San Michele Cave, Ozieri

The San Michele Cave of Ozieri, near the town, plunges into the limestone for about eighty meters and is made up of rooms and tunnels covered with stalactites, fed by small drops of water. Partly destroyed, it was reused both as a dwelling and as a place of worship and necropolis, an underground burial site excavated in the rock and intended as a collective tomb, called “domus de janas” (house of the fairies). This cave gave its name to the so-called “Ozieri” or “San Michele” culture, framed in the Late Neolithic of Sardinia, between 3200 and 2800 BC. The ceramic materials found in the cave are technically perfect, clearly superior to the ceramics of all subsequent cultures, with particular production and decoration of stone vessels predominantly featuring concentric semicircle designs. The excavations, carried out in 1914 and 1949, brought to light a significant number of artifacts now preserved in the “G.A. Sanna” National Museum in Sassari.