Water History

This chapter is concerned with people's behavior experience of bodily evacuation between enand leaving the toilet, across the full specof private to public toilets in the Roman world.l Our written sources for this aspect of latrine use, while of some help, are relatively meagre (see Thiiry, chapter 4.1, pp. 43-47), and much of the reconstruction has to rely on a close reading of the archaeological evidence. Inevitably, this is weighted towards the multi-seater public latrines (joricae), since being larger and more monumentally built they are more likely to preserve incidental details that can provide clues to behavior, but many of the insights thus gained can be transferred to less public settings also.

Editorial introduction to a special issue of Water History, on the Roman and Byzantine empires. (Full document available on SpringerLink.)

Roman mastery of hydraulic engineering, and in particular of long-distance aqueduct supply systems, enabled the growth of a distinctive urban culture characterised by public
bathing and lavish water display in both public and private settings. In the rural sphere, the extension of empire around the Mediterranean facilitated, among other things, the transfer of irrigation technologies between regions of different cultural and geological backgrounds. This led to an increasing flexibility of responses to irrigation problems, and to the development of complex schemes incorporating elements of several technologies; the growing complexity and scale of both urban water supply and rural irrigation systems required the development of legislation to regulate usage and protect the rights both of the state and of individual users of the systems. The provision, and the control, of water supply and irrigation systems, and of water-using amenities such as fountains, bath-houses and
ornamental pools, became a powerful political tool for rulers and elites, courting favour with the populace for whom these structures were provided, asserting control over the resources necessary to construct them, and sometimes over nature itself, or emphasising status distinctions by the possession of display fountains, private baths, or private latrines in one’s own house. The Roman Empire, and to a considerable extent also the Byzantine
Empire which succeeded it in the east, was marked by the conscious manipulation of water resources for both usage and display, especially in the urban landscape.

J. Pickett, “Temples, Churches, Cisterns and Pipes: Water in Late Antique Ephesus,” in De Aquaeductu Atque Aqua Urbium Lyciae Pamphyliae Pisidiae: The Legacy of Sextus Julius Frontinus, International Congress on the History of Water Management and Hydraulic Engineering in the Mediterranean Region. Antalya, October 31 – November 9, 2014, ed. G. Wiplinger, Babesch Annual Papers on Mediterranean Archaeology Supplement 27 (Leuven: Babesch/Peeters, 2016): pp. 297-312

This paper re-examines the evidence for the diffusion of foggara-based irrigation across the Sahara in ancient and medieval times. Recent fieldwork by the Fazzan project has established that the foggaras of the Wadi al-Ajal in Libya are of Garamantian origin (last centuries B.C. / early centuries A.D.), and appear to have been used perhaps until the early middle ages (ninth to eleventh centuries), but probably not beyond this. Abandonment of some of the foggaras may even have begun as early as the fourth century A.D. It is argued that foggara irrigation technology was introduced from Egypt in the second half of the first millennium B.C., and enabled the development of a Garamantian agricultural society in Fezzan, which controlled trans-Saharan trade. From the Fezzan, foggaras spread north to the fringes of the Garamantian world, to southern Tunisia and the southern Aurès in the Roman period.
An apparent collapse in North-South trans-Saharan trade in the late Roman period (fourth/fifth centuries A.D.), linked to the decline of the Tripolitanian coastal cities, weakened the Garamantian state, not least by affecting supplies of slaves used in foggara construction and maintenance. Coupled with a declining water table, problems of labour and maintenance gradually led to the abandonment of most foggaras, and a shift to smaller-scale agriculture supported by wells. Meanwhile, however, development of oasis zones in the west central Sahara (especially the Touat and Gourara) facilitated the subsequent development of new North-South trade routes through what is now the Algerian Sahara. These oases are today the zones of most highly developed foggara use anywhere outside Iran; local tradition puts foggara use here as early as the eleventh century A.D., and there are grounds for thinking it may go back to the seventh century if not earlier. There are strong similarities, in construction and nomenclature, between the foggaras of Fezzan and those of the west central Sahara, and it is most likely that the foggaras of the Touat and Gourara were introduced from the Fezzan. From these oases the foggara subsequently spread to the Tidikelt, Tafilelt and Figuig. Foggara technology spread throughout north Africa along trans-Saharan trade routes, and also enabled the development of oases as trading centres. As such, the history of the foggara in the Sahara is inseparable from the history of trans-Saharan trade.

