Il lessico dei figuli di Cutrofiano. Storia e lingua dei demiurghi dell'argilla

The village of Cutrofiano, a small town in the province of Lecce, was lucky enough to emerge in an area where the presence of clay has always been abundant. Its inhabitants have been able to obtain great wealth from such a humble material, managing to draw sustenance from it since ancient times. The deep ongoing relationship between clay and the village's society is easily identifiable by the entrance of several technical terms and concepts into the local dialect. This is demonstrated by the archival documents, the interviews with potters, the lexicographic repertoires on which we have based our research. It is the dialect itself that has become a symbol of the people's material connection with things and everyday life, as it is precisely the practicality of the language that makes reference to these objects. It was possible to identify a list of headwords containing as many as 103 terms. Starting from the initial stages of this work, we will deal with the history, documentation and etymology of some of them. The definitions given are nearly always taken from Rohlfs' VDS. In addition, we have inserted the attestations of the words (and their variants) appearing in the documents studied.