Mamuthones

Description from original post (created 2015-10-17 05:02):

The carnival costume of the Mamuthone is no doubt one of the Sardinia’s most important carnival masks and represents a thousand-year-old tradition. The Mamuthone is covered in a sheepskin and wears a dark wooden mask bearing an imperturbable and fascinating expression. He is weighed down bynumerous cowbells on his back which often exceed 30kg.


The Mamuthones make their way through the streets in single file, occasionally jumping in rhythm so their cowbells ring out in an unmistakable and intriguing sound. They are led in procession by theIssohadores, who use long ropes made from rushes to command them. Without the weight of the cowbells the Issohadores are more agile than their prisoners but they accompany them in their slow rhythmical progression through the town.

In the past decades a crowd of academics and historians have been trying to narrow down the countless theories around this tradition, in the effort to find an exhaustive explanation and possibly its exact origins.
Natives seem to unconsciously know the answer to all questions, and unabashed, every year, the sacred ceremony takes place, for the sake of the community, today as it did in prehistoric times. “Even if I’ve always known the Mamuthones, and my father and grandfather before me,” confessed Salvatore Ladu, “still now, every time I see them parade, they give me the willies, and rest assured that this is the same for all Mamoiada’s inhabitants. “The Mamuthones are more than just a masquerade for us, they are part of our identity, their presence is alive all year long.” Arguably, today the most accredited theory sees this as a propitiatory ritual performed to augur well in the seasonal crossing from the dark winter to the warmer months of springtime and summer that lead to the new harvest. As the main resources of Mamoiada are based on farming, the lives of their inhabitants were, and to some extent still are, heavily reliant on Mother Nature’s will.

Their appeal is simple: natives as well as visitors are transported back in time into a world of primordial instincts, when men didn’t shy away from negotiating their most basic needs directly with their divinities. The three times a year the Mamuthones are due, all townspeople gather together, keeping their breath in the wait for them to appear.