A New Mosaic Workshop in South Sardinia?

Abstract

Up to now, two workshops have been identified in South Sardinia, at Nora, but the recent discovery in the surroundings of Cagliari of two late polychrome mosaics, one at Sarroch, the other at Settimo San Pietro, yielded new data, increasing our knowledge. Both of them present the same patterns - a chevrons rainbow style pattern and an orthogonal pattern of adjacent imbricated scales - and strong similarities in the style, while nothing similar has been found in the whole Sardinia; an unknown, common workshop can therefore be assumed. But the floor at Settimo San Pietro includes a third panel which shows a geometric mosaic “à trame végétalisée”, exactly alike to other two which were found in Carthage and Maiorca, and we can assume a Carthaginian origin of this pattern. So, can we think to only one workshop for the three floors, even for the panel with chevrons and adjacent imbricated scales, and for the mosaic at Sarroch too? And responsible for these mosaics could be African itinerant workers or Sardinian craftsmen, with African models at their disposal? Literary, documentary and archaeological sources witness for the existence of cartoons and pattern books in the ancient world, but we know for sure that itinerant craftsmen too existed. The present study will debate and analize the different working hypotheses, but the answer is not yet possible, and we have to wait for more archaeological data and findings.

Keywords

• : sardinia
• mosaic
• itinerant craftsmen
• stationary workshops
• pattern books
• transmission of motifs