Chapter 7. Situating Sardinia’s giants’ tombs in their spatial, social, and temporal contexts

The positioning of Sardinia’s Bronze Age tombs was as carefully planned as their design. Working from that premise, this chapter analyzes the spatial patterning of these tombs in relation to contemporary settlements, for insights into the tombs’ function. Standard interpretations of the tombs’ purpose are weighed against the spatial data and artifactual evidence, and are discarded. A more nuanced picture of the tombs’ role in Nuragic society emerges, one that downplays their mortuary and cosmological importance and emphasizes instead their practical significance as spaces of community gatherings, whether secular or sacred. This role would have been both manifest in and reaffirmed by these spatial arrangements.