Men of Dikes and Canals: The Archaeology of Water in the Middle East.

• Author: Yule, Paul
• Position: Book review

Men of Dikes and Canals: The Archaeology of Water in the Middle East. Edited by HANS-DIETER BIENERT and JUTTA HASER. Orient-Archaologie, vol. 13. Rahden, Westphalia: VERLAG MARIE LEIDORF, 2004. Pp. xi + 424, illus.

This imposing report of a conference that took place in 1999 under the aegis of the German Protestant Institute of Archaeology in Amman, Jordan, contains no less than thirty-nine contributions dealing with the topic of prehistoric and early historic hydrology. Given the diversity of the contributions, nearly all topics concerning ancient water management are dealt with, with a geographic emphasis on Jordan. The topics range temporally from the Neolithic to the Islamic period, and spatially describe a triangle from Egypt over to Assyria and down to Oman. Egypt or the Yemen alone could have supplied enough material for a conference of their own. Given the large number of excellent new studies, it is impossible to deal with them in any way adequately here. This volume contains the largest body of studies devoted to the topic known to the reviewer and clearly shows the vast recent development of ancient Near Eastern studies, overwhelmingly exceeding the topics current a few short decades ago. I offer below some selected comments.

The volume begins with a brief account of the topography of the Jordan Valley (Meier), to clear up this matter at the beginning of the conference. We then learn that from the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (from 9.500 BP) water management was practiced. Prior to this few sites are known and these seem to have relied on naturally available water resources (Gebel, Kafafi). The Sadd el-Kafara, located southeast of Cairo near Helwan, is the oldest high dam known. It dates to the Old Kingdom (Dynasty IV or V; Fahlbusch). It measures maximally 110m in width and originally was over 15m high.

Most of the contributions are direct observations of field situations, but studies of the Old Testament (Vieweger) are also brought to bear. Paradoxically, the Qur'an is not very informative about water resource management.

'Aflaj (subterranean water channels) are relatively unimportant in the Near East, and are limited to only a few areas. Wells and cisterns are more important than at least this reviewer had suspected. They have a very wide variety of forms.

Nabataean water management is perhaps best known, owing to the number of contexts available for study (papers of Akasheh, Bellwald, Joukowsky, Lavento et al., Lindner, Sha'er)...