This is an attempt to bring together the various aspects of our deeply ambiguous relationship with water, providing a systematic account of its symbolic and philosophical significance; this involves looking at how water has been conceived and the role it has played in everyday thought, mythology, literature, religion, philosophy, politics and science, both across cultures and through history.

The aim is to study ancient fountains in their architectural context, in the belief that the context will reveal their function in the dwelling.  This article first analyzes the fountain structures and examines the relationship between each structure and the architecture. Through this approach, it is possible to reach some conclusions of more general value, concerning the function of central parts of Roman houses.

This paper considers a largely ignored aqueduct that was one of Augustus' largest construction projects. The Aqua Augusta transferred a significant amount of water from a mountain basin, with consequent environmental and social impacts, to at least eight towns around the heavily settled, and geologically unstable, Bay of Naples. The Augusta, rather than being focused on one urban centre, was a regional water supply network built to help secure the strategic area of Campania. In its creation and operation we see a complex interplay between municipal and imperial interests until the Augusta's demise in the fifth century AD.

This paper explores the implications of the archaeological evidence for the standards of public hygiene actually achieved in the towns of Roman North Africa. It looks first at drainage infrastructure, then at public and private toilets, and finally at evidence for public excretion and waste disposal.

Twelfth-century records show how social organisation in western Sicily was based around Muslim kin groups, many of whom gave their names to localities and landscape features, including water resources. Prominent among these was the ḫandaq – a ditch or gully often known by a personal name. The ḫandaqs conveyed water to fields and other channels, thus providing a low-cost, simple-to-maintain and locally regulated supply that required no input from lord, province or state – unlike the water-management system in and around Palermo with its qanāts, wells, water-raising devices and springs whose provision and regulation was integrated with the interests of the island’s governors, army and jurists.

Over the past 20 years archaeological surveys and remote sensing have contributed significantly to the discovery of ancient hydraulic systems in the Middle East. The significance of this increase, namely in the scale and number of canals, conduits and qanats, is examined and related to the role of power and the administration of the later territorial empires which date from the first millennium BC and later. We demonstrate that hydraulic systems spread into the rain-fed zone of northern Iraq, Syria and southern Turkey, especially during the past 3000 years. These systems contributed to the intensification of agricultural production and to the colonization of the Near Eastern landscape.

Constantinople was the largest city in late antiquity, and in medieval Europe until the thirteenth century. Over the first two centuries of the city's life as a new imperial capital the eastern emperors created a water supply system to rival that of imperial Rome. This article summarises recent studies of the hydraulic system in Thrace in order to contextualise a discussion of imperial patronage and the methods used to finance the system's upkeep. From the fourth to the sixth century collections of imperial legislation provide important evidence for the control of abuse, the distribution of water within the city and the financing of the system. This evidence is discussed in the context of the known topography and archaeology of the water supply to provide a richer understanding of the urban history. After a period of decline the system was renovated as the city's population recovered and there is extensive evidence for continuing maintenance until the twelfth century. A number of senior Byzantine officials with specific responsibilities for the city's water are discussed for the first time and provide important evidence for the continuing concerns necessary to sustain the developing urban population.

