It is believed and said that Sardinia is one of the most conservative areas in the West. This is not without foundation, especially when it comes to parties. Historical events have created the conditions for the Christian order of the year to be introduced early in Sardinia. Despite this, it is still possible to observe the singularity of Sardinian festivals and to capture their particular stamp compared to those that are celebrated on the continents that border the Mediterranean Sea.

However, similarities can be drawn, not only in the space-time context of the prehistoric and historical Mediterranean, especially with some festivities that take place on the one hand in the Mediterranean context of the Near East, on the other in the Iberian Peninsula, particularly in Catalonia.

Moreover, even in Sardinia, as everywhere else, festivities are characterized by being ritual activities for the social organization of the time and for being, these social activities, pleasant (Valerio Valeri). The party, making possible the collective perception of the discontinuity of time with respect to the duration of individual time, introduces meaning and order into the chaotic and undifferentiated flow of events (Levi-Strauss).

So there is a profound difference between party and everyday life, but - contrary to what is believed - not a contrast. If anything, it unites in collective experience what is normally separated in daily life (spirit and matter, the sacred and the profane, the useful and the useless, misery and abundance, and so on).

The festivities are therefore characterized not only by rites but also by different and unusual behaviors, compared to the usual ones, in clothing, in nutrition, in work activity, in the observance and non-compliance with prohibitions, in allowing for reciprocity and the gift that daily life mostly inhibits and, above all, in allowing ourselves to have fun and collective fun. The peculiarity of the festival is given by the peculiar configurations that these general traits assume depending on the civilizations in which they are established and materialized.

Prehistoric and historical persistences, agro-pastoral socioeconomic context, areal and temporal references that refer to the presence on the island of the various peoples who have alternated there and above all the very long paths, not only temporal, of assimilation and sedimentation of these phenomena - motivated by the relative isolation of Sardinia from the outside and between country and country in its interior - provide an explanatory background to the liveliness, variety and particular timbre and color of the Sardinian festival.

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MONOGRAPHS
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