Identifying pre-Hispanic water storages in agricultural areas of south-central Andes through diatom evidence

In the Andes, there are several pre-Hispanic irrigation networks with structures destined for water storage. However, it has not been widely discussed in archaeological research. This is probably due to their being difficult to identify. The aim of this study is to explore the use of diatom assemblage analysis as a methodological tool suitable to help in the identification and characterization of these ancient hydraulic structures. We analyzed two archaeological structures interpreted as water reservoirs from north-western Argentina (EH1 in Antofagasta de la Sierra and U-88R1 in Yocavil) and compared them to current reservoirs. The diatom species composition and the changes in the dominant ecological groups in the studied structures highlight different periods of hydraulic behavior. EH1 contained and stored water, but there were periods of time in which there was a lack of use or abandonment of the structure. However, the U88-R1 structure does not have diatom evidence of containing standing water for a prolonged time but presence of wet soils. Thus, the structure could have been used for other water management strategies. The results show that diatom analysis is a methodological tool with a high potential to study ancestral hydrotechnologies.     

Dams,Diversions, and Development: Slow Resistance and Authoritarian Rule in the Salween River Basin

We engage geography's longstanding debate on what “counts” as resistance by introducing slow resistance to account for temporal-political strategies against unjust developments, particularly under authoritarian conditions. We draw on over a decade of fieldwork in the Salween River Basin where dams and diversions have been proposed since 1979, including the most recent iteration, the Yuam River water diversion project in Northwest Thailand. We find that resistance by impacted communities and civil society encompasses slow, strategic, and considered actions over time and generations. Such resistance is necessarily protracted to contest developments (re)proposed over decades. By foregrounding the strategic use of time and temporality, we highlight often overlooked actions and strategies of resistance by a diverse range of actors, showing how resistance movements are incremental and interconnected over time, even when “under the radar”. These strategies are key to contesting and (re)shaping the conditions of development in the Basin.     

Regulatory Alchemy: How the Water Cycle Becomes Capital in the California Desert

A proposed project will take water from an aquifer in the California desert to the coast. Lacking final approvals more than 30 years after it started, the project remains a plan despite sizeable opposition. What is its secret? In this paper, I examine the imaginaries of the underground aquifer underneath the lands of Cadiz Inc, the project proponent. While local theories insist the company is at the centre of a Chinatown conspiracy, I argue that the company stays alive through regulatory alchemy, a term that reveals the magic at the heart of scientific and regulatory approval processes. I examine narratives of the aquifer in environmental compliance and financial reporting in order to reveal how regulatory processes become the conditions of profit-making, building on debates in critical legal geography and political ecology.     

The Making of a Regulatory Crisis: Restructuring New York City's Water Supply

Much practically orientated environmental research is marked by a polarity between functionalist abstraction and ahistorical normative discourse. This paper seeks to bridge the divide between theoretical and empirical research through a case study of New York City's water supply. Current processes of socio-economic restructuring are leading to negative environmental consequences obscured by a failure to extend analysis beyond limited temporal, spatial or sectoral scales. Insights from regulationist theory show that a combination of fiscal, political and other developments are bringing about a wide-ranging reformulation of existing patterns of environmental regulation and service provision in the city. The power of the state is being radically diminished in relation to the power of capital and a plethora of different interest groups. A relatively simple centralized model of environmental regulation is being transformed into a complex decentralized pattern involving the emergence of new approaches to urban governance. Further research is needed on the contradictions between capitalist accumulation and environmental regulation at different spatial scales in order to link New York's changing role within the global economy to the declining political legitimacy and fiscal capability of the state to play an extensive role in environmental management.     

Contours of the Past: LiDAR Data Expands the Limits of Late Pre-Columbian Human Settlement in the Santarém Region,Lower Amazon

Recent studies have shown that pre-Columbian societies in the Amazon undertook significant landscape modifications, including earthworks. Our fieldwork has revealed that pre-Columbian settlements in the Santarém Region, Lower Amazon, were not limited to the vicinities of permanent water courses, as formerly often assumed. Instead, numerous archaeological sites, dating from ca. a.d. 1300 up to the time of European colonization in the seventeenth century, have been found in an upland area known as the Belterra Plateau, south of the present-day city of Santarém. These upland sites have been found to be associated with particular features in the landscape: cavities or depressions, known locally as “Poços de Água”. LiDAR data shows that a pattern of non-randomly distributed depressions extends far into the densely forested Tapajós National Forest (Flona-Tapajós), allowing us to suggest that the expansion of inland settlement extended considerably farther to the south than what has previously been established through conventional archaeological fieldwork.     

The Ereğli E Shipwreck,Turkey: an early Hellenistic merchant ship in the Black Sea

A shipwreck from the early 3rd century BC was discovered in the Black Sea's suboxic depths off Ere?li, Turkey, during the 2011 E/V Nautilus expedition. Remote investigation revealed the trawl‐damaged remains of a merchant ship carrying multiple amphora types associated with Aegean and Pontic production areas. Also discovered were elements of the ship's hull that show evidence of both pegged mortise‐and‐tenon and laced construction. The wreck provides crucial archaeological evidence for both maritime connectivity and ship‐construction methods during a period of political and economic transition.     

