Pages: 355-365 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.55086/sp265355365

This work, which continues the study of Sardinia’s traditional material culture, focuses on jewelry. Its purpose is not only to analyze this vivid and distinctive phenomenon, but also to examine the remarkable stability of the island’s jewelry tradition. This tradition has not only been fully preserved but has also moved beyond rural handicraft production to become an “ethnic” regional brand that meets the demands of tourists and, even more significantly, remains strongly preferred by the island’s inhabitants. The author seeks to analyze the reasons for the population’s exceptional loyalty to this tradition in light of the processes of “returning to oneself” and the search for identity that have swept across Sardinia. The study draws on the author’s long-term fieldwork, as well as on concepts and theoretical and methodological principles developed within anthropology to understand and reinterpret the interaction between material and social practices. Using the region under study as an example, this approach makes it possible to view material culture as a key to deciphering broader social processes.

Keywords: Sardinia, jewelry, traditional forms and motifs, modern production trends, preferences of the population

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