Author: Federica Sulas
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317197372
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 348
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Book Description
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. This unique collection explores how ancient water systems relate to present ideas of resilience and sustainability and can inform future strategy. Through an investigation of historic water management systems, along with the responses to, and impact of, various water-driven catastrophes, contributors to this volume present tenable solutions for the long-term use of water resources in different parts of the world. The discussion is not limited to issues of the past, seeking instead to address the resonance and legacy of water histories in the present and future. Water and Society from Ancient Times to the Present speaks to an archaeological and non-archaeological scholarly audience and will be a useful primary reference text for researchers and graduate students from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds including archaeology, anthropology, history, ecology, geography, geology, architecture and development studies.
Author: Mark Altaweel
Publisher: UCL Press
ISBN: 1911576712
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 334
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Book Description
Today our societies face great challenges with water, in terms of both quantity and quality, but many of these challenges have already existed in the past. Focusing on Asia, Water Societies and Technologies from the Past and Present seeks to highlight the issues that emerge or re-emerge across different societies and periods, and asks what they can tell us about water sustainability. Incorporating cutting-edge research and pioneering field surveys on past and present water management practices, the interdisciplinary contributors together identify how societies managed water resource challenges and utilised water in ways that allowed them to evolve, persist, or drastically alter their environment. The case studies, from different periods, ancient and modern, and from different regions, including Egypt, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Southwest United States, the Indus Basin, the Yangtze River, the Mesopotamian floodplain, the early Islamic city of Sultan Kala in Turkmenistan, and ancient Korea, offer crucial empirical data to readers interested in comparing the dynamics of water management practices across time and space, and to those who wish to understand water-related issues through conceptual and quantitative models of water use. The case studies also challenge classical theories on water management and social evolution, examine and establish the deep historical roots and ecological foundations of water sustainability issues, and contribute new grounds for innovations in sustainable urban planning and ecological resilience.
Author: Dylan Kelby Rogers
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004368973
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 130
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Book Description
Water played an important part of ancient Roman life, from providing necessary drinking water, supplying bath complexes, to flowing in large-scale public fountains. The Roman culture of water was seen throughout the Roman Empire, although it was certainly not monolithic and it could come in a variety of scales and forms, based on climatic and social conditions of different areas. This article seeks to define ‘water culture’ in Roman society by examining literary, epigraphic, and archaeological evidence, while understanding modern trends in scholarship related to the study of Roman water. The culture of water can be demonstrated through expressions of power, aesthetics, and spectacle. Further there was a shared experience of water in the empire that could be expressed through religion, landscape, and water’s role in cultures of consumption and pleasure.
Author: Charles R. Ortloff
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000088235
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 415
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Book Description
The Hydraulic State explores the hydraulic engineering technology underlying water system constructions of many of the ancient World Heritage sites in South America, the Middle East and Asia as used in their urban and agricultural water supply systems. Using a range of methods and techniques, some new to archaeology, Ortloff analyzes various ancient water systems such as agricultural field system designs known in ancient Peruvian and Bolivian Andean societies, water management at Nabataean Petra, the Roman Pont du Garde water distribution castellum, the Minoan site of Knossos and the water systems of dynastic (and modern) China, particularly the Grand Canal and early water systems designed to control flood episodes. In doing so the book greatly increases our understanding of the hydraulic/hydrological engineering of ancient societies through the application of Complexity Theory, Similitude Theory and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analysis, as well as traditional archaeological analysis methods. Serving to highlight the engineering science behind water structures of the ancient World Heritage sites discussed, this book will be of interest to archaeologists working on landscape archaeology, urbanism, agriculture and water management.