ANALES DE ARQUEOLOGÍA C O R D O B E S A n ú m E R O 2 7 ( 2 0 1 6 ) ÍNDICE ARTÍCULOS PÁGS. 11 -34 BUGELLA ALTAMIRANO, Matilde: El Tesoro de Córdoba. Comercio ilegal de antigüedades en el primer tercio del siglo XX The Treasure of Cordoba. Illegal antiquities trade during the first third of the XX century PÁGS. 35 -58 ARIÑO GIL, Enrique; DE SOTO GARCÍA, M.ª de los Reyes: Técnicas de muestreo en la prospección arqueológica: la experiencia del Ager Salmanticensis (Salamanca, España). Archaeological survey and sampling: the experience in the Ager Salmanticensis (Salamanca, Spain) PÁGS. 59 -76 CERAUDO, Giuseppe; MURRO, Giovanni: Aquinum: una città romana tra ricerca e prospettive di valorizzazione Aquinum: a Roman city between research and assessment prospects PÁGS. 77 -96 CARNEIRO, André: A villa romana, entre a construção literária e a realidade construída The roman villa, between the literary construction and the built reality PÁGS. 97 -124 TURCHIANO, Maria; VOLPE, Giuliano: Faragola e l'eredità delle ville in Italia meridionale tra Tardoantico e Altomedioevo Faragola and the legacy of Roman villae in Southern Italy between Late Antiquity and Early Middle Ages ANALES DE ARQUEOLOGÍA C O R D O B E S A n ú m E R O 2 7 ( 2 0 1 6 ) PÁGS. 125 -160 VALERO TÉVAR, Miguel Ángel: La iconografía del mito de Pélope e Hipodamía en la Musivaria Romana. Nuevas aportaciones a partir del mosaico de Noheda The iconography of the myth of Pelope and Hippodamia in Roman Musivaria. New contributions from mosaic of Noheda PÁGS. 161 -182 GARCÍA VILLALBA, Claudia: La significación histórica del vello facial en los retratos de Octavio Historical significance of facial hair in Octavian's depictions PÁGS. 183 -214 MACHANCOSES LÓPEZ, Mirella: Actualización de la topografía de las necrópolis de Valentia: siglos I-III d.C. Actualization of the topography of the Valentia's cementerial areas: 1 st -3 rd century AD. PÁGS. 215 -238 SCALCO, Luca: Donne di casa: ritratti di liberte e patroni sui monumenti funerari romani Family women: portraits of freedwomen and their patrons on Roman funerary monuments PÁGS. 239 -266 TEJEDOR GARCÍA, Úrsula; PIÑERO PALACIOS, Juan Manuel; SALINAS VI-LLEGAS, José Manuel: Excavación y estudio antropológico de la muestra visigoda procedente de la calle Pintor Palomino, 55 (Córdoba) Excavation and anthropological result from a visigoth site in calle Pintor Palomino, 55 (Cordoba) PÁGS. 267 -292 GONZÁLEZ GUTIÉRREZ, Carmen: Las mezquitas de barrio de Madı-nat Qurt . uba 15 años después: espacios religiosos urbanos en la capital andalusí Secondary mosques in Madı-nat Qurt . uba 15 years later: religious urban spaces in the capital of al-Andalus PÁGS. 293 -324 VÁZQUEZ NAVAJAS, Belén: Las condiciones higiénicas y el saneamiento en Madı-nat Qurt≥ uba durante el siglo X Hygienic Conditions and Sanitation in Madı-nat Qurt . uba during the 10 th Century NORMAS DE REDACCIÓN Y PRESENTACIÓN DE ORIGINALES PÁGS. 325 -328 Normas de redacción y presentación de originales.

A r q u e o l o g í a y T e r r i t o r i o M e d i e v a l 2 0 , 2 0 1 3 . p p . 3 1 -6 6 I . S . S . N . : 1 1 3 4 -3 1 8 4 RESUMEN El objetivo de este artículo es mostrar cómo el análisis de las infraestructuras hidráulicas urbanas puede ayudarnos a conocer mejor la realidad histórica de una medina andalusí, a través del ejemplo de Madinat Qurtuba, y concretamente de un sector de sus arrabales occidentales (al-Yanib al-Garbi) durante el Califato omeya. Las excepcionales condiciones del yacimiento cordobés nos han permitido examinar con detenimiento cuatro de las parcelas excavadas en medio de este gran suburbio, donde hemos intentado rastrear la génesis y evolución de los sistemas hidráulicos. Constatada ya la existencia de depósitos de agua, canales, letrinas, pozos y otras estructuras análogas, tratamos de dar un paso más descubriendo en qué momento fueron insertadas en la trama urbana y qué presencia tuvieron en la vida diaria de sus pobladores 2 .

