Sicily, Sardinia, and Elba). I would have guessed the
first two (although not necessarily in the correct
order—they are almost the same size), since both of them
are huge enough to have been independent states at
various periods, but I didn’t/don’t know the smaller
islands very well. St. Antioco is more than twice the
size of Ischia. Anyway, the island has been connected to
the mainland by causeway and bridge since the time of
the Carthaginians, so I don’t know how much of an island
it really is.
There are a lot of interesting (and now protected)
wetlands and marshes (I don’t know the difference) along
the southwest coast. We got as far north as Oristano,
the big gulf about one-third of the way up on the
western coast in the photo. Apparently, they destroyed a
lot of it in the name of doing away with mosquitoes and
malaria some years ago, but now they (the wetlands, not
the mosquitoes) are a national and ecological treasure;
there are a lot of flamingos (flamingoes, flaminguses?)
standing around on one leg scarfing up the freebie
protected vegetation. (But, later, I did get some severe
mosquito action in my hotel room. Screw the environment.
Fill in the marshes. So far, no malaria.)
On the way, we passed through the capital city of
Cagliari (in the center of the big gulf at the bottom of
the island), the symbol of which is an elephant! Even
the local bus company logo is a stylized elephant. The
guide wasn’t sure why and that irritated me. I suggested
Hannibal. She was not amused. She suggested that it was
a symbol of strength blah-blah-blah. (I still
think it’s Carthage—only about 100 miles away as the
elephant swims.)
Anyway, the whole southwestern part of the island is a
good place to get a handle on Mediterranean history and
chronology: Late Neolithic (the Ozieri culture) to the
later Nuraghi culture to the Phoenicians, Carthaginians,
Greek, Roman and even the fascinating independent period
of the Sardinian “judges” (a confederation of sorts that
lasted from 900-1400 a.d. before they got munched up by
the new upstart Med nation states). (The Italian term is
Guidicato,
usually left untranslated in English because there is no
good term unless you invent “judgeocracy.” Wait, what is
the Greek for judge? Krino-? I just found some uses of
krinocracy, but I still don’t understand what it means.
It may be the term used by those who think we are
letting judges interpret the constitution too much.)
Remnants of all of that are often within a few minutes
drive of one another.
[later: the term in kritarchy. See the
link to Eleonora d'Arborea, immediately below.]
We went to the nearby town of Iglesias on the mainland,
at one time a center of silver
and lead mining. Now it’s fallen on hard times.
It’s weird scenery—dozens of abandoned mine shacks, huge
ones, all over the hillsides. There is some optimistic
talk about turning some of them into hotels for
tourists, but that will never happen. The place is
inland and too warm in the tourist season.
I learned about Eleonora
d’Arborea, one of the women “judges” I just
mentioned. I have to add her to my list of powerful
women in history whom I periodically fall in love with
and, thus, have to find a way to link her to Naples. (I
think I have it, but am not sure. With love, all things
are possible.)
 We saw the
temple of Antas (photo, right). There is no shortage of
Roman temples in the Med, but this one is particularly
interesting. It is in the southwestern part of the
island near the town of Iglesias, just up the coast from
the two large islands of St. Antioch and St. Peter. The
site was discovered (and restored) in the 1980s and
apparently is built on top of an earlier Phoenecian
temple, and even that
is on top of something else—nuraghic
ruins. The burial areas of that nuraghic culture
were in use in the first half of the Iron Age (the 9th
and 8th centuries BC.) The religious
activities of that culture centered on Sardus the son of
Hercules (from whom the name of the island, Sardinia,
itself, derives). Later Carthaginians incorporated that
deity as did the Romans, who even left an
inscription to Sardus
Pater (Sardus, the Father) at the site. How sweetly syncretistic of
them.
September 2009
We are right on the southeast corner of Sardinian
outside of a town called Villasimìus, pop.
normally around 3,000 but swollen to 50,000 at the
height of the tourist season (just past). That tip of
the island is actually south of the city of Cagliari,
which is at the center of its own large gulf, so you
swing down the gulf to the SE when you leave Cagliari in
order to get to where we are. It is a very scenic coast,
reminiscent of the Amalfi drive, including all of the
don’t-you-dare-take-your-eyes-off-the-road hairpin
turns.
I went to the local small (but fine) archaeological
museum today, where it occurred to me that I never
really had straight what is meant by the term
“Phoenecian-Punic.” “Phoenician” refers to the Phoenicians. (I’m a
quick study!) and “Punic” refers to the Carthaginians.
Carthage was originally a Phoenecian city, so I was a
bit confused by displays that tell you that “the
Phoenecian settlement of Cuccureddus was destroyed by
Carthage.” Apparently, that is simply a matter of an
off-spring culture becoming stronger than the parent and
eventually waging war against it—something Oedipal,
perhaps, raised (lowered?) to the level of geopolitics.
