Author Description

These seven papers from a session held at the XIVth UISSP congress held in Liège in 2001, focus on the little-studied subject of water management on the Chalcolithic and early Bronze Age taking case studies from across Europe and the Near East. The contributors define water as an appropriate category for study within prehistoric societies drawing on a range of archaeological, historical, geographical, cultural and ethnographic sources. The case studies cover a broad range of subjects including engineering and water management schemes, the construction of dams and dykes, methods of drawing water, cultural interaction and communication facilitated by water, anthropological models and the impact of the intensified exploitation of water.