Hydraulic Archaeology

The knowledge on islamic watermills in Balearic Islands is due to M. Barceló and his research group at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. The first condition they stablished is that mills have to be seen as a part of a whole hydraulic system. Most of this sys- tems were analyzed on the three main Balearic islands and, then, in Valencia too. This survey on the watermills allowed to observe trends on the situation of the milling engines in the net of dams, channels, orchards ant other elements belonging the hydraulic systems: generally islamic watermills were built at the end of the main channel. This poster presents the results in the excavation of the remains of a watermill — called Es Molinot — standing at the end of a hydraulic system called Torrent de ses Fonts, on Sant Josep de sa Talaia, Ibiza island. The situation of the watermill would indicate an islamic chronology, on the contrary, other evidences, as the fact that the water came from an independent own channel, might be the sign of a more recent date of construction. The main objective is to establish a chronology throw archaeological materials. Being islamic, Es Molinot would be on the same trend than the other studied watermills, but if it is dated on a later time it might be a proof of the transmission of one technical solution by personal interchange of knowledge, or by imitation. In the case of a post-Islamic chronology the constructive characteristics of this mill could be used to date two other very similar mills located in different places of the island.

The pre-Columbian Andes are renowned for agricultural terrace systems in areas of steep terrain. Most studies have concentrated on regions characterized by seasonally-variable limited precipitation, yet research in high-precipitation and cloud-forest regions of the North and Eastern Andes demonstrates the diversity of terrace technologies adapted to different landscapes. This paper presents research from survey, excavation, and digital modeling of three types of well-preserved agricultural terraces found in a 50 km2 area in central Chachapoyas, northeastern Peru. These terrace types—which we refer to as linear segmented, contour, and sinkhole—were all comprised entirely of earth, not stone. Results from digital modeling using ArcGIS hydrology tools indicate different manners through which each terrace type structured the movement of water over the ground surface, supporting previous arguments that similar earthen terrace infrastructure in Colombia, Ecuador, and eastern Peru were likewise designed to manage runoff drainage rather than support irrigation.

En este libro se reúnen nueve estudios representativos de una buena parte de las más recientes investigaciones sobre hidráulica agraria en el contexto de las sociedades feudales del occidente europeo medieval.  Desde el siglo XII, a través de una amplia variedad de aplicaciones prácticas, soluciones técnicas y despliegues espaciales, los conocimientos hidráulicos se pusieron al servicio de un proceso de expansión agraria y colonización territorial sin precedentes, caracterizado por su diversidad formal y, al mismo tiempo, regido por una lógica social común.

Seit Beginn der Römischen Kaiserzeit erlebte die Gegend zwischen Mayen am Rande der Eifel und Andernach am Rhein eine enorme Steigerung ihrer wirtschaftlichen Aktivität. In kurzer Zeit entstand dort ein Industrierevier, von dem aus weite Gebiete in den römischen Nordwestprovinzen mit hochwertigen Basaltlava-Mühlsteinen, leichten Tuffsteinen und später auch mit hitzebeständiger Keramik versorgt wurden. Steinbrüche wurden neu angelegt, Land- und Wasserwege ausgebaut, bestehende Exportgebiete ausgedehnt und andere erst noch erschlossen. Auf Rückschläge im 3. und 4. Jahrhundert folgten weitere Boomphasen.
Wie konnten die zahlreichen Arbeiter und ihre Familien ernährt werden, und welche Folgen hatte der Erfolg der Stein- und der energieintensiven Keramikindustrie für die Umwelt? Um dies zu klären, wurden zwei römische Villen am Nordrand der Mayener Mühlsteinbrüche im Segbachtal mit geophysikalischen Messungen, Grabungen, geoarchäologischen und botanischen Untersuchungen erforscht und ihr gesamtes Umfeld erkundet. Die Ergebnisse präsentiert dieses Buch. Die Bewohner der villa Mendig, »Im Winkel« waren selbst an der Herstellung von Mühlsteinen beteiligt. In der Spätantike dürfte eine Flächendrainage dort einen Umschlagplatz für Mühlsteine am Segbach trocken gehalten haben, während ein wehrhafter Speicherbau die Versorgung der Steinbrucharbeiter sicherstellte. In der villa Mendig, »Lungenkärchen« residierten Steinbruchbesitzer. Sie erwies sich als Axialhofanlage mit imposantem Wasserbecken. Begehungen führten ebenso zur Auffindung des zu »Lungenkärchen« gehörenden Begräbnisplatzes mit Monumenten aus Lothringer Kalkstein sowie zur Entdeckung eines bislang unbekannten vicus »Im Terl«.
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Roman Land Use in the Ancient Industrial Region of the East Eifel

