An English language history of the island of Pantelleria.

Archaeology

Mystery Places (Secrets of Pantelleria)

It is very clear that new cultures, once they gained some control of this iisland, destroyed and built over much of the existing history.

The Arabic inhabitants, as well as the Christian ones, seemed determined that any story of Pantelleria begin and end only with them. This is not a story unique to Pantelleria of course. The thing is that there is not much known about the ancient history of this island.

The second contributing factor to our lack of information is just money. Money for research and science and protection of what remains.... There has never been any real money put into a study of this island. The few times there has been some public Italian money for this work it is drained by the corruption surrounding public money and projects which is notorious in the south of Italy.

Many different cultures have saturated the history of this island. Each has left its mark and done also some work to erase the mark of those who went before.

We have some evidence of pre-historic inhabitants; people who lived simple and intense lives on an island with no natural water resources.

Most of the place names now in use are from the arabic cultures occupation and development of the island in the time leading up to the middle ages.

In this web space we just want to try and collect what information we can in the hopes that some information will lead to even more information in the future.