«L’europe» 125e congrès national des sociétés historiques et scientifiques université de Lille III 10–15 avril 2000

Vie Scientifique

?L’europe? 125^e congrès national des sociétés historiques et scientifiques université de Lille III 10–15 avril 2000     

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.     

Exploitation of groundwater in the oasis of Masāfī (UAE): A diachronic perspective

In order to understand the role of water resources in the establishment and long-term evolution of settlements investigated by the French Archaeological Mission in the UAE in the oasis of Masāfī, wells and springs of all periods, identified at the surface and in stratified contexts, were mapped and studied thanks to a multidisciplinary approach combining archaeology, geomorphology, geoarchaeology and ethnography. Our study demonstrates that:

• – The Masāfī oasis was located in a specific geological setting entailing the accumulation of groundwater resources at reachable depth.
• – The groundwater resources remained rather stable from the mid-second millennium BC to the second half of the twentieth century AD. In this respect, the apparent abandonment of the oasis during some periods cannot be explained by water depletion.
• – The groundwater resources have decreased sharply since the second half of the twentieth century AD, due to the introduction of new water extraction technologies, motor pumps and then drillings, as a result of the modernisation and industrialisation of UAE economy.

Our study also stresses the importance of well and spring irrigation in the development of the sedentary settlements in south-eastern Arabia, technologies that have often been neglected in the regional archaeological literature in favour of the qanāt.