A new study reveals that the bronze used in Nuragic bronzetti primarily came from Sardinian mines, confirming the island's central role in metallurgy and Mediterranean trade between the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age.
Recent studies show that Sardinian Nuragic sanctuaries were true centers for the management and processing of metals between the end of the Bronze Age and the beginning of the Iron Age.
Too often we are used to associating any ancient construction with purely ritual purposes, but more and more evidence reveals cultures that were advanced in many respects. This is precisely the case of what we find in Sardinia.
The new study published in PLoS ONE analyzed forty-eight Nuragic bronze figurines and three copper ingots from three important Sardinian sanctuaries and from an unidentified site, dating back to the 1st millennium BC.
Using a multiproxy approach that combined traditional chemical analyses with lead, copper, tin, and osmium isotope studies, the results showed that the copper came mainly from the Iglesiente-Sulcis district—probably from the Sa Duchessa mine—and from the Iberian Peninsula.
The research therefore reveals that the Nuragic bronze figurines, the famous statuettes, were made with local copper, providing further evidence of an advanced culture and of a true commercial and cultural network that connected Sardinia with both the western and eastern Mediterranean. Trade with the Etruscans, for example, is known to date precisely to the 1st millennium BC.
By contrast, no evidence emerged of the direct use of Cypriot copper in the analyzed figurines, as had previously been thought.
The bronze works were probably commissioned by the elite as votive offerings, and the variety of materials used suggests that the Nuragic metallurgists selected local or foreign copper according to availability, quality, or cost.
The study therefore confirms that the sanctuaries were not only religious sites but true centers for the production and storage of metals, positioning Sardinia as a strategic hub within the metallurgical and trade networks of the time.