476 Coroneo
In the fields around Donori, a late nineteenth-century excavation sparked by
important marble finds at the site of San Nicola led to the discovery of a triple-
nave basilica with an apse on its east, preceded by a narthex.9 This archaeologi-
cal area, in particular, deserves to be explored with up-to-date methods.
In general, builders must have used columns—probably spolia—rather
than piers to subdivide the aisles in these buildings. Their relatively thin walls
would have been unable to support stone vaults, and were presumably de-
signed to accommodate wooden roofs. There are voussoirs still lying in the
area of the basilicas of Cornus, which scholars have identified as the building
blocks of a later dome constructed to cover the baptismal area in the church.
Sporadic reports of paintings on plaster indicate that the basilicas of Cornus
may have featured pictorial programs, but no one has described the paintings
or published their photographic documentation.
While no sculptural ornament has survived from the basilicas of Tharros
and Nora, when archaeologists excavated the basilicas of Cornus, they sal-
vaged a series of marble elements dating from the fifth to the seventh centu-
ries; unfortunately, parts of them were lost. The Museo Nazionale “G.A. Sanna”
in Sassari acquired two architectural pieces: a capital decorated with fish and
a corbel with acanthus leaves. The Antiquarium of Cuglieri holds the rest, in-
cluding Corinthian capitals “with finely crenellated acanthus leaves,” capitals
with “smooth leaves,” bell-shaped capitals with acanthus leaves, corbels, balus-
ters from the presbytery’s enclosure, a colonette, and an altar table.
Various marble elements datable to the sixth century were found in the area
around the Romanesque basilica of San Gavino in Porto Torres: a baluster from
the presbytery enclosure that ended up in the atrium; three capitals carved
with frontal doves and one with doves in profile, which were reused in the
colonnade; another similar capital with doves in profile reused at the top of a
column in the parvis; and two bases with a cross and dove walled into the struc-
ture’s southern exterior. The site of the basilica of Donori offered up a fragment
of a marble parapet with a fish-scale motif (now in the Museo Archeologico
Nazionale in Cagliari), which was probably related to a fifth- to sixth-century
presbytery enclosure.
9 Giuseppe Fiorelli, “Donori (Prov. di Cagliari),” Notizie degli Scavi di Antichità comunicate alla
R. Accademia dei Lincei 4 (1885), pp. 229–237.