Sardinian waters

Acque Sarde (Sardinian Waters) extends the exhibition Etruscans and Veneti and adds a new voice to the story of water cults in ancient Italy. A group of bronze figurines and votive pottery from the National Archaeological Museum of Cagliari opens a window onto Nuragic Sardinia, where water was a sacred element, a meeting point and the centre of community life.

Around the 12th century BC, Nuragic civilisation went through a period of profound transformation: the building of nuraghi came to an end and new forms of settlement took hold. Between the Late Bronze Age and the early Iron Age, water became the focus of new places of worship. Sacred wells and springs, highly refined structures often set within larger sanctuaries, brought together different communities and took on social and political significance.

As in Etruscan and Venetic sanctuaries, ritual here centred on the offering. Many of the celebrated Nuragic bronze figurines come from these contexts: offerers and worshippers, archers, boxers and warriors, animal figures, alongside miniature nuraghi, vessels and boats, weapons and items of clothing. These objects speak of the relationship with the sacred and, at the same time, of the new ways in which individuals and emerging groups asserted and represented themselves.

In a changing society, the sanctuary became a place of connection, and the offering a gesture that wove together devotion, belonging and prestige: the same bond between water, the sacred and power that runs through the entire exhibition.