ABSTRACT
The chapter explores the role of atmosphere in understanding the interweaving of human communities, landscapes and air in wet lands. It is based on historic materials about marshlands in Agro Pontino (Italy). In the 1930s this region was affected by one of the most important operations of land reclamation of that time, conducted by the fascist regime which drained the largest marshland in Italy, i.e. the Pontine Marshes, perceived as a wasteland permeated by pestilential and deadly atmosphere. The material demonstrates a peculiar understanding of atmosphere as associated with malaria that until the beginning of the 20th century was perceived to be ‘bad air’: a combination of noxious vapours and miasmas. Through the concept of taskscape and by using ethnographic material the chapter draws a parallel between the atmosphere of the vanished Pontine Marshes and the atmosphere of Agro Pontino today, revealing the tangible and material presence of atmosphere, and highlighting its relations with the landscape and its inhabitants.
