Taming Surface Water in Pre-Islamic Southeast Arabia: Archaeological,Geoarchaeological, and Chronological Evidence of Runoff Water Channeling in Masāfī (UAE)

In semi-arid to arid environments, water is the most constraining resource for agricultural communities. In Southeast Arabia (Sultanate of Oman and United Arab Emirates), the demographic growth and the increase of sites at the beginning of the Iron Age II (1100–600 b.c.) is generally attributed to the development of groundwater harvesting techniques, and more precisely to qanāt technology. While only little is known on the origin of this technology, even less is known about other hydraulic techniques, which could have been used as a complementary source of water. An irrigation system, recently discovered near an Iron Age settlement in the oasis of Masāfī (UAE) was studied thanks to the combination of various methods—archaeology, geoarchaeology/micromorphology, spatial analysis, and chronology—which have allowed us to identify the technological development of small-scale runoff farming and to link this practice to social as well as environmental issues.     

Principles of Construction of Long-Term Water-Management Balances

Total runoff (R) is broken down into two components: stable underground runoff (U) and unstable surface runoff (S). The surface component may be reduced by agricultural amelioration measures that would retain a greater share on cultivated fields. The total supply available from runoff may be increased by long-term stream regulation. Water uses must be based on the stable underground component of runoff because the surface component is not dependable. The underground component is then distributed among users: industry and thermal power, which is largely provided by a recirculation system; urban and rural household uses, and regular irrigation. Rural and urban sewage may be used for sewage irrigation. The total elimination of discharge of industrial wastes and sewage is desirable so that all these uses represent withdrawal depletions.     

The Freshwater-Supply Problems of Mankind

Four Soviet hydrologists stress the usefulness of the water-balance principle in estimating the volume of water resources available to mankind. They carefully distinguish between the stable subsurface component of runoff, which has been mapped for the USSR at 1:5 million (and is now being mapped at 1:2.5 million) and the surface runoff, or flood, component. Measures are recommended to increase subsurface runoff at the expense of the surface component. These measures include autumn plowing to reduce sheetwash of snowmelt waters in spring, snowpack management in winter and windbreak planting. Other meliorative measures are irrigation and swamp drainage, both of which need to be placed on a more scientific basis with properly worked-out principles and norms. In discussing the world water-supply problem, the authors rule out recourse to new water sources, such as seawater desalination and glacier melting, and insist that mankind must preserve existing water resources by curbing the discharge of waste waters into natural bodies of water. The proposed recycling principles would increase consumptive use for water-supply needs, but would substantially reduce total withdrawals below the level that can be expected if present water-use practices continue to be followed.     

The Water Balance of the Land

The article gives a quantitative evaluation of the elements of the hydrologic cycle (precipitation, runoff, evaporation) for the earth as a whole, for natural geographic zones of the USSR (tundra, tayga, steppe, desert) and for types of land within a given zone. The role of man in altering the water balance of individual territories through reclamation measures (irrigation, drainage, plowing up of virgin land) and through changes in agricultural techniques is also discussed.     

Land selection for irrigation in Al-Andalus,Spain (8th century a.d.)

Abstract

The Andalusi hydraulic systems of the Iberian Peninsula, constructed by Arabs and Berbers between a.d. 711 and the feudal conquest of Al-Andalus (11–15th centuries a.d.), are today among the most productive agricultural areas in Europe. Their current extension is the result of several enlargements made to the original Andalusi design, irrigating lands initially rejected by the first builders. Understanding the reasons that led Arabs and Berbers to select or reject lands for irrigation is essential for documenting the formation processes of these agricultural areas. Here the topic is approached using the hydraulic system of Ricote (Murcia, Spain) as a case study. Through hydraulic archaeology, excavations, and GIS, it is shown that deep, flat, well-insolated (i.e., exposed to sunlight), slightly saline, colluvial soils were preferred for irrigation while slopes, shady areas, floodplains, and highly saline soils were rejected. Optimizing the water supply for irrigation was not a top priority. The results highlight the need to consider topographical features when studying how past agrarian societies introduced irrigated agriculture to new environments.     

