ORGANIZATION OF THE INSULAR SPACE

TERRITORIALISATION PROCESSES, SEDIMENTATION AND PERSISTENCE OF WATER KNOWLEDGE IN THE ISLAND OF PONZA FROM THE ROMAN AGE TO TODAY

Abstract

Solving the water supply in small islands has always been the primary target of the populations that would settle there on a temporary or permanent basis. Over the years, thanks to the circulation of people and knowledge in the Mediterranean and to the changing demands, there has been a diffusion and sedimentation of water knowledge, which allowed the permanent allocation of the populations even in the smaller islands. Through a long-term analysis, we want to highlight the broader evolution of territorialisation process involving the island of Ponza in all its history, highlighting how the water knowledge itself was structured and sedimented from the Roman era to the eighteenth-century population process and has persisted until today. Similarly, it emerges how in small island territories such as Ponza the success or, on the contrary, the failure of territorialisation process has depended on the ability of the actors to catch the opportunities offered by persistent water knowledge conjugated with the new and evolved knowledge.