The necropolis of Pranu Muttedu is one of the most important funerary areas of

pre-Nuragic Sardinia The Pre-Nuragic period refers to the prehistory of Sardinia from the Paleolithic until the middle Bronze Age, when the Nuragic civilization flourished on the island. Paleolithic The discovery of Paleolithic lithic workshops indicate a human pre ...

and is located near Goni, a small village in the

province of South Sardinia The Province of South Sardinia ( it, provincia del Sud Sardegna; sc, provìntzia de Sud Sardigna) is an Italian province of Sardinia instituted on 4 February 2016. It includes the suppressed provinces of Province of Carbonia-Iglesias, Carbonia- ...

. The complex has the highest known concentration of

menhirs A menhir (from Brittonic languages: ''maen'' or ''men'', "stone" and ''hir'' or ''hîr'', "long"), standing stone, orthostat, or lith is a large human-made upright stone, typically dating from the European middle Bronze Age. They can be foun ...

and

megaliths A megalith is a large stone that has been used to construct a prehistoric structure or monument, either alone or together with other stones. There are over 35,000 in Europe alone, located widely from Sweden to the Mediterranean sea. The ...

Sardinia Sardinia ( ; it, Sardegna, label=Italian, Corsican and Tabarchino ; sc, Sardigna , sdc, Sardhigna; french: Sardaigne; sdn, Saldigna; ca, Sardenya, label=Algherese and Catalan) is the second-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, after ...

(about sixty, variously distributed in pairs, groups or arrays), two megalithic tombs and a Domus de Janas surrounded by stone circles. The complex has been excavated by Enrico Atzeni, on several occasions since 1980. The site was used from the

Ozieri culture The Ozieri culture (or San Michele culture) was a prehistoric pre-Nuragic culture that occupied Sardinia from c. 3200 to 2800 BCE. The Ozieri was the culmination of the island's Neolithic culture and takes its name from the locality where early ...

period to the early

Copper Age The Copper Age, also called the Chalcolithic (; from grc-gre, χαλκός ''khalkós'', "copper" and ''líthos'', "stone") or (A)eneolithic (from Latin '' aeneus'' "of copper"), is an archaeological period characterized by regular ...

. File:Area archeologica di Pranu Muttedu - Menhir 02.jpg File:Area archeologica di Pranu Muttedu - Domus de janas 01.jpg File:Sardinien Goni Pranu Muttedu 02.jpg

Bibliography

* G. Lilliu, ''La civiltà dei Sardi dal paleolitico all'età dei nuraghi'', Torino, Nuova ERI, 1988; * E. Atzeni-D. Cocco, ''Nota sulla necropoli megalitica di Pranu Muttedu-Goni'', in ''La Cultura di Ozieri. Problematiche e nuove acquisizioni'', Ozieri, Il Torchietto, 1989, pp. 201–216.
Goni, Menhir e sepolture megalitiche di Pranu Muttedu
Archaeological sites in Sardinia Burial monuments and structures {{Italy-stub