Age determination of Petra's engineered landscape – optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) and radiocarbon ages of runoff terrace systems in the Eastern Highlands of Jordan

The unfavourable mountainous environment of the Petra region in southern Jordan was modified by ancient engineers to supply the Nabataean/Roman city of Petra with food and water. The area was reclaimed by installing extended runoff terrace systems and hydraulic structures. The agricultural terrace systems have so far been dated based on surface pottery, and the chronology of the systems is under debate. In this study, optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) and radiocarbon dating techniques were successfully applied to date these terrace systems. Samples were taken from the fills of agricultural terraces and underneath their walls to determine the chronology of the construction, use and abandonment of the agricultural terraces. The results suggest that runoff farming in the Petra region started around the beginning of the Common Era, and construction, use and maintenance lasted at least until 800 AD.     

Response of Alum Rock springs to the October 30, 2007 Alum Rock earthquake and implications for the origin of increased discharge after earthquakes

The origins of increased stream flow and spring discharge following earthquakes have been the subject of controversy, in large part because there are many models to explain observations and few measurements suitable for distinguishing between hypotheses. On October 30, 2007 a magnitude 5.5 earthquake occurred near the Alum Rock springs, California, USA. Within a day we documented a several‐fold increase in discharge. Over the following year, we have monitored a gradual return towards pre‐earthquake properties, but for the largest springs there appears to be a permanent increase in discharge. The Alum Rock springs discharge waters that are a mixture between modern (shallow) meteoric water and old (deep) connate waters expelled by regional transpression. After the earthquake, there was a small and temporary decrease in the fraction of connate water in the largest springs. Accompanying this geochemical change was a small (1–2°C) temperature decrease. Combined with the rapid response, this implies that the increased discharge has a shallow origin. Increased discharge at these springs occurs both for earthquakes that cause static volumetric expansion and for those that cause contraction, supporting models in which dynamic strains are responsible for the subsurface changes that cause flow to increase. We make a quantitative comparison between the observed changes and model predictions for three types of models: (i) a permanent increase in permeability; (ii) an increase in permeability followed by a gradual decrease to its pre‐earthquake value; and (iii) an increase of hydraulic head in the groundwater system discharging at the springs. We show that models in which the permeability of the fracture system feeding the springs increases after the earthquake are in general consistent with the changes in discharge. The postseismic decrease in discharge could either reflect the groundwater system adjusting to the new, higher permeability or a gradual return of permeability to pre‐earthquake values; the available data do not allow us to distinguish between these two scenarios. However, the response of these springs to another earthquake will provide critical constraints on the changes that occur in the subsurface and should permit a test of all three types of models.     

Historical Perspectives on Pre-Colonial Irrigation in Southern Africa

Abstract

One of the basic areas of interaction between water as natural resource and human societies as agents of cultural transformation is the technology of irrigation. In Africa at least 66 per cent of the available water is used for purposes of irrigation. For more than 4 000 years irrigation has secured food supplies for humans on a continent that is noted for its relative shortage of sufficient natural water supplies.

There is a remarkable hidden power of water in the history of southern Africa. This is particularly the case when we consider the development of early irrigation technologies of Iron Age farmers. The small irrigation furrow of the subsistence farmer was just as important to an insular community of Bantu-speaking people in pre-colonial times, as is the sophisticated irrigation technology in present-day South Africa. Currently there is a paucity of information about pre-colonial indigenous irrigation technology. This can be ascribed to a number of factors of which the invasion of modern Western traditions in the nineteenth century is perhaps the most important. A number of other factors for the apparent blind-spot is also presented in this study.

In southern Africa there are traces of indigenous pre-colonial irrigation works at sites such as Nyanga in Zimbabwe; the Limpopo River Valley; Mpumalanga; and South Africa's eastern Highveld. Reference is also made in this article to specific strategies of irrigation used by Iron Age communities, prior to the advent of a colonial presence. Finally, attention is also drawn to pre-colonial land tenure and state formation against the backdrop of Wittfogel's theories on hydraulic society.     

Irrigation and society

Wittfogel's hydraulic theory of the origin of the state has provided the subject of irrigation and society with a privileged place in archaeology; contemporary literature concerning the social consequences of irrigation development has been neglected by archaeologists. The literature suggests that irrigation technology has as much to do with bureaucratic power as with water. Bureaucratic managementand mismanagement of irrigation technology mediate the outcome of such development projects on the affected populations. This observation challenges theories that posit a linear relationship between population growth and technology. Archaeologists would benefit from applying the insights from the development literature to archaeological analyses of irrigation.     

