the masks | the event | origins and meanings | points of interest
THE MASKS
Su Mamutzones is the costume of silence.
The are dressed in black moleskin on top of which they wear a goat skin and goat skin leggings. They wear trinitos and campaneddas around their waists and two pairs of heavy bronze and copper bells on their chests.
Their faces are blackened with burnt cork and hold a club in their hands.
What characterizes su mamutzones from the other costumes from Barbagia is the way they decorate their heads: a goats wool bag is filled 
with cork su casiddu or more unusually su moju and decorated on the outside in the form of a crown with ox or goat horns at its extremities.
S’Urtzu, is a tragic sad character from the carnival in Samugheo. He has a goat’s head and is entirely covered in black goat fleece. He wears a kid goat skin across his chest and a belt from which a big bell hangs. Old people from Samugheo say that in ancient times he used to be called ocru.
S’Urtzu like the boe from Ottana and s’urtzu from Ulà Tirso is the beast, the victim to be tamed. In ancient times under the goat skin he used to wear cork to protect him from the beating he got from his guard, su omadore who was dressed in a long black hooded cloak and carried a soga, a stick, chains and goad for the oxen.