Pages: 61-72 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.55086/sp2556172

The study addresses an aspect of the little-studied “culture of everyday life” in Sardinia, one of the most conservative regions of Europe, which has not been covered in scientific literature: the use of three types of raw materials —stone, wood, and metal. The purpose of the research is to highlight the material aspects of the “existence” of these materials in the paradigm of anthropology (the empiricism of ancient and revived use, etc.), as well as their “hierarchical status” and “semantic content” (connotations, signification, symbolism, dating back to ancient cults. In the study, the author primarily relies on the results of many years of fieldwork in Barbagia, the central region of Sardinia. The research uses methods of structural and functional analysis, concepts and theoretical and methodological principles developed in anthropology in the process of rethinking social practices based on interaction with material objects, the role of objects and their symbolic capital in these practices, endowing the subject (material) with agency and one’s own biography, etc. References to history, ethnography, and anthropology enable us to reconstruct patterns in the processes of material creation and their social/spiritual understanding. Additionally, the regional approach allows us to correlate theoretical conclusions with the realities of the research region.

Keywords: Sardinia, everyday life culture, raw material, codes of interpretation, modern reappraisal

Information about author:

Oxana Fais-Leutskaia (Moscow, Russian Federation). Candidate of Historical Sciences. Center of European Researches, N. N. Miklukho-Maklai Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, Russian Academy of Sciences. Lenin Ave., 32-A, Moscow, 119334, Russian Federation
E-mail: [email protected]
ORCID:  0000-0002-2757-2434