Church of St. George
This church can be traced back to the ecclesia Santi Giorgi de Decimu, which appears in a document from 1089.
In the mid-1600s it was used as both a church and a cemetery. Excavation and restoration work in 1989 uncovered a Roman mosaic, which constitutes the first floor of the building, to be related to a baptismal font and basic ashlars of the semicircular axis. The Roman mosaic, the chronography of which has been reconstructed, is “pelte adjacent,” with a wedge-shaped peduncle, while the baptismal font is basically elliptical in shape. The base ashlars, put in relation to the font itself and to the first floor of the building, consisting of fragments of Roman mosaic, datable to the 3rd-4th centuries, give a hypothetical dating of a building constructed in the Byzantine period, thus at the beginning of the 6th century. The fact that there is also a baptismal font shows that here, in this building baptism was administered, thus we can speak of one of the first rural churches in the territory of Cagliari in which this sacrament was administered, we are thus speaking of a rural baptismal church. The excavation work uncovered, in addition to the elements described above, several coins that are dated around 1100-1200, up to 1500. Several burials were also unearthed, so we can be certain that the building has been used to the present day. The same documentary sources confirm to us the various restorations that are carried out in the monument in the 1600s, 1700s and 1800s.
Inside there is a retablo, which has a fifteenth/fifteenth-century setting, but it also has some elements that lead us to date it to the second half of the sixteenth century, so it is possible that there may have been some repainting. It is a double triptych with two side compartments and one central compartment. In the upper part of the central compartment we have the crucifixion scene, and in the middle central panel we have the adoration of the Magi. At the top left is an image of a martyred saint, perhaps St. Saturninus, or St. Antiochus, or St. Ephisius (this has not yet been defined).
On the lower left, however, is a depiction of St. George on horseback, in the background is the princess, and below is the act of St. George slaying the dragon with a spear.
The compartments on the right depict another saint, perhaps St. Anthony or, perhaps, St. Potitus.
Also indicated is the name, probably, of the patron: a certain Pittao, and below is depicted St. Michael the Archangel.
In the predella below are represented, on the sides, the four evangelists, in the center the Eucharist and the Archangel Gabriel with Our Lady representing the scene of the Annunciation.
This church has had several building interventions over the centuries, the most important of which is certainly the plugging of the semi-circular axis, in order to have a sacristy where the apse used to be in ancient times, and then the construction of the chapel, which we can date to the early 1500s, of which we have documents from the very end of the 1500s, when it was named “Chapel of St. Nicholas,” privileged by a Putzese family (certain Lisci or Lepori), who asked to be buried precisely in the Chapel of St. Nicholas of the Church of St. George. The church, however, retains several elements from the Roman period, such as fragments of columns, capitals, later transformed into stoups. In particular, in the seventeenth-century aedicule, a statue of St. George on horseback is still preserved, also dating from around the mid-1700s or early 1700s.
Hypogeum of Sant’Iroxi
In 1987, during work on the construction of the Decimoputzu Municipal Gymnasium, a partially damaged hypogeum, called the Hypogeum of Sant’Iroxi, was discovered.
The site, located on the northeastern slope of the Hill of Sant’Iroxi, or San Giorgio, was unearthed under the direction of Giovanni Ugas of the Archaeological Superintendence of the provinces of Cagliari and Oristano, and today it is no longer visible due to partial damage during the work for the construction of the gymnasium and also due to the perishability of the construction material, since it was dug into the earth.
It is believed that this site originated in the late Neolithic age and was used for one thousand five hundred years, like the village to which it belonged, from the time of the Ozieri Culture until the Bonnanaro Culture.
The tomb consisted of three rooms devoid of architectural ornaments and symbolic decorative furnishings, and in it as many as 180 individuals were found buried in a fetal crouched position, but initially it is believed there may have been as many as 250, deposited in as many as 13 chronological stratigraphies.
Along with them, a vast sampler of weapons of the period was found, including nineteen among daggers made of arsenical copper and, for the first time, also large swords, an entire trove that is kept today in the National Archaeological Museum in Cagliari.
Of particular interest are these swords, forged with a triangular blade and ranging in length from twenty-seven to sixty-six centimeters, which bear some similarities to the swords of the El Argar Culture in Spain.
But the base of these valuable weapons is rounded, like that of the oldest daggers, and they are identical to those depicted in Egyptian frescoes depicting Shardana warriors.
Different pottery than in the past has also been found, as among them the tripod vase is absent, replaced by a vase with four or five feet at the base, and the bolli latte appears, with a kind of retraction of the inner face, to allow the lid to rest between the neck and shoulder of the vase. The peculiarity of the artifacts found in this tomb was such that the locals identified it as the Tomb of the Warriors designation that has since remained in common usage even among scholars.
The tomb is dated in the Early Bronze Age and attributed to the Bonnanaro Culture, which developed according to the chronology calibrated between 2200 and 1900 BC, and according to a more traditional dating between 1900 and 1600 BC.
