Among the various types of necropolis of prehistoric age in Sardinia, a special case is represented by those defined by scholars as Domus with architectural elevation.
In simple words, these are tombs of giants carved entirely in rock.
This typology of collective burials, which sums up to less than a hundred cases, actually shows itself as a kind of resumption of the better known phenomenon of burials in artificial caves, carved in the walls of the soft limestone rock and widespread in the Recent Neolithic.
In this case we are dealing with an excavation carried out at a decidedly later time and pertinent to the full Bronze Age when the Nuragic peoples were more accustomed to the construction of more monumental tombs.
It seems clear that the intent was to reproduce, as faithfully as possible, the external appearance of the megalithic tomb, hence the engraved presence of the ‘centered stele,’ divided precisely into architectural panels, placed in the center of the exedra.
This is also where the counter for attending different functions finds its place.
The inner room is usually smaller and differently shaped with the presence of small side rooms or niches.
Also in the case of Ittiari, the chronology seems to confirm the attribution to the Middle Bronze Age (18th-15th centuries BC), with reuses in later periods.
Another feature entirely similar coeval megalithic tombs.
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