{"it":{"id":"EUR-ACC","kind":"site","sub":"Europe","name":"Monte d'Accoddi","place":"Italy","lat":40.791,"lon":8.449,"date":"c.4000-3000 BC (INTERPRETATION)","mat":"limestone, earth","nfacts":5,"tags":["Europe"],"sum":"Monte d'Accoddi, in Sardinia, is a stepped platform reached by a ramp about 42 m long. Its oldest phase dates to about 4000 to 3650 BCE.","why":"A stepped, ramped altar in Sardinia that the ministry calls unique in the island's prehistory.","src":[443],"nsrc":2,"yt":"Nothing like Monte d'Accoddi is known in Sardinia. Where did the idea for its shape come from?","rel":["MES-008","EUR-010"],"hook":"Monte d'Accoddi in Sardinia is a stepped altar with a ramp 42 m long. Nothing like it is known nearby."},"S":{"443":["Wikipedia: Monte d'Accoddi","https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monte_d'Accoddi"]},"rec":{"id":"EUR-ACC","alias":[],"ms":[{"f":"phase 1","a":"base","v":"27 x 27","u":"m","o":"","unc":"","by":"Wikipedia Monte d'Accoddi","yr":"2026","m":"as stated","c":"Wikipedia Monte d'Accoddi","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Monte_d%27Accoddi&oldid=1364856745","b":"S","bb":"","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"c.4000-3650 BC","id":"M3503"},{"f":"phase 1","a":"height (probable)","v":"5.5","u":"m","o":"","unc":"","by":"Wikipedia Monte d'Accoddi","yr":"2026","m":"as stated","c":"Wikipedia Monte d'Accoddi","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Monte_d%27Accoddi&oldid=1364856745","b":"S","bb":"","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M3504"},{"f":"phase 1","a":"platform","v":"~12.5 x 7.2","u":"m","o":"","unc":"","by":"Wikipedia Monte d'Accoddi","yr":"2026","m":"as stated","c":"Wikipedia Monte d'Accoddi","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Monte_d%27Accoddi&oldid=1364856745","b":"S","bb":"","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M3505"},{"f":"phase 2 step platform","a":"dimensions","v":"36 x 29; ~10 m high","u":"m","o":"","unc":"","by":"Wikipedia Monte d'Accoddi","yr":"2026","m":"as stated","c":"Wikipedia Monte d'Accoddi","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Monte_d%27Accoddi&oldid=1364856745","b":"S","bb":"","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"3500-3000 BC","id":"M3506"},{"f":"phase 2","a":"ramp length","v":"42","u":"m","o":"","unc":"","by":"Wikipedia Monte d'Accoddi","yr":"2026","m":"as stated","c":"Wikipedia Monte d'Accoddi","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Monte_d%27Accoddi&oldid=1364856745","b":"S","bb":"","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M3507"}],"lab":[],"eng":[],"ori":[],"gaps":[{"a":"largest_block","r":"not found in free sources reached"},{"a":"block_mass","r":"not found in free sources reached"},{"a":"stone_count","r":"not found in free sources reached"},{"a":"slope_face_angle","r":"no published face/slope angle in sources reached (often n/a for non-pyramidal sites)"},{"a":"wall_batter","r":"no published batter survey in free sources"},{"a":"orientation","r":"no published azimuth reached"},{"a":"corner_precision","r":"no published precision survey in free sources"},{"a":"levelness","r":"no published levelling survey in free sources"},{"a":"rock_type","r":"not found in free sources reached"},{"a":"geochem_petro","r":"not found in free sources reached"},{"a":"quarry_source","r":"not found in free sources reached"},{"a":"mortar","r":"dry-stone construction or no binder analysis in free sources"},{"a":"tool_marks","r":"no tool-mark study in free sources reached"},{"a":"dating","r":"no absolute date extracted"},{"a":"coords_elevation","r":"no elevation row yet"},{"a":"volume_labor","r":"no volume/labour estimate in sources opened"},{"a":"lab_date_material","r":"no lab date with dated material in sources opened"},{"a":"hydrology_acoustics","r":"no published hydrology/acoustic measurement in sources opened"},{"a":"magnetic_radiation","r":"no published magnetic/radiation survey found (searched site name + magnetometry/radiation; Wikipedia, Google Scholar snippets)"},{"a":"metals_clamps","r":"no metal/clamp evidence reported in sources opened"},{"a":"excavation_history","r":"no excavation history row yet"},{"a":"artifacts_found","r":"no finds row yet"}],"dat":[],"aa":[{"id":"AA077","a":"Mesopotamian-style ziggurat link","who":"see anomaly_claims","main":"local Ozieri altar","ms":"","st":"no data","n":"no lab date opened","nl":4}],"ac":[],"me":[],"ci":[],"cq":[],"sd":[],"sub":[],"site":{"age":"c.4000-3000 BC (INTERPRETATION)","dm":"historical/stylistic (INTERPRETATION)","lab":"NO","weak":"no lab date opened","unesco":"","dens":"STUB"},"co":{"lat":"40.79111","lon":"8.44889","src":"Wikidata/enwiki (Q1945976)","agree":"agree","b":"V","note":"Wikidata/enwiki (Q1945976) vs OSM way 283846642 delta 0.0005 deg","osm":"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/283846642"},"src":[{"id":null,"t":"Wikipedia Monte d'Accoddi","u":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Monte_d%27Accoddi&oldid=1364856745"},{"id":null,"t":"Wikipedia: Monte d'Accoddi","u":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monte_d'Accoddi"},{"id":"VEUR-ACC-3","t":"Ministero della cultura: Santuario preistorico di Monte