'Coastal lagoons, shifting environments, and control of natural resources’

Lagoons and wetlands are environments that offer very valuable natural resources and as such have been exploited by humans since early times. This paper touches on the important role lagoons had in the Roman era not only in the production of salt but also for large-scale fishing and fish salting. It then focuses on cases of territorial disputes concerning lagoonal areas that involved local authorities against Roman tax farmers. It is argued that the reasons for these disputes were on the one hand the economically important resources offered by wetlands and on the other the morphological changes to which lagoons are prone, which could modify the interface between lagoon and sea. This mattered because in Roman law the sea and costal lagoons had different status regarding ownership.