In Loculi, the dig that tells three thousand years of Sardinian history reopens for one day

The archaeological dig on via San Pietro, in Loculi, in the province of Nuoro, opened to the public on an extraordinary basis on Thursday 29 October, from 9.30am to 1pm. This is reported by Vistanet Ogliastra, which reconstructs the history of the site: the discovery dates back to 2019, when works for the construction of a car park accidentally brought archaeological remains to light below street level.

Since then, excavations have uncovered a multi-layered area of around 700 square metres, with evidence spanning an exceptionally wide time frame: from the Bronze Age to the Middle Ages. Among the reported finds is a fragment of a votive sword of Nuragic type, an object that in Sardinian Bronze Age culture had a ritual rather than military function. The site also includes the remains of dwellings and ovens, elements suggesting continuity of occupation and use of the space across different eras.

The Loculi case fits into a phenomenon not uncommon in Italian archaeology: discoveries arising from ordinary infrastructure works — in this case a car park — that end up rewriting the map of known settlements in a given area. The Nuoro area, rich in Nuragic evidence, adds with this dig a piece spanning subsequent periods up to the Middle Ages, something rarely documented at a single site of limited size.

It should be noted that the news currently comes from a single source (Vistanet Ogliastra); independent confirmation is not available regarding the details of the discovery, the exact chronology of the finds, or the status of the ongoing investigations. The public opening remains, at this stage, a one-off event: from 9.30am to 1pm on a single day, over an area of around 700 square metres that required six years of work between the chance discovery and the first organised visit.