敦煌文献中所见唐五代时期的水利官吏

敦煌文献中保存了许多唐五代时期地方各级水利官吏的设置运作状况记录。唐代前期设都水令,为当时敦煌“统以千渠”的最高级别水利官员。中唐吐蕃统治时期设“水官”“部落水官”以及“水监”“部落水监”“地方总水监”。晚唐五代归义军时期专设水司,长官为都渠泊使,下设多名水官。敦煌绿洲四界及寿昌灌区分别设置多名有特殊责任的水官“平水”,以“平治水利”,平水“相量”为务。此外,每条灌渠、每座斗门均设渠头或斗门长,属基层一级。这套水利官吏系统层层负责,相互配合,有效保证了农田灌溉顺利进行。同时敦煌民间还自发地组织起一批“渠人社”,这对地方政府水利管理体系是有益的补充。研究历史上水利官吏系统及其运作状况,对今天河湖运行和治理管护也具有借鉴作用。     

Geography in the Republics of Central Asia

A review of the last 50 years of geographic research in the four Central Asian republics of Uzbekistan, Kirghizia, Tadzhikistan, and Turkmenia, where the dominant desert and mountain landscapes impose a specific character on geographic investigations. Physical geography has tended to focus on glaciation in mountains and on surface runoff in the desert as potential sources of water for irrigation. Economic geography has emphasized the utilization of desert pastures.     

Scientific Principles of the Complex Utilization and Conservation of Water Resources

A leading water-resource geographer outlines a series of measures that, in his view, would assure mankind with an unpolluted water supply for many more generations. He opposes the view that inland waters are virtually lost to man as a source of water and that other sources such as desalting of seawater or melting of icebergs must be sought. The proposed measures envisage the gradual reduction and ultimately halting of the discharge of wastes and sewage into streams and lakes by the use of municipal sewage for irrigation of forage crops near urban centers and the provision of closed water systems within industrial plants, including treatment and reuse of wastes.     

Water,Rules and Gender: Water Rights in an Indigenous Irrigation System,Marakwet, Kenya

The management of indigenous irrigation systems has received increasing attention both from social science researchers and from those development agents who seek to change them, or to find in them a model for organizing newly developed irrigation schemes. This article discusses how water is allocated within one such irrigation system, the hill furrow irrigation of the Marakwet escarpment in Kenya. It describes the ‘formal rules’ of water rights, giving particular attention to the issue of gender with respect to water rights. It then discusses the ‘working rules’ relevant to water allocation, involving various informal practices of sharing, buying and stealing. The implications of this complexity for understanding the operation of indigenous farmer-managed irrigation systems are examined.     

Dating the Ascope Canal System: Competition for Water during the Late Intermediate Period in the Chicama Valley,North Coast of Peru

Here we present the first ¹⁴C ages for the Ascope Canal System (ACS), a large prehispanic hydraulic network in the Chicama Valley on the north coast of Peru. Composed of multiple alignments that irrigated areas north of the river, our results indicate that the ACS was constructed and operated in the Late Intermediate Period, ca. a.d. 1000–1400. This overlaps in time with the Chicama-Moche Intervalley Canal that diverted water on the south side of the Chicama River and extended to the city of Chan Chan. Conservative estimates of discharge capacity indicate that the combined flow through the canals would have exceeded stream flow in the Chicama River during half of the year. The ACS appears to have functioned for several centuries and would have been in direct competition with the Intervalley Canal. There was, apparently, insufficient water for both systems and other Chicama Valley canals during most of the year. This study underscores the complexities of understanding the operations and histories of irrigation systems in complex societies.     

From private initiative to public intervention in Spanish water management: the case of the Muga and Fluvià rivers (1850–1930)

During the second half of the nineteenth century and the first third of the twentieth century, Spain, along with some other European countries, underwent a process of transition regarding water resources management. One of the most obvious transformations that occurred during this period was the increasing lead taken by the government in the building of large hydraulic structures and the subsequent decrease in the influence of private initiative in this matter. The government's aim was to exploit the water resources provided by the rivers to their full, and in particular to use the water that was destined for irrigation to maximum effect. The repeated failure of projects promoted by private companies led the government, not without problems, to enact regulations and create hydraulic plans to be put into motion by the public sector. This change in focus is the key to understanding the frenetic pace of hydraulic infrastructure construction that occurred later and which made Spain one of the world's leading nations in terms of indicators such as the number of large reservoirs in use. This article focuses on the transition from private initiative to public intervention and evaluates the main stages of this process in Spain. The cases of the basins of the Muga and Fluvià rivers, located in the extreme north-east of the Iberian Peninsula in Catalonia, are described in light of this process. This research attempts to verify that despite their modest size and their distance from the main decision-making centres, these two cases reflected the situation at the national level. This was just one of the many local effects of the transition process of water resources management in Spain, even though the results of this transformation would be neither immediate nor effective in the short term.     

