Electronic ISSN: 1877-7244
Print ISSN: 1877-7236
The general purpose of the Water History is to encourage, promote, and foster historical understanding of the relationship between water and humankind. As water has influenced the development of human communities throughout the world, the study of water contributes to our understanding of economic, political, social, and environmental history, the history of science, medicine, technology, environmental sciences, and geography.
To reflect the wide range of academic disciplines involved in the growing field of water history, Water History seeks to foster cross-disciplinary discussion of ideas, methods, and experience so as to illuminate the complex processes that have shaped water resource use and thus reveal interrelated historical contingencies and precedents. The management of the world’s water supplies remains of critical concern to scholars, policymakers, and resource managers; as such, deepening our understanding of how past human societies used and related to water informs current debates on water management.
The history of water use can be a deeply political issue. Conflicts over the control and use of water have varied both historically and geographically, often crossing cultural, geographical, and institutional boundaries. In recognition of the complexity and sometimes contradictory aims and ideologies of those controlling water resources, Water History will provide a forum for peer-reviewed research in the field of water history and management. The journal will foster effective links between scholars engaged in water history research in the humanities and social sciences as well as the natural and applied sciences.
The unconquerable country: the Babylonian marshes in the Neo-Assyrian sources
The Assyrians ruled in the first half of the first millennium BCE over most part of the Ancient Near East. The Neo-Assyrian Empire was constructed on the base of a powerful, well organized and trained army, wh...“Cool and tasty waters”: managing Naples’s water supply, c. 1500–c. 1750
Although Naples was one of Europe’s largest cities (after London and Paris), studies of the management of its water supply during the early modern period are sorely lacking, despite growing interest in the sub...Evolution of the dry zone water harvesting and management systems in Sri Lanka during the Anuradhapura Kingdom; a study based on ancient chronicles and lithic inscriptions
A significant number of written sources report on the development of ancient dry zone water harvesting and water management systems in Sri Lanka. This paper attempts to address the lack of a systematic assessm...Modelling the freshwater supply of cisterns in ancient Greece
In this paper, we model the function of rainwater harvesting cisterns in ancient Greece. The model calculates on a monthly basis: (1) the collected and stored volume of water; (2) the amount of water extracted...Correction to: The sanctuaries of the Rain God in the Mixtec Highlands, Mexico: a review from the present to the precolonial past
The name of the project director and the funding source were in part incorrectly reflected in the Acknowledgments section and are hereby corrected as follows: The research leading to these results forms part o...The sustainability of ancient water control techniques in Iran: an overview
Qanats are a traditional source of water management that exists throughout much of the Middle East, and extending into North Africa, Spain and South Asia. In particular, they have played an impor...Luminescence dating of qanat technology: prospects for further development
With few exceptions in which dating is implied by indirect association with adjacent settlements or incorporation of diagnostic artefacts in upcast sediment, individual qanats have proven very difficult to dat...Instituting water research: the Water Resources Research Act (1964) and the Idaho Water Resources Research Institute
In 1964, Congress passed the Water Resources Research Act (WRRA) and created state research institutes to pursue practical research for the nation’s growing water problems. The Idaho Water Resources Research I...“Muddying the waters: recreational conflict and rights of use of British rivers”
Rivers have historically been spaces of recreation, in addition to work, trade, and sustenance. Today, multiple groups (anglers, canoeists, rowers, swimmers) vie for the recreational use of rivers in Britain. ...Ice and water. The removal of ice on waterways in the Low Countries, 1330–1800
This paper looks into the blocking of ice on Dutch and Belgian rivers and canals during the Little Ice Age and how this has affected shipping and other economic activities. The key issue here is how contempora...The Water Act, No. 54 of 1956 and the first phase of apartheid in South Africa (1948–1960)
After the formation of the Union of South Africa in 1910 the government department responsible for water governance, in terms of the Irrigation and Conservation of Water Act, No. 8 of 1912 went by the name of the...Between arguments, interests and expertise: the institutional development of the Dutch water boards, 1953-present
The Dutch water boards perform essential tasks for the Netherlands and generally effectively, yet they have often been called old-fashioned, ineffective and expensive. This paper describes and analyses the dis...De-colonizing water. Dispossession, water insecurity, and Indigenous claims for resources, authority, and territory
Set against the background of struggles for territory, livelihood, and dignified existence in Latin America’s neoliberal conjuncture, this paper examines contemporary Andean Indigenous claims for water access ...The sanctuaries of the Rain God in the Mixtec Highlands, Mexico: a review from the present to the precolonial past
This article focuses on the sanctuaries of the Rain God through time, paying particular attention to the devastations and the consequences that these sacred places suffered due to the colonization carried out ...The rise and fall of Munich’s early modern water network: a tale of prowess and power
Until the 19th century, not just the Isar River and its natural branches but also the “Stadtbäche”, artificial canals, provided Munich with water for drinking, commerce, waste discharge, defense, ostentatious ...Using and abusing a torrential urban river: the Wien River before and during industrialization
The Wien River is the largest tributary of the Viennese Danube and was a center of urban production during industrialization. It’s highly dynamic flow regime with small average discharge as well as recurrent b...The long-term evolution of urban waters and their nineteenth century transformation in European cities. A comparative environmental history
The nineteenth century was marked by a fundamental change in city-river relations. The environmental history perspective employed in this article illustrates how the complex interplay between the diverse natur...How water and its use shaped the spatial development of Vienna
Telling an environmental history of Vienna’s urban waters, this paper advocates the compound study of the evolution of fluvial and urban form. It traces the structural permanence of diverse types of running wa...Water supply of ancient Egyptian settlements: the role of the state. Overview of a relatively equitable scheme from the Old to New Kingdom (ca. 2543–1077 BC)
The study of the textual and archaeological evidence shows that the water supply of the settlements of ancient Egypt seems to have worked on a simple and a relatively equitable scheme, at least from the Old Ki...Europe’s Rhine power: connections, borders, and flows
This article explores the pivotal position of the river Rhine in the gradual development of a European electricity system. Although the general image of the Rhine is one of a inland transport corridor, it also...
