1st Edition

Water and Society from Ancient Times to the Present Resilience, Decline, and Revival

Edited By Federica Sulas, Innocent Pikirayi Copyright 2018
420 Pages
by Routledge

420 Pages
by Routledge

420 Pages
by Routledge

As water availability, management and conservation become global challenges, there is now wide consensus that historical knowledge can provide crucial information to address present crises, offering unique opportunities to appreciate the solutions and mechanisms societies have developed over time to deal with water in all its forms, from rainfall to groundwater. ... Read more

Introduction Water and society by the editors; Chapter 1 Sustaining freshwater security and community wealth: Diversity and change in the pre-Columbian Maya Lowlands; Chapter 2 Archaeological identification of human sensitivity to drought; Chapter 3 Water and Risks in Marginal Landscapes of Anatolia; Chapter 4 Water management and irrigation systems in Medieval Mediterranean; Chapter 5 The tale the river tells: Floodplains, climate change, and archaeology in West Africa; Chapter 6 Water and large-scale societies in southern Zambezia, 900‒1900 AD; Chapter 7 Traditions of water in the highlands of the northern Horn of Africa; Chapter 8 Managing water and land at the Amazon River estuary: From Precolumbian times to the present; Chapter 9 Ancient water management in Southern Arabia: Creativity, resilience, and sustainability in Yemen and Oman; Chapter 10 Qanāts of Iran: Sustainable water supply system; Chapter 11 Angkor, food production, water management and climate change: The trajectory of urbanism in SE Asia to the mid-2nd millennium AD; Chapter 12 Hydraulic Complexities: Collapse and Resilience in Sri Lanka; Chapter 13 Historic water systems in India: Relevance for sustainable development of significant cultural landscapes; Chapter 14 Historic Water Systems, Urban Growth, and Resilience in American Cities; Concluding essay 1 Resource gain and complexity: Water past and future; Concluding essay 2 Historical water socio-ecological systems - Sustainability, resilience and transformability

Biography

Federica Sulas (PhD, Cantab) is an Archaeologist with research interests in historical landscapes. She has conducted field research Ethiopia, Tanzania, South Africa, Zimbabwe and Sardinia. As Assistant Professor at the Centre of Excellence for Urban Network Evolutions of the Danish National Research Foundation (grant DNRF119), Aarhus University, Denmark, she is developing collaborative research on urban transitions and social complexity in eastern and southern Africa.





 



Innocent Pikirayi (PhD, Uppsala) is a Professor in Archaeology at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. He researches on complex societies in southern and central Africa and is currently conducting geoarchaeological investigations at Great Zimbabwe to understand the ancient city’s water resources. He is also interested in ancient urbanism and the globalization of the early-modern world.