I frantoi ipogei pugliesi. Conservazione di una tradizione plurisecolare

This paper proposes an in-depth study of the values of the material and immaterial culture of Apulia's rock civilisation, with the aim of preserving and enhancing some significant testimonies present in the area, identified in the production system of underground oil mills in the Fasano countryside, which in this specific case are enriched with an additional historical-landscape richness, as they are located along the banks of the blades, which cut across the low-Murgia plateau. These settlements, of very ancient origin, were occupied during the Middle Ages by small farming communities, mainly dedicated to olive growing due to the immediate benefits they brought to the oil production cycle, reaching a more organised configuration at the same time as the development of the system of fortified farms, favoured by the Bourbons, until the more recent abandonment of these hypogeal environments for the shift of production activity to more modern, aboveground constructions, in which new, avant-garde extraction systems were located, in line with postindustrial provisions and the more recent tourist and economic-productive transformations of the area.