Urbanizing rural waters: Rural-urban water transfers and the reconfiguration of hydrosocial territories in Lima

This article studies how urbanization processes and associated rural-urban water transfers in the Lima region (Peru) create water control hierarchies that align the municipal drinking water company, hydropower plants and rural communities on unequal positions. By scrutinizing the history of water transfers and hydropower development in the Lima region, the paper shows how imaginaries about the superiority of engineering, the need to generate electricity for national development, the backwardness of the ‘land of lagoons’ where water is diverted from, and about wished-for water abundance in Lima, all became manifested in hydraulic megaprojects. More than technical means to supply water to Lima City, these hydraulic grids, supported by legal, institutional and financial governance techniques; produce diverging material, social-symbolic and political effects for rural and urban water users. While the established system means water control and access for hydropower and drinking water companies, it implies dependence and/or exclusion from the benefits for rural communities. More specifically and beyond questions of outright water grabbing, perceived injustices involve the distribution of water-related benefits, loss of autonomy, and the socio-environmental impacts of territorial transformations.     

State and cult in six hundred years of irrigation activities in an arid area of China: a case study of the Dragon King Temples in the Hexi Corridor

The Hexi Corridor is an important region of irrigated agriculture in an arid area of China. Prior to 1949, a large number of Dragon King Temples played a key role in irrigation activities in the Hexi Corridor. Since the Ming and Qing dynasties, these temples have undergone a three-stage process of evolution. They gradually evolved from sites of sacrifice and prayers for rain to become the sole embodiment of the regional hydraulic order. Beginning in the late nineteenth century, the symbolic role of the Dragon King Temples declined, and they degenerated into crucial spaces for violent contests over control of water resources in times of hydraulic crises. Finally, Dragon King Temples faded from the sociopolitical scene after the founding of the People’s Republic of China. The unique natural environment of the Hexi Corridor reduced local people’s awe of the Dragon King, yet the social environment compelled them to identify with the state. In the Ming and Qing dynasties, the state maintained its presence in local irrigation activities by introducing and promoting the cult of the Dragon King and the building of temples, which were revered as symbols of state power. With the decline of the state in modern times, local society’s worship of the Dragon King also dwindled. After the Communist regime began to exert all-around control of irrigation, Dragon King Temples were quickly replaced by the government at the grassroots level, and the cult finally disappeared as modern state power expanded.     

The Terramare and the surrounding hydraulic structures: a geophysical survey of the Santa Rosa site at Poviglio (Bronze Age,northern Italy)

The Terramara Santa Rosa is a Middle and Late Bronze Age archaeological site located in the Po alluvial plain, northern Italy. It is constituted of two moated villages delimited by earthen ramparts. The peripheral structures of the site are sealed by fine-textured flood plain deposits and they have not been fully explored through excavation due to their large extent. Because the shape of the villages and their relation to moats and the fluvial network are of paramount importance to understanding the landscape management and the use of water resources in the Terramare civilisation, a geophysical survey was planned to extend the results of the existing archaeological excavations to the site scale. A frequency-domain electro-magnetic sounding (FDEM) and electrical resistivity imaging (ERI) covered an area of approximately 26 ha; ERI was conducted for a total length >9000 m. Despite the predominance of electrically conductive fine-textured sediments, electrical resistivity anomalies were observed and they were attributed to subtle lithological differences in the sedimentary context of the alluvial plain. The geophysical interpretation, after the calibration with the excavation data, revealed the structures of the Terramara and of the surrounding hydraulic network, which are not visible at the surface due to flood plain deposits. The Santa Rosa site was founded in a favourable geomorphological position, on the top of a crevasse splay lobe of the adjoining Po palaeo-channel, rising above the surrounding alluvial plain. The Terramara and their surroundings were delineated through an artificial modification of this pre-existing crevasse splay lobe and a well-targeted urban design, with the objective of diverting water, most likely from a palaeo-channel of the Po River, through the digging of peripheral moats used to collect water around the site and to distribute it to the surrounding fields for irrigation. The water management documented by this study in the Terramara Santa Rosa can be considered as paradigmatic for the whole Terramare civilisation, which is therefore responsible of the introduction of the irrigated agriculture into western Europe for the first time.