Editing Nuraghe (section)

==Function==
[[File:Nuraghe la Prisciona.jpg|thumb|200px|[[Nuraghe La Prisciona]], Nuraghe village near [[Arzachena]], Sardinia]]
There is no consensus on the function of the nuraghes: they could have been rulers' residences, military strongholds, meeting halls, religious temples, ordinary dwellings or a combination of any of these things. Some of the nuraghes are, however, located in strategic places – such as hills – from which important passages could be easily controlled. They might have been something between a "status symbol" and a "passive defence" building, meant to be a deterrent for possible enemies.

Nuraghes could also have been the "national" symbol of the Nuragic peoples. Small-scale models of nuraghe have often been excavated at religious sites (e.g. in the "maze" temple at the Su Romanzesu site near [[Bitti]] in central Sardinia). Nuraghes may have just connoted wealth or power, or they may have been an indication that a site had its owners. Recent unconfirmed theories tend to suggest that Sardinian towns were independent entities (such as the [[city-state]]s, although in a geographical sense they were not cities) that formed federations and that the building of these monuments might have depended on agreed-on distributions of territory among federated unities.

They were not tombs of princes and their families, as was mistakenly believed by taking as an argument the discovery of human remains there, but of strata of a later age than the Nuragic, that is, Carthaginian and Roman. Neither were they monumental temples, which today are known to be of different shapes and types, even for prehistoric island times, likewise burials (domus de janas or "fairy houses"; tumbas de sos gigantes or "tombs of the giants").<ref>{{Cite web |last=lostcivilizations |date=2023-09-20 |title=Vestiges of a remote civilization: the nuraghi of Sardinia |url=https://www.neperos.com/article/s1a0v4545b26b4fc |website=Neperos.com |language=en-US}}</ref>

In 2002, Juan Belmonte and Mauro Zedda measured the entrance orientations ([[declination]]s and [[azimuth]]s) of 272 simple nuraghes and of the central towers of 180&nbsp;complex ones. The data revealed clear peaks corresponding to orientations pointing to the sunrise at winter [[solstice]] and to the Moon at its southernmost rising position. These alignments remained constant throughout the history of nuraghe.<ref name="Belm">{{cite journal |author1=Zedda, M. |author2=Belmonte, J.A. |year=2004 |title=On the orientations of Sardinian nuraghes: Some clues to their interpretation |journal=Journal for the History of Astronomy |issn=0021-8286 |volume=35 Part&nbsp;1 |issue=118 |page=92|doi=10.1177/002182860403500104 |bibcode=2004JHA....35...85Z |s2cid=120386421 }}</ref> The most common declinations revealed were of around −43° for the earlier nuraghes, shifting to just −45½° for the later. Zedda has suggested that the target is likely a star, quite possibly [[Alpha Centauri]].<ref name="Belm"/>
[[File:Particolare del Nuraghe Bruncu Madugui.JPG|thumb|Protonuraghe Bruncu Madugui, [[Gesturi]]]]
[[File:Silanus - Nuraghe di Santa Sabina (07).JPG|thumb|Nuraghe di Santa Sabina, from [[Silanus, Sardinia|Silanus]], an example of a monotower nuraghe.]]
[[File:Villanova Truschedu - Nuraghe Santa Barbara (49).JPG|thumb|Nuraghe Santa Barbara, [[Villanova Truschedu]], an example of a tancadu nuraghe.]]