THE ZIGGURAT OF MONTE D’ACCODDI was a place of the gods, somewhere between chelu e mare, as singer Maria Carta might have sung. That very word seemed somewhat outlandish—a ziggurat in Europe, in Sardinia of all places. Ziggurats were the ancient platform mounds and step pyramids that took shape in Mesopotamia in the fifth millennium BC like some scene out of the Tower of Babel.

After driving down the back country road to reach the site, not quite seven miles from Sassari, passing farms on either side, I parked my car at a grassy clearing. At first glance, it looked like a hill; in fact, Monte d’Accoddi means a “mountain of stones.”