d'Accoddi","u":"https://cultura.gov.it/luogo/santuario-preistorico-di-monte-daccoddi"},{"id":null,"t":"SardegnaCultura (Regione Sardegna): Sassari, Altare prenuragico di Monte d’Accoddi","u":"https://www.sardegnacultura.it/articolo/sassari-altare-prenuragico-di-monte-daccoddi"},{"id":null,"t":"LaPArS, Laboratorio di Preistoria e Archeologia Sperimentale: Monte d’Accoddi (research project page)","u":"https://www.lapars.it/it/le-ricerche/contesti/monte-daccoddi"}],"sum":"In a field outside Sassari, in the north-west of Sardinia, there is a stone that someone shaped like an egg and then cut clean through. The cut is not straight. It runs along a subtle, curving line in three dimensions, the kind of surface a modern sculptor would plan with care. It lies a few steps from a long earthen ramp that climbs to a flat-topped mound of rough limestone, and the mound is the reason anyone comes here. Nothing else like it is known on the island.\n\nMonte d'Accoddi stands on the edge of a plateau above the Rio d'Ottava, in the Nurra region, about 15 kilometres from Sassari. It is a stepped platform, a truncated pyramid of earth and stone with sloping walls of large, roughly shaped limestone blocks. The figures vary a little by source, but the base measures about 36 by 29 metres, an area of about four tennis courts, and a ramp about 42 metres long rises to the top. Italy's Ministry of Culture puts the surviving height at about 10 metres, roughly three storeys; the regional culture service gives 5.4 metres for the visible terrace. Inside there are no chambers and no entrances. It is solid, layered fill, which is why scholars have called it by so many names: an altar, a temple, a step pyramid and, most provocatively, a ziggurat.\n\nThe ramp and the mound belong to a second building. Inside them lies an older and smaller one. The excavator Santo Tinè, who dug here from 1979 to 1990, found that the first monument had been a square terrace of its own, with its own ramp, and on its top a rectangular shrine whose walls had been plastered and painted with red ochre. Archaeologists call it the Red Temple. Its floor and part of one wall survive, along with the holes where posts once held up a pitched roof. The sources disagree on its size. One gives a base of 27 by 27 metres and a probable height of 5.5 metres, crowned by a platform of about 12.5 by 7.2 metres. The regional account gives 23.8 by 27.4 metres, with a ramp about 25 metres long. Either way, its square plan was laid out to the cardinal points of the compass, which has led some to suggest it also served for watching the sky.\n\nWhen all this happened is the first real puzzle. The regional culture service places the Red Temple late in the Ozieri culture, around 3200 to 2800 BC, and says it burned during the Filigosa culture, around 2800 BC, after which the larger platform was raised to replace it. The LaPArS research project, which is restudying the finds of the 1950s, reads the evidence very differently. Drawing on newer radiocarbon dates from southern Sardinia, it puts the first monument at about 4000 to 3650 BC and the second at about 3500 to 3000 BC. The ministry dates the main monument to the start of the Copper Age, between 3500 and 2900 BC. The gap between these answers is several centuries, and nobody has yet made them agree.\n\nThe site was found in the early 1950s, in a field owned by the Segni family, and Ercole Contu excavated it from 1952 to 1959. Alberto Moravetti dug again in 2000 and 2001. Digs around the altar, from the 1960s on, found the traces of a small sacred landscape. A menhir 4.44 metres tall stands on the south side, set upright again in recent years. A dolmen sits near one corner. Beside the ramp lies a rough offering table of trachyte, and near it a trapezoid slab of limestone resting on three stone supports, with seven holes around its rim and a natural sinkhole beneath. The regional account suggests it may have been a table for blood sacrifice. The bones back that idea. In the Abealzu-Filigosa layers, the remains of sheep, cattle and pigs turn up in nearly equal numbers, which makes Monte d'Accoddi among the earliest known sacrificial sites in western Europe. It has been called \"the most singular cultic monument in the early Western Mediterranean.\"\n\nAround the platform stood huts with walls of mud brick or plastered reeds on low stone footings. One is known as the sorcerer's hut, after the tip of a cattle horn and some shells found inside a jug. Carved stones turned up too: one with a lozenge and spirals, one with a stylised female figure, a small oval stone scored with 13 parallel grooves. Half a kilometre away, in the limestone face above the river, eight rock-cut tombs with several rooms each are often carved with the heads of bulls.\n\nThe mainstream reading is clear and well argued. Monte d'Accoddi was a Copper Age sanctuary, built and rebuilt by local Sardinian farmers. The finds show ordinary work alongside ritual: ochre, spinning and weaving, farming, metalworking. The menhir, the stelae and the marble figurines all fit long island traditions. LaPArS adds that the crafts change gradually, with no gap and no sudden break, as though the same people simply kept going.