Home | Search | Site map | Contacts

It is possible to know the history and the presence of inhabited centers in this characteristic area of Sardinia only since the fourteenth century. Official information sources are the Vatican Archives from which it is possible to learn the names of some of these inhabited centers, as Olevà and Urrà. In 1600's it appears for the first time the name of another center: Berchidda, a name without doubt very common in Northern Sardinia. It is also found again in an act of baptism of 1756, when it is certified a baptism in the "drop of Olevà", more popularly known with the name of Berchidda. In the nineteenth century, with the aim of being able to distinguish this center from other more known and populated, it adopted the diminutive Berchiddeddu with which it is still known today.

Some historians, strating from the sixteenth century, asserted the existence of another center called Olgheri or Orgheri or Erguri. And one thinks that both this name and Berchidda go back to the language spoken in Sardinia at the time of the roman occupation, language called preroman or protosardinian.

The name of Orgheri survived for a long time; it is found again cited also in an act of baptism in 1822, and we believe that this name together with the name Berchidda has been used till the end of the XIX century with it was substitued by the name Padru, first in the common language, next in the official documents. The reason why Orgheri was called Padru can be found in the ancient traditions, like that one to alternate the cultivation lands for two years to seeds and two years to the pasture, to avoid an excessive land usage and the consequent impoverishment of the soli.

The land used for seeding were the nearest ones to the village and were called sidattone, bidattone or vidazzoni, those more distant was used as pasture or Prato. The Prato term translated in the local language becomes Padru.

Another question concerns the reason why Padru was annexed to Buddusò, and not to a nearer center. To answer to go back: in the XIV century Sardinia saw a phenomenon of "urbanisation". At the time the small centers became smaller and smaller and it were often of an all impossible an autonomy of administrative type. Many centers began to disappear from geographic maps and this phenomenon continued slowly until the nineteenth century. The pertinent lands that then belonged to the collectivity, were assigned to the neighbouring Communes, becoming those that today are the communal lands. All this involved centers like Orgheri, Olevà and Urrà.
If then it is considered that to the age one lived in a regimen of feudal character, and the lands of a feud could not be assigned to another. The lands called "Sos saltos de josso ", the Monte Acuto, therefore Ozieri, Buddusò, Alà belonged to the Olivà county, then of property of Spanish feudatories, the Duchi di Gandia; Monti was instead of the Baronia Manca from Sassari; Olbia finally re-entered in the "Giudicato di Gallura". Alà to the age was a modest center, never could take advantage of the land to the better (in 1688 count to Alà only 188 inhabitant) while Buddusò was beyond doubt a center very larger and populated. Consequently the only possible solution was that one to assign "Sos saltos de josso " to Buddusò.