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Quaternary Science Reviews
Water, life and civilization: climate, environment and society in the Jordan Valley
2012 •
Graham Philip
The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology
Robert Schiestl, Review of J. Bunbury, The Nile and Ancient Egypt. Changing Land-and Waterscapes, from the Neolithic to the Roman Era, Cambridge 2019
2021 •
Robert Schiestl
4 The Egyptian Nile: Human Transformation of an Ancient River
Salima Ikram
The Nile, the longest river of the world, connects Northeast Africa from its headwaters near Lake Victoria to the Mediterranean Sea. This chapter focuses on the Nile in Egypt, where the river's annual inundation (until the building of the two modern dams at Aswan) was the source of the country's fecundity and guarantor of its civilization since the 6 th millennium BCE. While the historical population of Egypt remained at a maximum of c. four million people until the mid-19 th century when Vice-Roy Muhammad Ali modernized the country, in 2019 the number passed the threshold of 100 million people. Increased demographic pressure, the alteration of the country's ecology through the mega-impact of the construction of the Aswan High Dam, and industrialization have led to a massive transformation of the Nile River system. One of the consequences has been an almost complete extinction of the country's native fauna and flora. The overuse of the water (rice and cotton irrigation projects) and the absence of the river's historical natural sedimentation have had irreversible effects on Egypt's agriculture and heritage (salination; disappearance of archaeological sites) and caused land loss to rising sea levels in the delta. In view of the environmental degradation in the Nile valley, and the dangers to Egypt's water security posed by overpopulation and the construction of the Merowe dams in Sudan and the Renaissance dam in Ethiopia, sustainable water management is of critical importance.
Journal of Hydrology
Taming the torrents: The hydrological impacts of ancient terracing practices in Jordan
2016 •
Qasem Abdelal
Tristant et al 2011 - Tristant, Y., De Dapper, M., Aussel, S., ‘Cultural and natural environment in the eastern Nile Delta. A geoarchaeological project at Tell el-iswid (South)’, in Friedman, R.F. and Fiske, P.N. (eds), Egypt at its Origins 3. OLA 205 (Leuven: Peeters publishers, 2011), p. 137-153.
Yann Tristant
Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Water
Experts on the past, working in the present: what archeologists can contribute to current water management
2017 •
Emily Holt
Tony Wilkinson and the water history of the Near East
Maurits Ertsen, Jason Ur
Cairo ecologies : water in social and material cycles
2014 •
Tessa Farmer
Workshop 14 – Waterscapes: Perspectives on hydro-cultural Landscapes in the Ancient Near East
Davide Nadali, Lucia Mori, Lorenzo Verderame
Water is a central topic in the ancient Near Eastern studies: more than 60 years have passed and much has been done since the 1957 “hydraulic society” model, presented by Karl Wittfogel in his “Oriental Despotism”, but still in 2012, the late Tony Wilkinson, wrote that “Too often the archaeology of water is studied as a footnote to other areas of the ancient cultural record, or, simply presented as an interesting diversion from the ‘real’ archaeology of buildings, burials or artefacts.” (Water History 4: 155-176). Pointing to the importance of field research especially dedicated to the topic of water, he continued by underlying the need to generate an overall conceptual framework for dealing with ancient water systems and, to shift the focus away from the “water and power” perspective, towards a more nuanced understanding of water management, which would re-consider the effective role of the local management of water resources. The workshop aims at presenting and discussing the recent perspectives on water studies in the ancient Near East in an interdisciplinary perspective, which should contribute to the development of new interpretative models, able to enrich the long debate on where, how and when technologies related to water management in dry areas took place and which may be their role in the modern world, where water is considered as the key to a sustainable future. In particular, the presence and even the absence of water is a cultural and social cause that deeply influenced and affected the birth and development of settlements and urban centres: different waters co-existed and worked in the change of the environmental conditions of villages and cities, creating aquatic wet areas characterized by peculiar flora and fauna that are reflected in the economical, social and religious aspects of material culture.
Kaptijn, E. 2018: Learning from ancient water management: Archaeology's role in modern-day climate change adaptations. WIREs Water 5, p.1-11, doi: 10.1002/wat2.1256.
Eva Kaptijn
Climate change is altering our environment and societies worldwide have to devise adaptation strategies. Water management strategies are becoming especially important. In the past, societies had to adapt in order to survive as well. Communities often practised long-term sustainable agriculture. By understanding the ways in which ancient communities were successful at or failed in attaining social-ecological resilience through water management archaeologists can provide important information for modern communities facing similar problems. Archaeology’s long time perspective is very valuable. However, archaeologists are confronted with a number of issues. Archaeology can only study the material remains of past societies, not the living communities. Not all human activity translates into material residue and not all materials survive. Moreover, people will not demonstrate completely rational cause-and-effect behaviour, but ideology and beliefs, which archaeology can only poorly attest, will also have influenced decisions. Nevertheless, archaeology can bring a unique perspective to the debate on climate change adaptation: archaeology can falsify or corroborate sustainability claims, ancient water management techniques may still be a resilient mode of subsistence and ancient techniques often rely on relatively simple technology allowing for easier adoption. When transposing ancient water management techniques to modern situations it is important to involve stakeholders from an early stage, to incorporate traditional knowledge systems as much as possible and most importantly to ascertain whether physical and socio-cultural circ*mstances are comparable. Archaeological knowledge on ancient sustainability and water management is not a panacea for all climate related aridification, but can contribute a unique longue durée perspective.