From the beginning of the Roman Imperial period, the area between Mayen on the edge of the Eifel and Andernach on the Rhine experienced an enormous increase in its economic activity. In a short time, an industrial area developed there, from which wide areas in the Roman north-western provinces were supplied with high-quality millstones of basalt-like lava , light tuff and later also heat-resistant ceramics. Quarries were newly established, land and water routes were expanded, existing outlets were extended and others were still to be developed. Setbacks in the 3rd and 4th centuries were followed by further booms.
How could the numerous workers and their families be fed, and what consequences did the success of the stone and energy-intensive pottery industries have for the environment? In order to clarify this, two Roman villas on the northern edge of the Mayen millstone quarries were investigated with geophysical measurements, excavations, geoarchaeological and botanical studies, and their entire surroundings were explored. The results are presented in this book. The inhabitants of the villa Mendig, »Im Winkel« were themselves involved in the production of querns. In late antiquity, a surface drainage system there probably kept a transhipment point for millstones on the Segbach dry, while a fortified storage building ensured the supply of the quarrymen. Quarry owners resided in the villa Mendig, »Lungenkärchen«. It turned out to have an axial courtyard with an impressive water basin. Inspections led to the discovery of the burial ground belonging to »Lungenkärchen« with monuments made of Lorraine limestone as well as the discovery of a previously unknown vicus »Im Terl«.

This brief text is aimed at offering a general overview of the colonisation of the alluvial plains around the coast of the Gulf of Valencia following the Christian conquest in the 13th century. For this, two specific cases will be analysed and the extensive recent bibliography on the main changes affecting this coastal environment over a relatively short time (barely a few decades) will be examined : substitution of andalusi population groups by new settlers, modification of settlement patterns, densification of irrigation networks and expansion of agricultural land at the expense of dry pasture lands and coastal wetlands.

After a century of progressive conquest, the Catholic Monarchs culminated the occupation of the Canary Islands in the last two decades of the fifteenth century. At the exact same time, they led the subjugation of the Kingdom of Granada, the last Muslim polity in the Iberian Peninsula. In both cases, military occupation was immediately followed by the settlement of thousands of European newcomers who took control of the land, while the natives were segregated, displaced and, in many cases, exterminated. This was the result of the implementation of a series of domination strategies that had been developed by the Latin Christendom during the Middle Ages, were used in all the European fronts of expansion between the eleventh and the fifteenth centuries and were now being transferred to the Atlantic archipelagos and beyond. The destruction of the indigenous societies and the creation of settler communities was a necessary condition for the achievement of the conquerors’ economic and political objectives, and they were planned and directed by the Castilian authorities. The aim of this paper is to analyse the colonisation of the Kingdom of Granada and the Canary Islands -namely Gran Canaria- in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries to understand what were the economic interests that determined these processes and how they shaped the resulting societies and landscapes.

Both in the Canary Islands and the Kingdom of Granada, the negative effects that derived from the elimination of the natives were counterbalanced to a certain extent by the Christian peasants settling the land. However, their numbers were always smaller than those of the extinguished indigenous inhabitants. It appears that the Castilian crown was actively pursuing the limitation and concentration of the population and, therefore, transforming the numerous and scattered pre-conquest settlement into a nucleated, denser and more limited one. This pattern can be observed in other Medieval and Early Modern conquests, and it is directly related to the economic transformations that followed them, since the conquerors altered the traditional usages of the land to produce cash crops, such as corn, wine, wool and sugar.