\n\nThat continuity tells its own story about power. At some point a hut was built at the foot of the ramp, which suggests that access to the summit became controlled and limited. A sacred height that anyone could climb became one that somebody guarded. The burial of the Red Temple inside a larger platform reads the same way: the old shrine was not erased, it was enclosed, its authority absorbed into something bigger.\n\nThe trouble is the shape. A ramped, stepped platform of this kind is unique in Sardinia, and the regional service calls it unique in the western Mediterranean. Its closest likeness lies far to the east. The second platform, as one account puts it plainly, resembles the ziggurats, the stepped temple towers of Mesopotamia. LaPArS notes that the architecture has prompted \"intense debate\" over its origins. The archaeologists G. and M. Webster went furthest. In 2017 and again in 2019, citing the architecture, the ritual deposits and diagnostic pottery, they argued that the monument was the product of a migration from Mesopotamia in the first half of the fourth millennium BC, probably a group in exile. The mainstream view remains a local monument. A local origin and an outside idea need not exclude each other, but no opened source offers direct evidence of contact.\n\nThe site outlived the argument by a long way. Bell Beaker groups came after about 2500 BC and left their cups and bowls. In the Early Bronze Age a child was buried here, the skull placed in a three-legged vessel. One account has the site abandoned around 1800 BC, at the dawn of the Nuragic age of stone towers; the regional account records later visits in Nuragic, Phoenician-Punic, Roman and medieval times. The monument was partly reconstructed in the 1980s, and one account says half of it has now been rebuilt.\n\nWhat rite was performed on the summit, nobody knows. What remains is the profile against the Sardinian sky, a long ramp rising to a flat stone top, and beneath it, sealed in earth and limestone, a red floor where someone last stood before the fire, facing the four directions, on a hill built in a shape that people on the other side of the sea would have recognised.","qs":["Nothing like Monte d'Accoddi is known in Sardinia. Where did the idea for its shape come from?","An older red temple was found inside the altar. Why build a new monument over an old one?","The ministry calls the site unique in Sardinia. What can one site tell us without others to compare?"],"gal":[{"src":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a9/Monte_d%27Accoddi.jpg/1280px-Monte_d%27Accoddi.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail","page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Monte_d%27Accoddi.jpg","title":"Monte d'Accoddi.jpg","lic":"CC BY 4.0","licurl":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0","by":"Photo2023","cap":"Monte d'Accoddi"},{"src":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a7/Monte_D%27Accoddi_03.JPG/1280px-Monte_D%27Accoddi_03.JPG?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail","page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Monte_D%27Accoddi_03.JPG","title":"Monte D'Accoddi 03.JPG","lic":"CC BY-SA 3.0","licurl":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0","by":"Cristiano Cani","cap":"Monte D'Accoddi - MIBAC"},{"src":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8c/Monte_D%27Accoddi_05.JPG/1280px-Monte_D%27Accoddi_05.JPG?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail","page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Monte_D%27Accoddi_05.JPG","title":"Monte D'Accoddi 05.JPG","lic":"CC BY-SA 3.0","licurl":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0","by":"Cristiano Cani","cap":"Monte D'Accoddi - MIBAC"},{"src":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8a/Monte_D%27Accoddi_07.JPG/1280px-Monte_D%27Accoddi_07.JPG?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail","page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Monte_D%27Accoddi_07.JPG","title":"Monte D'Accoddi 07.JPG","lic":"CC BY-SA 3.0","licurl":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0","by":"Cristiano Cani","cap":"Monte D'Accoddi - MIBAC"},{"src":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9c/Monte_d%27Accoddi%2C_reconstruction_1.jpg/1280px-Monte_d%27Accoddi%2C_reconstruction_1.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail","page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Monte_d%27Accoddi,_reconstruction_1.jpg","title":"Monte d'Accoddi, reconstruction 1.jpg","lic":"CC BY-SA 4.0","licurl":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0","by":"Daniel Ventura","cap":"Monte d'Accoddi, reconstruction"}]},"img":null,"md":null,"hh":[{"v":"4000 BC","h":"Oldest parts, built by the Ozieri culture or earlier","s":[172]},{"v":"3500 BC","h":"Original structure buried in earth and stone","s":[172]},{"v":"Limestone, earth","h":"Made of","s":[172]}],"hs":{"172":["Wikipedia: Monte d'Accoddi (and sources cited there)","https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monte_d%27Accoddi"]},"lh":{"s":"img/h/EUR-ACC.webp","w":1280,"h":960,"o":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a9/Monte_d%27Accoddi.jpg/1280px-Monte_d%27Accoddi.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail"}}