Learning from ancient water management: Archeology's role in modern‐day climate change adaptations

Abstract

Climate change is altering our environment and societies worldwide have to devise adaptation strategies. Water management strategies are becoming especially important. In the past, societies had to adapt in order to survive as well. Communities often practised long-term sustainable agriculture. By understanding the ways in which ancient communities were successful at or failed in attaining social-ecological resilience through water management archeologists can provide important information for modern communities facing similar problems. Archeology's long time perspective is very valuable. However, archeologists are confronted with a number of issues. Archeology can only study the material remains of past societies, not the living communities. Not all human activity translates into material residue and not all materials survive. Moreover, people will not demonstrate completely rational causeand-effect behavior, but ideology and beliefs, which archeology can only poorly attest, will also have influenced decisions. Nevertheless, archeology can bring a unique perspective to the debate on climate change adaptation: archeology can falsify or corroborate sustainability claims, ancient water management techniques may still be a resilient mode of subsistence and ancient techniques often rely on relatively simple technology allowing for easier adoption. When transposing ancient water management techniques to modern situations it is important to involve stakeholders from an early stage, to incorporate traditional knowledge systems as much as possible and most importantly to ascertain whether physical and socio-cultural circumstances are comparable. Archeological knowledge on ancient sustainability and water management is not a panacea for all climate related aridification, but can contribute a unique longue durée perspective.

Human responses to climate and ecosystem change in ancient Arabia

“…In this case, both food security and sustainability are closely linked with historical practices and capacities for local decisionmaking, oversight, and control of palm-based food resources (i.e., dates) (80). This shows that knowledge drawn from historical practices and archaeological sources can in fact contribute to addressing contemporary challenges (81).…”

Assessment of vulnerability and site adaptive capacity to the risk of climate change: the case of Tchogha Zanbil World Heritage earthen site in Iran

“…Through the study of the historical places, it is especially apparent how ancient people managed extreme climatic events (Jansen, 1989; Parry, 1992; Burian, 2002; Angelakis and Koutsoyiannis, 2003; Wyatt, 2014). Ancient knowledge of water management is highlighted in various studies as an adaptive response of modern societies to climate change (Mays, 2010; Kaptijn, 2018). Based on these studies, the long-term perspective of archeology can provide insight into how communities have responded to climate change and the feedback that resulted from the developed studies (Mitchel, 2008; Caseldine and Turney, 2010; Van de Noort, 2013).…”

Covid-19 and climate change in the times of the Anthropocene

“…Regarding climate change, we have some limited historical information regarding relatively minor climatic variations, such as concerning ‘The Little Ice Age’ and the Mediaeval ‘Great Warming’, which, respectively, had important impacts on societies (see Fagan, 2001, 2008). We have to rely on bio-climatic proxies and the archaeological record concerning more severe climatic change periods in the earlier Holocene (see Clarke et al, 2016; d’Alpoim Guedes, 2016; Kaptijn, 2017), and have even more sparse information regarding life during the chaotic climate conditions of the Pleistocene (see Burroughs, 2008; Carto et al, 2008; Eriksson et al, 2012; Rosen and Rivera-Collazo, 2012). We can, however, also gain some perspective on present climate change by considering it in relation to the corona virus pandemic (also see Gardiner, 2020).…”