Cemeteries of Etruria having been proved non-existent by the Italian Ministry of Education. It is only in the extreme south-west that megalithic structures app

during the last few years. The tomb is a simple rectangular corridor 36 feet in length, lying east and west. Only one cover-slab, that at the west end, remains, and the exact disposition of the rest of the tomb is uncertain. In one of the side uprights which supports this slab is a circular hole, which, however, seems to be the work of Nature, though its presence may have led to the choice of the stone. The tomb was carefu

monuments, whatever that influence may have been. The same influence may also have been responsible for the bronz

ed a skeleton lying on the right side with the legs slightly contracted. These two tombs can hardly be described as dolmens; they seem to have had no cover-slabs, and the blocks, which were small, were let into the earth, scarcely appearing above the surface. Taken by themselves the Monteracello tombs would hardly prove the presence of the megalithic civilization in Sicily. However, in the valley called Cava Lazzaro there is a rock-hewn tomb where the vertical face of the rock in which the tomb is cut has been shaped into a curved fa?ade, a very usual feature of megalithic architecture. This is ornamented on each side of the

indow in the face of the rock. The dead were often seated round the wall of the chamber, evidently engaged in a funerary feast, as is clear from the great vase set in their midst with small cups for ladling out the liquid. A single tomb often contained many bodies, especially in cases where the banquet arrangement was not observed; one chamber held more than a hundred skeletons, and it has been suggested that the bodies were only laid in the tomb after the flesh had been removed from the bones, either artificially or as the result of a temporary burial elsewhere. Such a custom is n

air court outside the fa?ade of the tomb, built very much after the megalithic style. Large vertical surfaces of rock were carefully sought after for tombs, and the almost inaccessible cliffs of Pantalica and Cassibile are literally honeycombed with them. Where such surfaces of rock were unobtainable a vertical shaft was sunk in the level rock and a chamber was opened off the bottom of it. The tradition of t

r. Certain vases found with neolithic burials in a cave at Villafrati and elsewhere in Sicily resemble the pottery usually found in megalithic tombs; one of them is in fact a bell-shaped cup, a form typical of megalithic pottery. It is thus possible that an immigration of megalithic people into Sicily took place during the stone age, definitely later than the period of the earliest neolithic remains on the is

ilization, where the architecture displays its greatest variety and flexibility. The simplest manifestation of megalithic building, the dolmen, was up till lately thought to be absent from

es are often artificially squared, and set with a clay mortar. The plan and arrangement of a simple nuraghe are usually as follows (Fig. 17): The diameter of the building is generally under 30 feet. A door of barely comforta

1. Mnaidra, D

The Nuraghe of M

ace

on, section and

onumenti

a), which is circular, often with two or three side-niches (b b), and roofed by corbelling, i.e. by making each of the upper courses

into grooves. The niche on the right of the passage clearly served to hold a man, who would command the passage itself and the staircase to the upper floor; he would, moreover, be able to attack the undefended flank of an enemy entering with his shield on his left arm. To the same effort at impregnability we may safely ascribe the fact that the staircase leading to the upper room did not begin on the floor-level of the passage, but was reached through a hole high up in the wall. Many of the nuraghi are surrounded by elaborate fortifications consisting of walls, towers, and bastions, sometimes built at the same time as the dwelling itself, sometimes added later. Those of Aiga, Losa, and s'Aspru are among the most famous of this type. All the nu

was still visible. The walls in one case stood high enough to show, from the corbelling of their upper courses, that the huts were roofed in t

the remains of everyday life found in them, and from the polish which continual use has set on the side-walls of some of the staircases. In general appearance and design the nuraghi recall the modern trudd

ernatives are possible. Either Sardinia was a continual prey to some piratical Mediterran

l dynasts at the expense of their neighbours. He suggests that the existence of the fortified enclosure of Nossiu, where there is no sign of a true nuraghe, may mean that there were certai

s Tomb at Murag

s of the British

(Fig. 18). The slab which closes one end of the tomb is of great size, and consists of a lower rectangular half with a small hole at the base and an upper part shaped like a rounded gable. There is a raised border to the whole slab, and a similar band in relief marks out the two halves. This front slab forms the centre-piece in a curved fa?ade of upright slabs. The ch

clear that they are the work of the same people as the Giants' Graves. Were further proof needed it could be afforded by a grave at Molafà, where a Giant's Grave with its fa?ade and gabled s

f thirteen dolmens, forty-one menhirs, two alignements, and a cromlech. They fall geographica

ngular in plan, and usually consist of four side-walls and a cover-slab. The finest of all, however, the dolmen of Fontanaccia, has seven bloc

of the plan being uncertain. There are still thirty-two blocks, of which six have fallen. The other alignement, t

ewn tombs of the ?neolithic period which ought perhaps to be

OF CO