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The "Giovanni Marongiu" Civic Museum in Cabras houses the rich archaeological heritage of the Sinis Peninsula, a vast region that closes the Gulf of Oristano to the north, a strip of land suspended over the sea. It is the cradle of civilization, and home of the Giants of Mont'e Prama, the greatest archaeological discovery of the late 20th century in the Mediterranean.

The ‘Giovanni Marongiu’ Civic Museum, opened in 1997, houses important items from the local area, from prehistory to the Middle Ages. The pre-Nuragic and Nuragic periods are documented by materials recovered from the excavation of the village of Cuccuru is Arrius, located on the shores of the Cabras Pond, which testify to a settlement from the Middle Neolithic to the Imperial Roman era. Among the exhibits you can admire the funeral objects of the Bonu Ighinu culture (5th millennium BC), including statuettes of the Mother Goddess and objects in green stone and obsidian, beautiful decorated ceramics (4th-3rd millennium BC) and funerary objects from 55 burials from a necropolis dating back to the 1st-3rd century AD. In 2014 the museum was expanded with two showcases dedicated to the Nuragic village of Sa Osa where, in one of the wells dug next to the huts, grape seeds were found dating back to the 10th century BC, the oldest evidence of vine cultivation in Sardinia. In the same year the room exhibiting the Statues of the Giants was opened. They were reassembled with the finds from the necropolis of Mont'e Prama, dating back to the Iron Age. During the excavations, which were conducted between 1975 and 1979, more than 40 burials were identified, most of which were pit burials, with no grave goods but covered by heaps of sculptural materials, including 5178 fragments patiently reassembled at the Centre for the Restoration and Conservation of Cultural Heritage in Li Punti (Sassari). Their work managed to restore thirty powerful fragmentary sculptures, almost two meters high: 18 bare-chested "boxers" with kilt, shield and glove, 6 archers with tunic, chest protection, helmet, bow and greaves and 6 warriors. At the Museum of Cabras there are 6 statues on display, together with some betyls and 4 of the nuraghe models out of the 16 total found. The other statues and other models are on display in the National Archaeological Museum of Cagliari. Mont'e Prama was the sacred and funerary area reserved for the dominant clan that occupied the border between the Nuragic territory and the settlement of the Phoenician newcomers. The latter settled in the far south of Sinis, where the city of Tharros stood, to which an entire section of the museum is dedicated. Founded by the Phoenicians on a pre-existing Nuragic village in 8-7 BC, the city was enlarged and ‘monumentalised’ in the Punic period and then became a Roman urbs, inhabited until the Middle Ages. A large part of the exhibition dedicated to Tharros consists of tophet materials from the typical Phoenician-Punic city sanctuary where cinerary urns, containing incinerated remains of children and small animals, were placed. The sanctuary, located on the northern outskirts of the settlement on the same site as the pre-existing nuragic village, has yielded thousands of terracotta cinerary urns (amphorae, jugs, pots), datable between the 7th century BC and the 2nd century BC, alongside about 300 sandstone steles and cippi. The urns mostly contained the incinerated remains of children from 0 to 6 months, rarely older (up to 5 years), alongside with bones of small ovine animals (lambs and kids), evidently sacrificed to the deity. Inside some of the urns some small ornamental objects belonging to the children and some amulets have also been documented. Part of the tophet room is dedicated to the ‘artisan quarter’ of the city of Tharros, where ceramics, bronze and iron were worked. There are also numerous finds (ceramics, amulets, jewellery and metal artefact) from the Punic necropolises: the inhumation necropolis that once stood in the present village of San Giovanni di Sinis, and the incineration necropolis at Capo San Marco. A final room of the museum focuses on a major underwater discovery made in 1989: in the remains of the hull of a Roman ship, lying just over a mile from the island of Mal di Ventre, a cargo of a thousand lead ingots were found, each half a metre long and weighing 33 kilos. The cargo allowed the wreck to be dated to between 89 and 50 BC. In addition to the permanent exhibitions, the museum hosts temporary exhibitions, educational workshops and conferences.

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