Provincia di Sud Sardegna

There is no State Archive for this province. Created in 2016, Sud Sardegna has no Archivio di Stato of its own and its territory falls under the Archivio di Stato di Cagliari.

The Antenati directory contains no Sardinian civil-status series at all. A registry search for Cagliari, Sassari, Nuoro or Oristano returns nothing, because Sardinian documentation is not published through the portal. That is a statement about coverage and not a claim about survival; no assertion of loss should be made from it.

Research therefore runs through three custodians.

The comune keeps the first original of every civil act made since 1866. For any act from that year onward this is the correct destination, and the comuni here are small enough that a specific, dated request is usually answerable.

The parish holds baptisms, marriages and burials, and is the only route before 1866. Many Sardinian parish series are long, the Tridentine requirements having been applied here as elsewhere.

The Archivio di Stato di Cagliari, approached directly rather than through the portal, holds notarial, judicial and administrative fonds covering this territory — and notarial acts, recording dowries, land and inheritance by name, are frequently the deepest accessible source.

For Carbonia, remember the town dates only from 1938; earlier generations are wherever the family came from.

Regional Law no. 2 of 4 February 2016 created the Provincia del Sud Sardegna from its predecessor provinces. It is the newest administrative unit in this collection.

What it contains is far older and unusually industrial for Sardinia. The Sulcis-Iglesiente in the west has been mined since Phoenician and Roman times — lead, zinc and silver — and the industry was revived on a large scale in the nineteenth century, drawing capital and engineers from Piedmont, France and Belgium and labour from across the island and the mainland. Iglesias was its centre, with a mining code, a mining school and a workforce with its own culture and its own conflicts; the Buggerru shootings of 1904, when troops fired on striking miners, triggered Italy's first general strike.

Carbonia is the striking case. It did not exist before 1938: it was founded by the Fascist government as a coal town to work the Sulcis lignite basin, inaugurated by Mussolini in December of that year, and populated deliberately with workers brought from the Veneto, Istria, Abruzzo and elsewhere. A Carbonia family of 1940 is almost always a mainland family of 1937, and its earlier records are in another region entirely.

The Campidano in the east is the island's grain plain, and the Marmilla and Sarcidano behind it are nuraghic country — Su Nuraxi at Barumini is the greatest of the nuraghi and a World Heritage site.

The mines closed from the 1960s and the Sulcis has been losing population ever since.

Do not begin at Antenati. It holds nothing for Sardinia, and a search there will only cost time.

Begin with the comune for anything from 1866, naming the person, an approximate year and the act.

For earlier generations write to the parish, and expect Latin, and sometimes Spanish or Sardinian name forms.

Write to the Archivio di Stato di Cagliari directly about notarial and judicial material; the absence of a provincial archive does not mean an absence of records.

If the family is from Carbonia, establish where they came from before 1938 — the town was founded that year and settled from the mainland. If they are from Carloforte, expect Ligurian surnames and a Tabarkan origin.

Su Nuraxi at Barumini — the greatest of the nuraghi, and a World Heritage site.

The Sulcis-Iglesiente mines — Iglesias, Masua and Nebida, worked since antiquity.

Carbonia — founded in 1938 as a coal town and settled from the mainland.

Carloforte — Ligurian-speaking since 1738, settled from Tabarka in Tunisia.

Sant'Antioco — the Phoenician and Punic town on its island.

The Campidano — Sanluri, Villacidro and Guspini, the island's grain plain.