The article presents contemporary Greek water-rituals and their relation to ancient pre-Christian traditions and sites, manifested by springs in caves. Formerly springs represented Water-Nymphs, and today springs are dedicated to the Panagia (i.e. the Virgin Mary), under her attribute of Zōodochos Pēgē (i.e. the Life-giving Spring). People have traditionally expressed their beliefs through rituals connected to purity and water by fetching Holy water from the caves dedicated to these divinities. The water is thought to be particularly healing and purifying during their festivals, such as the modern festival dedicated to the ''Life-giving Spring'', which is celebrated on the first Friday after Easter Sunday. During this celebration Athenians come to Panagia's chapel inside a circular Spring House hewn in the rock on the Southern slope of the Acropolis to fetch Life-giving water. The Sacred Spring is situated inside a cave over which is constructed a church. It is also important to be baptised in water from one of Panagia's sacred springs. The cult dedicated to the personified sacred and healing spring-water, has traditionally been important for political purposes as well. Based on fieldwork on contemporary religious rituals, the author compares the modern evidence with ancient material, arguing for a continuous association of water sources with the sacred in Greece, as observed in the Athenian Acropolis Cave, a cult which is not very well-documented and therefore deserves to be better known. The comparison will also exploit the cult of springs in other Greek caves and similar cult found in parallel non-Greek contexts.

The water-mill is one of the earliest examples of human efforts to harness natural forces to do mechanical work, and stands as the ancestor of a long line of machines. Water-milling greatly increased per capita  productivity in the time-consuming and widely needed grinding of grain into flour, and enabled greater specialisation in labour, with the water-miller (molendinarius) emerging as a separate figure from the miller-baker (pistor) of the earlier Roman period. The spread and uptake of the water-mill is therefore important to questions of economic development and the relationship of capital investment in technology to economic growth

The Anastenaria festival is celebrated in the village of Agia Elenē in Greek Macedonia in May. The main ritual during the festival is the ecstatic dance over red-hot coals by people who are possessed by their saint. Thus, the festival presents a ritual, which in many ways is in opposition to the official Orthodox religion. A particular theme in the festival, which has been compared with ancient sources, is the "Dionysian" element and the "holy dyade" related to the cult of the Great Mother and the personified Bull god, via several couples, such as Kybele and Attis, and the modern cult dedicated to Agia (i.e. Saint) Elenē and Agios (Saint) Kōnstantinos. But, the similarities between the ancient cult dedicated to Aphrodite and Adonis and the modern cult may also be of relevance. Accordingly, the article will present the modern Anastenaria festival. It will further make a comparison with an ancient parallel celebrated in connection with the same passage during the agricultural year, the unofficial Athenian festival dedicated to the vegetation god, Adonis, the Adōnia. A reason to this is that both festivals present ritual diversity within their respective societies, simultaneously as they belong to the same cosmologies within their respective communities.

monografías de arqueología cordobesa Vaquerizo, D.; Garriguet, J. A.; León, A. (Eds.) Ciudad y territorio: transformaciones materiales e ideológicas entre la época clásica y el Altomedioevo 20 [ 2014 ] Córdoba, 2014 Ciudad y territorio: transformaciones materiales e ideológicas entre la época clásica y el Altomedioevo Vaquerizo D.; Garriguet, J. A.; León, A. (Eds.) La dirección de MgAC no se hace responsable de las opiniones o contenidos recogidos en los textos, que competen en todo caso a sus autores «Cualquier forma de reproducción, distribución, comunicación pública o transformación de esta obra solo puede ser realizada con la autorización de sus titulares, salvo excepción prevista por la ley. Diríjase a CEDRO (Centro Español de Derechos Reprográficos) si necesita fotocopiar o escanear algún fragmento de esta obra (www.conlicencia.com; 91 702 19 70 / 93 272 04 47)» Serie monográfica publicada por el Grupo de Investigación Sísifo (P.A.I., HUM-236), de la Universidad de Córdoba, en colaboración, en este caso, con su Servicio de Publicaciones. N Ú M E R O 2 0 2 0 1 4 [ N U E V A É P O C A ]

