Filitosa is the only site on the island where the pre-eminence
of the statues can be seen in the so-called Torréen monuments (a unique
place where the fragments of the statues were then used by the Torréens
as building materials in the construction of their "religious" monument,
raised up at the heart of the promontory.) Its oppidum with its three monuments
and Torréen village, has provided a quarter of all the recorded knowledge
gathered on Corsican Torréen civilisation.
The village settlement still shows four architecturally characteristic
developments contained within a still-visible enclosure to the south-east,
an area of little shacks with curvilinear dry-stone walls; to the east,
the base of a building connected with the defence of the enclosure; in the
centre, a circular monument with a single chamber to which one can attribute
a religious character; To the west, a large, elliptical monument, divided
into two chambers and several passageways dominates, from a height of 60m,
a vast part of the valley, and the confluence of the Sardelle (dry) with
the Barcajolo river (a tributary from the left bank of the Taravo. It is
these turriform structures that are the origin of the name given to the
site, "Turrichju".
These monumental complexes never cease to amaze. After anthropomorphic
statuary art, the followers of megalithism chose other cultural or religious
practises, as shown by the construction of vast circular monuments, the
torre.
Filitosa can count two of these, at the centre and in the west,
complemented to the east by a look-out platform for the main entrance. A
so-called Cyclopean enclosure, made of large stones, surrounds the site.
The Bronze Age group of dwellings are thus called "Castelli". If the enclosure
is most certainly defensive, the primary purpose of the torre is not military.The
distribution of chambers, corridors, nooks and crannies scarcely follows
military logic.
Wouldn’t this complexity in the internal organisation have
been deliberate, intended to conceal the practice of certain funeral or
initiation rites? The presence in the centre of the sole room in the central
monument, of a baked-clay area legislates in favour of this hypothesis.
Ritual fires were lit there, the ashes collected bearing witness
to this. If the torre is a fire temple, the purpose of the fire remains
unknown. Was it connected to initiation rites, to death, to a natural element
or to a divinity ?
The Corsican "torre", the Sardinian "nuraghi", the Balearic
"talayots" make up part of a great Mediterranean family of architecture,
which uses the dome in the construction of circular monuments. The roof
of the tower is no longer covered in straw or wood, but is a false vault,
made of rings of corbelled stone that become smaller towards the top. The
Torréen monuments of Filitosa were not only a sanctuary or religious place,
they probably served also as warehouses for food storage or weapons depots.
