La gestión del agua en época romana: casuística en las ciudades de la provincia Hispania Ulterior-BaeticaCASTRO GARCIA TESIS INDICE (original) (raw)

2016, https://corpus.ulaval.ca/jspui/handle/20.500.11794/26711

This research focuses on the analysis of water management in the cities of Roman province Hispania Ulterior Baetica, through a representative selection of case studies. The time frame is established from the early contact of Romans with this territory in 218 BC, to the eminent transformation of the Roman Empire in 212 AD. Our main objective is to study the interaction between society and environment, through the management of their natural resources. We will apply the modern concept of integrated water management, from a holistic approach that will allow us to understand the management practices from economic, political, administrative and legal dimensions so as the expression of their social representations. The thesis is divided into three chapters, which from general to particular support the final interpretation. First, we will analyse the post-classical perception of water management and use in Roman times. We recognize the first interests that have led to identify the aqueducts as the first subject of study. In the consolidation of the historiography of water in the Roman period, research lines are diversified towards treating different aspects involved in water management practices. Research attends diverse sources, generating reliable models of water management in the Roman Empire, define the different realities in provincial cities thoughout the Mediterranean. These models serve to define the cases studies in the Baetica province. In the second chapter, we aim to identify a common culture of water in the Roman times by exploring ancient literary and epigraphic sources. We will examine Latin and Greek hydraulic terms. Due to current indeterminacy of the vocabulary employed to designate certain hydraulic infrastructures, which integrate models of water management in Ancient times, we will define them for their proper application in the subsequent examination of Betic cases. Finally, in the last and main chapter we analyse the integrated water management in Baetica through a selection of cities, which represent the province. These cities are inserted in diverse environments: Baetis riverside, meadows, countryside, valleys, coast, presierra or sierra, all of them with different climates. Additionally, they represent various civic statuses and a different degree of population and cultural integration in the province as well as in the imperial administrative structure. Each city has a strategic, economic and territorial role in the province: administrative capital, pathway node, river or maritime port, control of the mining, oil, and fish saltery production, etc. The method used in this analysis attempts to be as uniform as possible. First, we will examine the natural environment, the historical and historiographical context, continuing with the description of sources that testify water management practices -placed in their urban and rural territorium- to conclud an interpretive analysis of urban water cycle. The last objective we aim to achieve is the resolution of the formulated hypothesis: When did the cities of Hispania Ulterior Baetica take on roman water management practices? Did these practices correspond with a common roman culture of water? How did the previous cultural heritage -oriental and Greek- take part in this management? We argue to determine if the adoption of a roman water management system in Baetica was a uniform process, or that it depended on the degree of urban community integration in the provincial and imperial ensemble. We attempt to understand who was the promoter, what were their interest and until when these practices developed. The answer to these questions enables us to inscribe a general reflexion about the relationship between the centre and the peripheries, in regards to the management of a common and necessary resource, water.