The Chequered Tomb
A news story from the island of Sardinia raises some interesting questions.
It would seem that back in 2007 Bonorva Municipality applied for and received a government grant to conduct an archaeological survey of the area. The job was passed on to the local cooperative society, which in turn employed an archaeologist called Francesco Sartor to do the work. The result of Mr Sartor's survey was that he was commissioned the following year to excavate on the site.
Naturally all this activity aroused a degree of interest locally and Mr Sartor received many enquiries as to his results, to all of which he replied that he had not yet found anything. However a keen-eyed local observed that every day the workmen were coming down covered in dirt and one day spoke to one of them in his native Sardinian - further guarding against any evesdropping by Sartor by using a roundabout way of phrasing his question. "Has the sow given birth to its piglets?" he asked and the local man, who understood him perfectly, replied, "Yes, and you should see how many and how beautiful they are!"
A nod being as good as a wink among the Sardinians, the keen-eyed local - a Mr Porcu (is there any relationship between the name and the question, one wonders? - summoned his brother and at the weekend the two of them went up to the place where the excavators were working. It turned out to be very near a prehistoric necropolis identified in 2002, but there was nothing to be seen apart from an area of bare earth where the vegetation had been cleared away. However there was a sheet of plastic on the ground, carefully pinned in place by stones and buckets of earth, and this the Porcu brothers proceeded to remove.
Underneath was a tunnel and they lost no time in dropping down into it and creeping along it to a spot where they found an ornate facade cut into the rock, in the centre of which was a doorway. Inside that was a large room carved into the rock, off which three smaller rooms opened. What astonished the two was the fact that all four rooms were painted with red ochre, dark blue and white. The gable roofs were painted in blue and white to resemble wooden boards, while the walls were decorated in red with bull heads and a series of large spirals. One of the side chambers had a roof painted with a chequer-board pattern of black and white, which has led to the tomb being called "Tomba della Scacchiera" - the Chequered Tomb.
Mr Porcu went back home for his camera and took a number of photographs and then the two carefully put the plastic back in position and returned to their homes with no one the wiser. A few days later, however, Porcu went to the mayor of Bonorva, Mimmino Deriu, and showed him the photographs. Mr Deriu was astonished: as mayor he expected to be kept informed of what was going on - his municipality was paying for it, after all - but so far he had not been told a single thing.
After four months of work, Francesco Sartor came down from his hill and went away to write up his report and the next thing the Porcu brothers knew was that the Soprintendenza Archaeologica della Nuoro i Sassari, the local arm of the Italian Heritage Ministry, sent some heavy machinery up to the site to lift a huge boulder over the entrance to the tomb, sealing it in place with copious quantities of concrete.
So far so good, but now a row has broken out between the Soprintendenza and its archaeologist, Mrs Luisanna Usai, and the mayor of Bonorva, backed up by the Porcus. The Soprintendenza haughtily declares that "Our main aim is to protect these sites. We are the one who decide which are the best channels to inform people about this kind of discoveries." The mayor and his allies claim that they are being denied access to their heritage and point out that other tombs in the area are being ruined by heavy water seepage and unless the "Tomba della Scacchiera" is open and monitored, it too might suffer damage.
Unfortunately the mayor let slip the real reason behind his lofty sentiments when he stated, "I am working to further improve our archaeological heritage, thanks to the re-opening of the local archaeological Museum located on a former monastery and through the recent agreement with the Forestry Service so to preserve and enhance - also with touristic aims - the Tenuta Mariani, where the sealed necropolis lies."
Ah - tourism! Rather like the Greek guide who lamented to me about the Elgin Marbles, "But no one is making any money out of them!" it would seem that the main complaint of the mayor and the Porcus is that no one is making any money out of this new discovery. Entrance fees, parking fees, guiding fees, the provision of over-priced Coca Cola, all slipping through their fingers because the tomb is blocked.
On the other hand, I can see the Soprintendenza's point of view. The tomb was not constructed for public viewing, the entrance is narrow, the rooms are small and there is no lighting. Within a short time of opening - were the tomb to be opened - grubby tourists would be crowding in to rub their sweaty backs against the 6,000 year old paintings or rub their fingers on them to see if the paint came off. (How do I know? Because that is exactly how people on the Diggings tours behave when we visit some of the Tombs of the Nobles in Egypt!) Within a very short time the paintings would be gone and the Porcus would find that they had killed the goose which laid the golden egg.
The solution - to build a perspex inner room inside the tomb, hermetically sealing the tomb from the humidity and heat of the tourists (who, to a man and a woman, persist in breathing when inside these ancient monuments, a deplorable habit which I cannot condemn strongly enough) - is not only expensive, but given the size of the passageways, may not be practical. Other solutions, such as remotely-controlled cameras or even a complete reproduction of the tomb, are also expensive and have the downside of making the tomb less attractive to tourists!
I do not envy the Italian Minister for Culture who will have to try to find a balance between the competing claims of preservationists, tourists, local businessmen, and others.
© Kendall K. Down 2010
