Taming Surface Water in Pre-Islamic Southeast Arabia: Archaeological, Geoarchaeological, and Chronological Evidence of Runoff Water Channeling in Masāfī (UAE)

ABSTRACT

In semi-arid to arid environments, water is the most constraining resource for agricultural communities. In Southeast Arabia (Sultanate of Oman and United Arab Emirates), the demographic growth and the increase of sites at the beginning of the Iron Age II (1100–600 b.c.) is generally attributed to the development of groundwater harvesting techniques, and more precisely to qanāt technology. While only little is known on the origin of this technology, even less is known about other hydraulic techniques, which could have been used as a complementary source of water. An irrigation system, recently discovered near an Iron Age settlement in the oasis of Masāfī (UAE) was studied thanks to the combination of various methods—archaeology, geoarchaeology/micromorphology, spatial analysis, and chronology—which have allowed us to identify the technological development of small-scale runoff farming and to link this practice to social as well as environmental issues.

KEYWORDS:

• Arabia
• Iron Age
• runoff
• irrigation
• geoarchaeology

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge the Fujairah Tourism and Antiquities Authority, and especially Ahmed al-Shamsi, Saeed al-Semahi, and Salah Ali Hassan for their support, which enables us to carry out our study of Masāfī oasis. The first author would also like to thank the Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme (Paris), the Fritz Thyssen Foundation (Cologne), and the Water Management group of Excellence Cluster Topoi (Freie Universität Berlin) for funding his research on ancient water systems in Arabia through the granting of a Clemens Heller fellowship (Fernand Braudel-IFER program).

Notes on contributors

Julien Charbonnier (Ph.D. 2011, University Panthéon-Sorbonne) is currently a research fellow at the Freie Universität – Research Cluster TOPOI in Berlin. He is conducting research on the pre-Islamic irrigation systems and oases in Arabia as well as present-day water management and sharing methods.

Louise E. Purdue (Ph.D. 2011, University of Nice) is a researcher at the National Centre of Scientific Research in Nice (CNRS-UMR 7264). She is a geoarchaeologist and micromorphologist specializing in semi-arid environments and has been conducting fieldwork in Arizona, Guatemala, Yemen, UAE, and southern France. Her work focuses on irrigation systems and cultivated soils.

Anne Benoist (Ph.D. 1998, University Panthéon-Sorbonne) is a researcher at the National Centre of Scientific Research in Lyon (CNRS-UMR 5133) and was in charge of the Masafi Operation (UAE) from 2006 to 2015. She is conducting research on the Iron Age ceramic technology in southeast Arabia and has also worked in Iraq, Oman, Yemen, and Ethiopia.