In any event, the Phoenecian-Punic period is generally
listed as 750-238 BC, the former date marking the first
wave of Phoenician expansion from the Middle East to the
western Mediterranean, and the latter date being when
the island of Sardinia was itself incorporated into the
not-yet Roman Empire as a result of the First Punic War.
The presumed date of Carthiginian incursions on its own
parent Phoenecian settlements in this part of Sardinia
is about the middle of the 500s BC.
The Phoenicians came to this part of the Mediterranean
to trade, no doubt, with the Etruscans
and pre-Roman Italic tribes
on the mainland and with areas to the West, such as the
Balearic islands. There is, however, evidence of much
earlier habitation in this part of Sardinia and, indeed,
all over the island, including the Nuraghic culture or
cultures (1600-500 BC) that were responsible for the
stone dwellings and megaliths that are iconic of the
island; the remains of about 7,000 nuraghi have been
found on the island, some of them quite substantial.
Before that, there was the Neolithic period (or Recent
Stone Age) (6000-2700 BC) of which there remain parts of
various settlements, including a nearby Domus de Janus
(house of spirits), a large rock hollowed out to form a
funeral chamber within, leaving the natural rock surface
to serve as the outer wall. There are about 2,500 of
these things found throughout Sardinia; they provided
the most common form of Neolithic burial. Some have a
single chamber, but they can have as many as 20, in
which case they are a form of catacomb, I suppose. The
term Domus de Janus looks Latin but is Sardinian.
Without my handy OED, I am guessing that that Domus is
pre-Latin Indo-European. Domus de Janus is also the name
of the hotel we are staying at tonight and tomorrow.
Very funny.
Well before all that, there is the so-called Ozieri
culture, late
Neolithic and Copper Age communities in the north of
Sardinia. Their implements, caves dwellings and
rock-cut tombs from the fourth century BC are
well-known in archaeology. There is even
evidence of pre-Sapiens inhabitants from Paleolithic
times. Presumably, they got to the island by a land
bridge thought (known?) to have existed that joined the
continent to Sardinia. Maybe there was a bridge that
joined Corsica to Sardinia and the continent to Corsica,
but I don’t know. In broad terms, however, the entire
Mediterranean Sea was brought into existence about ten
million years ago by the coming together of the African
tectonic plate and the plate that makes up the greater
Eurasian landmass to the north. In the case of Italy,
the prominent mountain range, the Apennines, the
"backbone" of Italy, resulted from the collision of the
smaller Apulian plate with the Iberian plate. The
mountains formed, and islands such as Sardinia and
Sicily surfaced. The Mediterranean —an inland sea, at
the time—then evaporated, dried up for a few million
years. When the land bridge of Gibraltar gave way, it is
estimated that a volume of water equal to three or four
hundred Niagaras started flowing into the basin,
refilling the Mediterranean in about a century. It must
have been quite a show for our hominid ancestors
grunting around for roots and berries on the slopes of
the Atlas Mountains in North Africa —("Holy
Archaeopteryx! Look at all that wet stuff! I'd better
evolve some brains, learn how to use tools and start
building a raft!")
Archaeology in much of this area started as recently as
the 1970s and 80s when a lot of sites were irreparably
damaged by the bull-dozers of development. The hill in
back of our hotel in Villasimìus is apparently
the site of one such Phoenician settlement, but you’d
never know it. These neo-Phoenicians (I think a lot of
them are from Germany) do have a nice small golf course,
though.
It’s amazing how much information is gained from pottery
inscriptions and design. The many amphora from
archaeological sites plus the many more dredged up by
underwater archaeologists in the nearby waters are like
books that used to have food and wine in them. (An
unbeatable combination!) It’s quite a task—and much
remains to be done around here—to put together all the
pieces, sunken and shifted over the centuries, of
various cultures, from the Stone Age through the early
Phoenician travelers, then the Greeks and Romans, the
Byzantines and on and up to the Spanish ship that sank
in the 1400s off the small Isola dei Cavoli off of Cape Carbonara
just a few miles away from here. At that time,
Sardinia—or a large section of it—was part of the
so-called Crown of Aragon, a
loose (pre-nation state of Spain) confederation of
commercial sea-farers (much like the Phoenicians), a
confederation that included Sicily and then the
Aragonese Kingdom of Naples for a brief time.
Sept. 23, 2009—Note to myself: see if I can find some
research in population genetics and how it relates to
the origins of the Etruscans. I bought a little journal
off a newsstand, Sardegna
antica, culture mediterranee, n. 35. (It’s hard
to tell if that number 35 means the 35th in a series of
general Mediterranean Culture or 35th in a series about
Ancient Sardinia; I think the former rather than the
latter.) In any event, there was an article entitled
“Genetics” that claims older speculation that
proto-Sardinians are related to Etruscans in now
genetically shown to be wrong. (It also mentions the
linguistic evidence that has long shown Etruscan not to
be Indo-European.) There are a few interesting items in
the bibliography, among others A Genetic History of Italy, though
it’s from 1988—quite a while ago. There are some more
recent citations as well.
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