Author: Jonas Berking
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :
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Book Description
Author: Willem Willems
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789088903861
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 434
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Book Description
Water is vital for life, and its availability has been a concern for mankind throughout the ages. Its presence has always been ascertained in a variety of ways and the development of human society everywhere is connected with various forms of water management. Man also needed to manage water to find protection from its dangers and the need for that is increasing. In the coming decades, the impact of climate change is expected to intensify floods and droughts, affect groundwater resources, raise sea levels, increase pollution and enhance the frequency and magnitude of disasters. Societies around the world are challenged to adapt to these threats to ensure water security, economic prosperity and environmental and cultural sustainability. This book deals with the heritage of water management and the use that was made of water, as well as the impact of water management on heritage. An example of the former may be an ancient irrigation system in the Filipines or in the Middle East that still functions today, while the latter may reflect the importance of maintaining groundwater levels for the preservation of organic remains on archaeological sites or of wooden piles underneath standing buildings. In either case the papers in this book reflect the dynamic nature of water, and hence the equally dynamic relation between water management and heritage. This publication follows up on a Heritage and Water conference in Amsterdam, the first of its kind. Its main purpose is to credibly present the importance and value of heritage and historical experience for water and sustainable development, and vice versa, present the importance of water management for the protection of heritage. It presents evolving insights and concepts about Water and about Heritage from a variety of disciplines, policy and public perspectives illustrated with cases studies and aims to connect decision makers with experts such as engineers, archaeologists, historians, geographers, ecologist and landscape architects
Author: Steven Mithen
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674072197
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 382
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Book Description
Water is an endangered resource, imperiled by population growth, mega-urbanization, and climate change. Scientists project that by 2050, freshwater shortages will affect 75 percent of the global population. Steven Mithen puts our current crisis in historical context by exploring 10,000 years of humankind’s management of water. Thirst offers cautionary tales of civilizations defeated by the challenges of water control, as well as inspirational stories about how technological ingenuity has sustained communities in hostile environments. As in his acclaimed, genre-defying After the Ice and The Singing Neanderthals, Mithen blends archaeology, current science, and ancient literature to give us a rich new picture of how our ancestors lived. Since the Neolithic Revolution, people have recognized water as a commodity and source of economic power and have manipulated its flow. History abounds with examples of ambitious water management projects and hydraulic engineering—from the Sumerians, whose mastery of canal building and irrigation led to their status as the first civilization, to the Nabataeans, who created a watery paradise in the desert city of Petra, to the Khmer, who built a massive inland sea at Angkor, visible from space. As we search for modern solutions to today’s water crises, from the American Southwest to China, Mithen also looks for lessons in the past. He suggests that we follow one of the most unheeded pieces of advice to come down from ancient times. In the words of Li Bing, whose waterworks have irrigated the Sichuan Basin since 256 BC, “Work with nature, not against it.”
Author: David Sedlak
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 030017649X
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 353
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Book Description
The little-known story of the systems that bring us our drinking water, how they were developed, the problems they are facing, and how they will be reinvented in the near future
Author: Pierre-Louis Viollet
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 0203375319
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 336
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Book Description
This new book offers an engineer's perspective on the history of water technology and its impact on the development of civilisation. A Second Edition and translation into English of the French book "L'Hydraulique dans les Civilisations Anciennes".Water professionals, engineers, scientists, and students will find this book fascinating and invaluable
Author: Nicola Chiarenza
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110677067
Category : History
Languages : de
Pages : 280
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Book Description
Water is a global resource for modern societies - and water was a global resource for pre-modern societies. The many different water systems serving processes of urbanisation and urban life in ancient times and the Middle Ages have hardly been researched until now. The numerous contributions to this volume pose questions such as what the basic cultural significance of water was, the power of water, in the town and for the town, from different points of view. Symbolic, aesthetic, and cult aspects are taken up, as is the role of water in politics, society, and economy, in daily life, but also in processes of urban planning or in urban neighbourhoods. Not least, the dangers of polluted water or of flooding presented a challenge to urban society. The contributions in this volume draw attention to the complex, manifold relations between water and human beings. This collection presents the results of an international conference in Kiel in 2018. It is directed towards both scholars in ancient and mediaeval studies and all those interested in the diversity of water systems in urban space in ancient and mediaeval times.
