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It's official: the latest issue of @JournalLevant on #OttomanWaterscapes is now in print, along with my article on cisterns and salt pans. Join me on a two-part journey to the Mani peninsula to learn about the #CARTographyProject and water management in the Mediterranean. 
1/ https://twitter.com/JournalLevant/status/1343494973753319429
1/ https://twitter.com/JournalLevant/status/1343494973753319429
Part 1: Cisterns
My favorite English travel-writer, Paddy Leigh Fermor, first ventured into Mani with his partner Joan in 1951. After walking and swimming around the peninsula, they became intimately familiar with the ways that locals managed salt and freshwater to survive. 2/
My favorite English travel-writer, Paddy Leigh Fermor, first ventured into Mani with his partner Joan in 1951. After walking and swimming around the peninsula, they became intimately familiar with the ways that locals managed salt and freshwater to survive. 2/
In the eloquent retelling of his Mani adventure, PLF only mentions hydraulic infrastructure in passing. The first encounter involves a stone-built cistern. 3/
PLF: "[W]e watched the daughter of the house drawing water from a deep well leading to a cistern in the white rock. What a time it took till the half brackish, half sweet and slightly cloudy liquid appeared…”
[Fermor 2004:73] 4/
![PLF: "[W]e watched the daughter of the house drawing water from a deep well leading to a cistern in the white rock. What a time it took till the half brackish, half sweet and slightly cloudy liquid appeared…”[Fermor 2004:73] 4/](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EqgDVnqW4AkjWpw.jpg "PLF: \"[W]e watched the daughter of the house drawing water from a deep well leading to a cistern in the white rock. What a time it took till the half brackish, half sweet and slightly cloudy liquid appeared…”[Fermor 2004:73] 4/")
[Fermor 2004:73] 4/
For the last thousand years, Maniats have used cisterns to collect runoff rainwater, allowing them to survive the dry summers in a place without any natural springs. Around the 18th c., they stopped capping them with giant slabs and started using barrel vaults instead. 5/
The shift in cistern architecture reflects what was happening to houses, too – the so-called “megalithic” house style was replaced by the fortified stone towers that Mani is famous for today.
Why? It’s complicated. But better mortar (and clan warfare) played a part. 6/
Why? It’s complicated. But better mortar (and clan warfare) played a part. 6/
An average cistern would have supplied a single household, running dry around September when it could be repaired before the winter rains came. The earlier cisterns could support 4-6 people and 1-2 animals, and the larger ones ~15 people (meaning households prob. got bigger). 7/
I shared all the data from the cisterns we measured on @ZENODO_ORG. This is one of only publicly available datasets about domestic-scale cisterns from the eastern Mediterranean! #datasharing #cisternsareawesome 8/ https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1208620
I’ll continue this thread next week, with a glimpse into another type of hydraulic infrastructure that dots the shores along Mani’s west coast… saltpans!
Until then, happy new year! /9
Until then, happy new year! /9