Dispersal of biota by humans is a hallmark of civilization, but the results are often unforeseen and sometimes costly. Like kudzu vine in the American South, some examples become the stuff of regional folklore. In recent decades, “invasion biology,” conservation-motivated scientists and their allies have focused largely on the most negative outcomes and often promoted the perception that introduced species are monsters. However, cases of monstering by scientists preceded the rise of popular environmentalism. The story of tamarisk (Tamarix spp.), flowering trees and shrubs imported to New England sometime before 1818, provides an example of scientific “monstering” and shows how slaying the monster, rather than allaying its impacts, became a goal in itself. Tamarisks’ drought and salt tolerance suggested usefulness for both coastal and inland erosion control, and politicians as well as academic and agency scientists promoted planting them in the southern Great Plains and Southwest. But when erosion control efforts in Arizona, New Mexico and Texas became entangled with water shortages, economic development during the Depression and copper mining for national defense during World War Two, federal hydrologists moved quickly to recast tamarisks as water-wasting foreign monsters. Demonstrating significant water salvage was difficult and became subsidiary to focusing on ways to eradicate the plants, and a federal interagency effort devoted specifically to the latter purpose was organized and continued until it, in turn, conflicted with regional environmental concerns in the late 1960s.

The remains of Rome’s first aqueduct, the Aqua Appia, which Appius Claudius Caecus contracted as censor in 312 B.C., are no longer accessible. Late nineteenth and early twentieth century scholars’ interpretations of then-extant ruins disagree, negating one another. Moreover, since antiquity, many historians have fallen back uncritically on a common assumption, that the first of Rome’s aqueducts functioned in similar ways as imperial public water works did: to tap drinking water sources for growing populations, to water elite villa gardens, and to supply public baths. Archaeological evidence reveals that during the middle Republic, wells and cisterns provided adequate drinking water, and neither baths nor gardens had developed to the point of requiring dedicated water supplies. Why, then, did Appius Claudius Caecus build Rome’s first aqueduct?
I propose different and more complex motives from those commonly assumed for early Roman aqueducts. First, I analyze existing archaeological reports, population data, and interpretations of engineering and architectural technologies, arguing that commonly-held assumptions about aqueduct form and function cannot apply during the middle Republic. Second, I examine literary evidence, situating Appius’ political actions within a historical context that suggests the first aqueduct played an explicit role in Rome’s political and military domination of the Italic peninsula. Third, I probe the Claudian censor’s biographical context and suggest that personal imperatives moved him to build for family prestige. In the end, reinterpretation of evidence pertaining to Rome’s first aqueduct permits a wider reassessment of how aqueducts functioned within a republican context, and insists they should not simply be read as precursors to empire.

Among the important engineering projects that were undertaken in Rome during the late-sixteenth and early-seventeenth centuries were three proposals to restore and build aqueducts. The scale of these projects was enormous, yet all three were implemented and they had a profound effect on the city. They not only spurred urban growth and improved public health with a reliable and abundant water supply, but also, they shaped new modes of urban and territorial administration and helped to re-establish the joint temporal and spiritual hegemony of Rome and the Church as the centre of Christianity during the Counter Reformation. The fi rst of these projects was a restoration of the ancient Aqua Virgo, by then called the Acqua Vergine, carried out between 1560 and 1570. This restoration was initiated by Pope Pius IV (1559-65) and completed under Pius V (1566-72). Pope Sixtus V (1585-90) sponsored the Acqua Felice between 1585 and 1587. That aqueduct tapped the springs of one ancient aqueduct, the Aqua Alexandrina and linked portions of the restored channel of another, the Aqua Marcia, with wholly new construction. The Acqua Paola, built between 1607 and 1612 under Pope Paul V (1605-21), reused the springs and followed along the course of the ancient Aqua Traiana using almost entirely new construction.

