The hydraulic legacy of the desert: 9,000 years of sustainable water resources management in N Arabia

阿拉伯半岛（半）干旱的沙漠被流动的游牧文化占据了9000多年。由于缺乏常年水资源，这些社会必须发展和保持适当和适应的水管理方法，以便使其社会经济在干旱地区可持续地生存。这些方法通过影响当地的自然水文条件和过程来对景观进行水力操纵，目的是确保某些地点的供水——至少是暂时的。水资源的过度开发几乎被排除在外；其传统的和正在消失的环境知识是真正可持续的，也是本项目记录的主题：在应用考古水文学方面，使用旧技术可能有助于解决干旱地区的水资源短缺问题。这项试点研究旨在初步评估这些水管理方法，同时也为考古水文学这一新学科准备一个案例研究。以约旦东南部库尔班·贝尼·穆拉为中心的Wadis Sahab al- Abiad和al- asmar地区被选为研究对象。大多数人不知道的是（综合）水管理技术的类型，以及千年来技术发展的可追溯性。全新世期间的气候和环境变化可能引起了重大的社会经济变化（例如，公元前4千年绿洲定居主义的出现），但它们可能没有引起超越（从那时起平行存在的）迁移牧民标准的实质性水力创新。在整个千年中，流动畜牧业的扩展似乎仍然受制于相当保守的水技术，以适应不断变化的水可用性和气候，因此是水文条件变化的直接指标。

The (semi-) arid deserts of N Arabia are occupied by mobile pastoral cultures since more than 9,000 years. Due to the lack of perennial water resources these societies had to develop and maintain suitable and adapted methods of water management in order to have their socioeconomies sustainably surviving in the arid lands. These methods result in the hydraulic manipulation of landscapes by influencing of the natural local hydrological conditions and processes, aiming to secure – at least temporal – water provision at certain sites. Over-exploitation of water sources is almost excluded by this; its traditional and vanishing environmental knowledge is truly sustainable and subject of record in this project: In terms of Applied Archaeohydrology, the use of the old techniques may contribute to face water shortage in arid areas. This pilot study aims to initially evaluate these methods of water management while it also prepares a case study for the new discipline of archaeohydrology. The region of the Wadis Sahab al- Abiad and al-Asmar with the central place Qulban Beni Murra in Southeast Jordan was chosen for this research.Mostly unknown are the types of (combined) water management techniques, to what extend a technical development is traceable for them during the millennia. Possibly, climatic and environmental shifts during Holocene have caused substantial socioeconomic changes (e.g. the occurrence of oasis sedentism by the 4th millennium BCE), but they may not have caused substantial hydraulic innovations beyond the standards of the (from then on parallel existing) transhumant pastoralists. Throughout the millennia, the extend of mobile pastoralism appears to remain subject to rather conservative water technologies adapting to changing water availabilities and climate, thus being a direct indicator for changing hydrological conditions.