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Sardinian Mining
The
mining industry in Europe and North America, in general, has been hard
hit by falling demand, high operating and capital costs, stringent
environmental concerns and globalization. Sardinia is no different, yet
a simple look at some place names in Sardinia tells the importance
of mining and metalurgy in the history of the island: Gennargentu and
Argentiera both
contain the word for silver, Montiferru
(iron
mountain), Raminosa (copper),
Capo Ferrato
(iron), and so forth.
Indeed, an entire southwestern town is named for coal—Carbonia; it
opened in 1938 in order to house coal miners from the local mines.
These days, however, the entire island is in the midst of a mammoth
(and precarious) shift to a tourist-based economy; yet Sardinia is
still the Italian province with the greatest mineral resources.
Facilities (now mostly closed) for the mining of silver, gold, copper,
lead, zinc, and coal are spread throughout the island and have been
since ancient times.
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The
lead and zinc mine of Montevecchio near
the town of Arbus in the southwest. The mine was
closed in the 1990s.
 Archaeology
has revealed that obsidian (a volcanic glass used to make
cutting implements) was mined in the central-eastern part of the island
as long ago as the 6th millennium BC. By about 3,000 BC, metal-working
technologies were apparently imported from the eastern Mediterranean.
The Phoencians (in the 8th century BC) and then the Carthaginians, who
replaced them, were both active mining peoples. Sardinia became a Roman
province in 226 BC. The Romans were very active miners of gold and
silver (as monetary standards) and lead (for such things as crockery
and water pipes). During the Middle Ages, when Sardinia was part of the
so-called Crown of Aragon, or at various
times allied with the
continental maritime republics of Genoa and Pisa, the island provided
all with important metals.
Sardinia passed into the hands of the Savoy dynasty of Piedmont in the
mid-1700s. Large-scale concessions were granted
to various continental Italian mining consortia, and by the beginning
of the 1800s, there were 59 active mines of
various kinds on the island; the mid-1800s was an active period
for mining. Critics recall that the relationship between mainland Italy
and Sardinia, when it came to mining, was almost a colonial one; that
is, the land-owners were from the industrial north of mainland Italy
and the workers were the Sardinians.
It is strange, indeed, that the entire mining industry of Sardinia may
survive only as a tourist-based cultural artifact, a curiosity, a
museum—a place to see where “they once mined the earth.” Perhaps that
is better than nothing. In any event, in 2001, the
regional government of Sardinia officially created the “Geo-mining
Historical and Environmental Park of Sardinia,” primarily in the
provinces of Oristano and Cagliari and particularly the Iglesiente area
in the southwest (including the two islands off the coast). The
ambitious goal of the park is to "...recover and maintain the entire
set of mining infrastructures for environmental, scientific,
educational, cultural and tourist purposes." That park
is now on the UNESCO Cultural Heritage list as, collectively, one of
our planetary
artifacts that should be saved because they remind us where we came
from.
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