Sardinian granitoids: 4000 years of geoheritage and dimension stones

The island of Sardinia is rich in magmatic, sedimentary and metamorphic rocks. Granitoid rocks are the most abundant among the different types of rocks; they can be found in an area of about 6.500 km2 and are more concentrated in the eastern part of Sardinia. This extraordinarily abundant granite formation has been widely acknowledged and used since protohistoric times, as the numerous archaeological finds scattered around the island have demonstrated. Academic literature (until the 1980s) has always regarded Sardinian granite used in Roman age as a class B granite. However, recent archaeological studies have fully demonstrated the important role of Sardinian granite for construction, after it emerged that much greater quantities of this rock had been widely used for quite some time in the central Mediterranean area.