Dialogue between Mediterranean Protohistory sculptures in the Museo Arqueológico Nacional: About the project 'Il Pugilatore Manneddu'. A Giant of Mont’e Prama (Cabras, Sardinia)

Abstract

As part of a collaborative project between Spain and Italy, a late Nuragic sculpture (900-750 BC), known as “Manneddu”, from the site of Mont’e Prama (Cabras, Oristano, Sardinia), has been shown as a guest work at the National Archaeological Museum (MAN, September 2024–January 2025), in dialogue with Iberian and Talayotic plastic art of Mediterranean Protohistory exhibited in the Museum. This paper presents some reflections on the use of stone in the first anthropomorphic representations sculpted in Iberian culture, without forgetting some precedents from the Late Bronze Age, Tartessian and Orientalizing period. The images of the four sculptural Iberian groups of Pozo Moro (Chinchilla, Albacete), Los Villares (Hoya Gonzalo, Albacete), Cerrillo Blanco (Porcuna, Jaén) and La Alcudia (Elche, Alicante), are studied, in addition to a select corpus of sculptures, which constitute the first Iberian anthropomorphic manifestations carved in stone, of funerary or sacred atmosphere, that the local aristocracies erected to legitimize and exhibit their power in the Iberian territories, in accordance with their beliefs and sense of taste; the use of stone shows a mixture of survival, memory, inequality and power in the liminal context of the rite, of deep value and political and social meaning.