Concerning weather, weather-related extremes and catastrophic consequences, 1342 was an extraordinary year in most parts of Central Europe, even in such an extraordinary decade as the 1340s. Accounting with the seven flood events (including one Danube flood) mainly of great magnitude, at present 1342 is the most important known flood year of medieval Hungary. Moreover, in this year extraordinary weather conditions, such as a mid-autumn snowcover were also reported. However, in the eastern parts of the Carpathian basin not only 1342 but also 1343 was a significant flood year with six reports on flood events occurred in the upper and upper middle sections of the Tisza catchment. In the present study, an overview of these events is provided, based on the information preserved in the most typical contemporary, well-dated source type of medieval Hungary, namely charters. The aim of the study is, on the one hand, to draw attention to the flood and weatherrelated evidence found in charters, and to provide a methodological background for further evaluation and utilisation of this source type in historical weather and flood research, through the very typical example of the years of 1342 and 1343. On the other hand, another aim is to discuss and analyse the unique nature of these two years in medieval Hungary, and (beyond the well-known year of 1342) to draw attention to the, up to now somewhat neglected, year of 1343.

Paper presented at the 4th IWHA-Conference, Water and Civilization: Water and Religion, Unesco Headquarters, Paris, December 2005. A shorter version was presented at the 35th world Congress of the International Society for the Comparative Study of Civilizations (ISCSC), Routes de l’Histoire: Passeurs de Civilisations, Porteurs des Diversites Culturelles. Verse et Contre Verse/The Paths of History: Bridges Across Civilizations, Carriers of Cultural Diversity. Pros and Cons, Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (EPHE)/Unesco, Paris, July 2006. Article versions of the paper have later been publised.

Located north of the village of Deir al-Medîna, the "Grand Puits" is for many people considered an instal- lation that was never used as a well due to the shaft apparently not reaching the water table. This idea was first suggested by B. Bruyère who excavated and published the structure and was subsequently a point echoed by many other Egyptologists. However, careful study of various documents, including excavation notebooks and documents from Pharaonic times, tends to contradict this hypothesis, clearly attesting to the presence of water in the well. This information opens the discussion on how Egyptian towns, situated in the edge of the desert far from any water source, could be supplied with water.

The outbreak of war in 1941, and the evacuations of industries to Central Asia, made energy production a new priority for the region. This led to the rushed approval of the first dam projects on the Syr Darya. Perhaps surprisingly, the Tajik leadership voiced their opposition to these projects, and First Secretary Ghafurov wrote a letter of protest to Beriia. I use the debate surrounding the dam to shed light on competing visions for the development of the region, balancing local plans with expectations emanating from Moscow, and competition between the republics.

Throughout history natural disasters always seem to hit the weakest groups in society hardest. Compared to middle class and elite groups their adaptation and mitigation strategies often seem more limited. Nevertheless there is nothing ‘natural’ about this situation. Environmental inequalities are always produced by specific social and economic conditions and these conditions can change over time. In this
article we try to examine long-term changes in environmental inequalities in three coastal wetland areas that were particularly prone to flooding, focusing on
the interaction between coastal towns and their surrounding countryside in the period 1300-1800. In the Flemish Coastal Plain, in Romney Marsh and in the Dutch Peatlands inhabitants had to cope with a permanently high flood risk. Their ability to do so changed over time and so did the social distribution of flood risk among the different groups in society.

La gran extensión de arrabales excavada al Occidente de la antigua Madīnat Qurṭuba, ofrece unas condiciones excepcionales para conocer de cerca los sistemas de abastecimiento, almacenamiento y evacuación de agua de una medina andalusí. El análisis pormenorizado de las instalaciones hidráulicas de uno de estos sectores, nos ha permitido comprender mejor la realidad histórica de estos barrios suburbanos, así como las características técnicas y formales de dichos dispositivos.