北大藏秦水陆里程简“阳”县考辨

北京大学入藏的秦代水陆里程简册中记载秦代有"阳"县存在,关于这一新出现的秦县,前辈学者认为可能是位于今河南省方城县的秦汉"阳城"。然而,从简册中记载的"阳"县下属各乡到其他地区的距离来看,"阳县"不太可能在今方城附近,而更有可能是位于先秦"唐"国故地的"唐"县。其他出土材料所见的"唐"县一般写作"阳",清华简《系年》中还有楚国曾灭"唐(阳)"置县的明确记载。秦代的阳县应该就是继承了楚灭唐国之后所设的阳县。     

Users' perspectives on decentralized rural water services in Tanzania

This article examines the impact of decentralization reforms on improving access to domestic water supply in the rural districts of Kondoa and Kongwa, Tanzania, using a users' and a gender perspective. The article addresses the question whether and to what extent the delivery of gender-sensitive water services to rural households improved after the reforms. Household- and village-level data were obtained through a household survey and qualitative methods. The findings show an increase of the proportion of households using improved sources of domestic water between 2002 and 2011. However, more than half of users still travel over a kilometre and use more than an hour to collect water in the dry season. Despite the increased proportion of women in water management committees, the outcomes of these decentralized arrangements differ for men and women. Overall, the reforms have produced contradictory effects by improving access to water supply for some users, and creating or reinforcing existing inter- and intra-village inequalities.     

Hydraulic and hydrochemical properties of deep sedimentary reservoirs of the Upper Rhine Graben,Europe

Hydraulic and hydrochemical data from several hundred wells mostly drilled by the oil and gas industry within the four deep carbonate and siliciclastic reservoirs of the Upper Rhine Graben area in France and Germany have been compiled, examined, validated and analysed with the aim to characterize fluids and reservoir properties. Due to enhanced temperatures in the subsurface of the Upper Rhine Graben, this study on hydraulic and hydrochemical properties has been motivated by an increasing interest in deep hydrogeothermal energy projects in the Rhine rift valley. The four examined geothermal reservoir formations are characterized by high hydraulic conductivity reflecting the active tectonic setting of the rift valley and its fractured and karstified reservoirs. The hydraulic conductivity decreases only marginally with depth in each of the reservoirs, because the Upper Rhine Graben is a young tectonically active structure. The generally high hydraulic conductivity of the reservoir rocks permits cross‐formation advective flow of thermal water. Water composition data reflect the origin and hydrochemical evolution of deep water. Shallow water to 500 m depth is, in general, weakly mineralized. The chemical signature of the water is controlled by fluid–rock geochemical interactions. With increasing depth, the total of dissolved solids (TDS) increases. In all reservoirs, the fluids evolve to a NaCl‐dominated brine. The high salinity of the reservoirs is partly derived from dissolution of halite in evaporitic Triassic and Cenozoic formations, and partly from the fluids residing in the crystalline basement. Water of all four reservoirs is saturated with respect to calcite and other minerals including quartz and barite.     

Fluid mixing induced by hydrothermal activity in the ordovician carbonates in Tarim Basin,China

Permian hydrothermal activity in the Tarim Basin may have been responsible for the invasion of hot brines into Ordovician carbonate reservoirs. Studies have been undertaken to explain the origin and geochemical characteristics of the diagenetic fluid present during this hydrothermal event although there is no consensus on it. We present a genetic model resulting from the study of δ¹³C, δ¹⁸O, δ³⁴S, and ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr isotope values and fluid inclusions (FIs) from fracture‐ and vug‐filling calcite, saddle dolomite, fluorite, barite, quartz, and anhydrite from Ordovician outcrops in northwest (NW) Tarim Basin and subsurface cores in Central Tarim Basin. The presence of hydrothermal fluid was confirmed by minerals with fluid inclusion homogenization temperatures being >10°C higher than the paleo‐formation burial temperatures both in the NW Tarim and in the Central Tarim areas. The mixing of hot (>200°C), high‐salinity (>24 wt% NaCl), ⁸⁷Sr‐rich (up to 0.7104) hydrothermal fluid with cool (60–100°C), low‐salinity (0 to 3.5 wt% NaCl), also ⁸⁷Sr‐rich (up to 0.7010) meteoric water in the Ordovician unit was supported by the salinity of fluid inclusions, and δ¹³C, δ¹⁸O, and ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr isotopic values of the diagenetic minerals. Up‐migrated hydrothermal fluids from the deeper Cambrian strata may have contributed to the hot brine with high sulfate concentrations which promoted thermochemical sulfate reduction (TSR) in the Ordovician, resulting in the formation of ¹²C‐rich (δ¹³C as low as ?13.8‰) calcite and ³⁴S‐rich (δ³⁴S values from 21.4‰ to 29.7‰) H₂S, pyrite, and elemental sulfur. Hydrothermal fluid mixing with fresh water in Ordovician strata in Tarim Basin was facilitated by deep‐seated faults and up‐reaching faults due to the pervasive Permian magmatic activity. Collectively, fluid mixing, hydrothermal dolomitization, TSR, and faulting may have locally dissolved the host carbonates and increased the reservoir porosity and permeability, which has significant implications for hydrocarbon exploration.