VIRTUAL: Prague Heritages

Abstract

At the end of the 19th century, with the end of piracy in the Tyrrhenian Sea, the coasts of Sardinia, mostly uninhabited, experienced a phase of repopulation due to the migratory flows of seafaring communities, coming from different areas of the Italian peninsula, dedicated to mercantile activity of small and medium cabotage and fishing. The settlement process was gradual, according to different methods: through urbanization of the existing coastal settlements, or through ex novo villages located in naturally sheltered and protected places, chosen for their proximity to the areas with the most fish to guard. At the same time, the development of fishing attracted from the same communities of origin a workforce specialized in the construction of boats and fishing equipment. The interaction, which has taken place over time, between the material traditions of the different communities and the indigenous one has determined phenomena of cultural transposition and hybridization, evident in everyday practices, in the forms of living and in the material production of which the means of work and locomotion – the boat – can constitute the emblem and the synthesis.
This contribution intends to analyse and highlight the effects of this acculturation in the merchant nautical tradition of the island. The boat – in the fishing and transport versions – as a summary of different traditions, design and construction practices, which have sometimes perpetuated methods and typologies extinct in the original places, sometimes instead have generated unprecedented variations with respect to them: due to the effect of environmental variables and climatic conditions, the availability of wood species suitable for structure, as well as the convergence of different material cultures. Thus a variegated formal and constructive typological abacus is defined which can in turn define a typological unicum, expressive of a territorial specificity.