A niche construction approach on the central Netherlands covering the last 220,000 years
This paper shows what a niche construction theory (NCT) approach can contribute to the long-term social and environmental history of an area when applied to both sedentary and non-sedentary communities. To und...Long term effects of climate on human adaptation in the middle Gila River Valley, Arizona, America
The Hohokam, an irrigation-based society in the American South West, used the river valleys of the Salt and Gila Rivers between 500 and 1500 AD to grow their crops. Such irrigated crops are linking human agenc...Commodifying snow, taming the waters. Socio-ecological niche construction in an Alpine village
White belts of snow clad mountains all over the world each winter. Even if there is no snow, the tourism industry is able to produce the white finery at the push of the button, thereby consuming large amounts ...How geoarchaeology and landscape archaeology contribute to niche construction theory (NCT)
In this paper a review is given of examples of geoarchaeological and landscape archaeological research from four locations throughout Europe. Case-studies from the North Sea coastal zone in the Netherlands and...Reconsidering the water system of Roman Barcino (Barcelona) from supply to discharge
This paper presents the results of the ‘Roman Barcino Water Network’ Project. This study employed a series of methodologies aiming at joining and interpreting all data available on water supply, distribution, ...Looking at half a millennium of co-existence: the Danube in Vienna as a socio-natural site
Which insights can be gained from a long-term study for river management today? Vienna’s layout and city budget are still influenced by interventions undertaken in the 19th century or even earlier. This introd...Floods, fights and a fluid river: the Viennese Danube in the sixteenth century
Alluvial rivers can show unpredictable channel changes and humans living along the river corridor repeatedly have to cope with the alterations of their physical environment. This was specifically the case in t...Feeding and cleaning the city: the role of the urban waterscape in provision and disposal in Vienna during the industrial transformation
This article presents an integrated socio-ecological perspective on the changing interrelations between Vienna’s “urban metabolism” and the river Danube during the industrial transformation in the nineteenth c...Urban land for a growing city at the banks of a moving river: Vienna's spread into the Danube island Unterer Werd from the late 17th to the beginning of the 20th century
In the relation between urban development and the Viennese Danube different periods can be identified from the late 17th to the early 20th century. These periods were strongly intertwined with both the history...Two steps back, one step forward: reconstructing the dynamic Danube riverscape under human influence in Vienna
As part of an interdisciplinary project on the environmental history of the Viennese Danube, the past river landscape was reconstructed. This article describes the different types of historical sources used fo...Changes in water and land: the reconstructed Viennese riverscape from 1500 to the present
Medieval Vienna was situated at the main arm of the swiftly flowing alpine Danube. From the fourteenth century onwards, the river gradually moved away from the city. This marked the beginning of 500 years of h...Ethnicity and aquatic lifestyles: exploring Southeast Asia’s past and present seascapes
This study explores the profound maritime dimension in Southeast Asia’s past and present. It highlights the region’s “sea people”, giving special attention to their complex and dynamic interactions with terres...Variations in discharge from the Qilian mountains, northwest China, and its effect on the agricultural communities of the Heihe basin, over the last two millennia
Over the last two millennia, agricultural land in the Hei river basin, northwest China, has been subjected to a series of significant droughts and flood events. These documented hydrological events were compar...Editorial
Editorial
Martin M. Melosi, Precious commodity. Providing water for America’s cities
Robert Lawrence France (ed): Wetlands of mass destruction. Ancient presage for contemporary ecocide in southern Iraq
Editorial Issue 1 Volume 3, 2011
Stefania Barca 2010 Enclosing water: Nature and political economy in a Mediterranean valley, 1796–1916
Book Reviews
Structuring properties of irrigation systems: understanding relations between humans and hydraulics through modeling
Irrigation systems were clearly important in ancient times in supplying crops with water. This requires physical distribution facilities and socio-political arrangements to coordinate between actors. Resulting...Cesare Rossi, Flavio Russo, and Ferruccio Russo: Ancient engineers’ inventions. Precursors of the present. History of mechanism and machine science
Chandra Mukerji: Impossible engineering. Technology and territoriality on the Canal du Midi
Editorial
Water, health and the body: the tide, undercurrent and surge of meanings
Water has meaning for health, illness and wellbeing. Central themes of meaning can be identified consistently throughout history, sometimes easily discernible, while at other times more difficult to identify. ...Water history and the modern
Joseph W. Dellapenna and Joyeeta Gupta (eds.): The evolution of the law and politics of water
Where has the water come from?
Capturing the waters: the hydraulic mission in the Lerma–Chapala Basin, Mexico (1876–1976)
The hydraulic mission of the Mexican federal government, embodied in its hydraulic bureaucracy (hydrocracy), led to the centralization of water development and the creation of water overexploitation in the Ler...
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