Antike Technologie: Die sabaische Wasserwirtschaft von Marib, vol. 3, Untersuchungen der sabaischen Bewasserungsanlagen in Marib.

AuthorPotts, D.T.

The Marib dam has fascinated generations of scholars and continues to do so to this day. Michael Schaloske's study, originally submitted in 1991 as a Ph.D. thesis to the Faculty of Agriculture of the Rheinisch Friedrich-Wilhelms-University at Bonn, presents the results of two seasons of fieldwork carried out between November 1983 and February 1985 under the direction of H. Radermacher and J. Schmidt. Superseding earlier studies of Marib's most famous monument, Schaloske's work takes its place in the DAI/ABADY series alongside earlier German studies of Sabaean irrigation technology by U. Brunner, I. Hehmeyer, H. Siewert, and J. Schmidt. The technical aspects of Marib's irrigation system are the particular focus of the present study, with the goal of documenting and analyzing the movement of water from its origins in the Wadi Dana to its arrival on the fields of the ancient city (p. 6). This is approached by treating the climate, hydrology, and ecology of the area in antiquity; the function and development of the physical structures employed to acquire and channel water in the oasis; and the chronological arrangement of the various installations found there. The book is divided into clearly marked sections which treat these and other relevant aspects of the subject. For the purposes of this review it may suffice to comment on some of the most interesting results of this important study.

Schaloske stresses that, however much we tend to concentrate on both the positive and negative aspects of climate change, anthropogenic processes such as deforestation need to be considered much more systematically in any climatic reconstructions (p. 13). My only criticism of Schaloske's review of palaeoclimate in the Marib region is that it is all too brief and should have incorporated more recent (and non-German) studies by scholars such as K. W. Glennie and H. A. McClure.

A series of six "Bauperioden" are sketched and various installations assigned to each one, but the archaeological basis for the chronological arrangement of the features thus designated is nowhere made explicit. Furthermore, the published drawing of the "bisher alteste Dutchlass," as attributed by Schaloske, contains an inscription (Abb. 9) for which no siglum and number are given, and the photograph cannot be coordinated with what the author elsewhere refers to as the "altesten Anlagen (N4, N5, S6/5)" (p. 24). Hunting through the book I found a further description of "Bauanlage N4" as...

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