[Authors and titles are listed at the end of the review]
In an ancient Mediterranean context, the study of water frequently conjures images of structures on a monumental scale (such as aqueducts, bathhouses, or nymphaea). Rather than pursuing these particularly visible hydraulic projects, the essays in this volume deliberately focus on quotidian ways of using water, predominantly within domestic settings. A focus on the mundane over the monumental is a welcome shift in emphasis from what has perhaps been more typical of scholarship on water in ancient times, since the large-scale pieces of hydraulic infrastructure—which often captured the, sometimes blinkered, attention of early classical scholars and archaeologists—were always exceptional. The water supply systems that brought water to, and drained water from, ordinary houses, by contrast, were far more typical of everyday life in the ancient world and in some respects they were no less impressive.[1] Moreover, as the various contributions to this volume demonstrate, examining and comparing different forms of non-elite hydraulic infrastructure and different cultures of water use proffers revealing insights into the societies and communities that dwelled around the Mediterranean in ancient times. Frequently, by focussing on the supply of water and its management, new ways of interpreting and understanding other aspects of ancient life emerge. The analyses offered across the different chapters of this volume, for example, touch on a variety of themes of considerable contemporary relevance, including sustainability, environmental and climatic change, and how water use was impacted by social hierarchies and inequalities within ancient societies. A volume exploring water use from the perspective of mainly non-elite members of society, therefore, is a welcome contribution to the archaeology of water and settlements within the ancient world.
Such a volume can never provide uniformly detailed coverage of such a complex topic across such a wide geographic area over a long span of time. Instead, the various contributors investigate how water was used in different cultural, temporal, and geographical contexts mainly through case studies which explore a specific settlement or region. The chapters, therefore, provide keyholes through which to glimpse different aspects of everyday water use at different moments, in Greece (Chapters 2 & 3), Turkey (Chapter 4), Italy (Chapters 5 & 6), North Africa (Chapter 7), and the Levant (Chapters 8 & 9). The final chapter focusses on cultural norms imported from the Mediterranean in Late Roman Britain. As the editors acknowledge, the sample these contributions provide is biased by the nature of the available evidence, with a particular focus on urban rather than rural water use. They raise, nonetheless, many interesting questions about water within ancient societies as well as opportunities for future research.
The volume’s authors focus on a wide range of categories of water systems, associated with a variety of activities in different contexts. These include cisterns dug into the marls of Piraeus, the rainwater collection systems of houses in Roman Pompeii, stepped pools within Jewish households, and wells associated with villa estates. Moving beyond the physical remains of the water installations themselves, the contributors also seek to understand the human implications of these different water systems. The important, yet archaeologically elusive, role played by sellers and carriers of water, for example, is mentioned by Mark Locicero (pp. 126–127), while related considerations associated with the labour involved in drawing and transporting water are discussed by J. A. Baird (p. 164) and James Gerrard (p. 178). The distinction between public and private water systems is also an issue discussed by several contributors. On the whole, household water use appears to have been organised within the private sphere without civic involvement. In some cases, however, a grey area seems to have existed—in Late Hellenistic Delos, for example, some ‘private’ cisterns may have played a ‘semi-public’ role, providing water for those without access to their own, which was presumably mediated through social arrangements (Patrik Klingborg p. 49).
Strikingly similar issues, including the relative archaeological invisibility of those involved in transporting water throughout settlements and the complex interaction between public and private water provision, afflict the study of water use in more recent historical societies.[2] This suggests that, in many respects, domestic water use was strongly influenced by geography, climate, and the availability of water sources and did not change a great deal across time in the premodern world. Several authors do delve into this topic—at Notion, on the Aegean Turkish coast, for example, Angela Commito highlights how the city’s depopulation prevented the development of a more sophisticated water provision system, as occurred in neighbouring cities that were continuously occupied (p. 71). Jane Millar Tully, meanwhile, discusses how, over time, wells were gradually superseded, though not entirely replaced, by cisterns within Piraeus—possibly as a deliberate strategy in response to the increased occurrence of droughts or in association with economic activities such as the irrigation of vegetable gardens (pp. 16–19).
While several authors explore the long-term development of water systems, at the other end of the scale a number of the chapters reveal their surprisingly short-lived lifecycles. This is a topic which archaeologists are uniquely well placed to address, since textual accounts can usually only provide data relating to a specific moment in time—which rarely concerns the minutiae of water management. At Pompeii, for example, detailed excavation combined with knowledge of the city’s wider context suggests many of the water systems were out of use in 79 AC (Gemma Jansen, pp. 114–115). The high level of detail available from Pompeii, therefore, provides a cautionary tale that excavated hydraulic infrastructure from less well studied contexts could give a misleading picture of whether a water system was in use at a particular time.
A major take-away from the various chapters is that different water supply solutions were relied upon in different contexts around the Ancient Mediterranean and beyond. Most strikingly, such variations seem to relate to the local geography and geology, though in some cases the cultural setting and users’ place within society were also important. Ann Glennie’s study of Cosa (Chapter 5), for example, cautions against thinking of a ‘Roman’ way of managing water, instead emphasising the local importance of topography and the agency of individual households in determining how water was managed. Commito (Chapter 4) shows that in Hellenistic towns there was rarely a single water system but rather a multitude of different water sources, such as natural springs, cisterns, and piped water supplies, which provided both a buffer, in case one became unavailable, as well as a choice of water from different sources for different purposes. Even where settlements were situated next to a water source, the water regime likely embraced multiple sources. At Dura-Europos, for example, though the city was situated directly on the banks of the Euphrates, rainwater harvesting and storage played a key role in provisioning the local population with water. Furthermore, Rick Bonnie (Chapter 8) highlights how water features, in this case stepped pools, could evolve and undergo changes in use for a multitude of reasons—including errors in construction, changes in ownership, maintenance costs, or the evolving needs of a household (pp. 144–145). All this drives home the highly complex and multifaceted nature of water use, even within a single ancient household.
Many contributors raise the difficulties associated with investigating ancient water use. These relate both to technical and methodological limitations as well as issues associated with how these sites and features have been investigated in the past. As features that were often reused over long periods, for example, dating water management installations reliably can be difficult. Any available descriptions in surviving textual sources can be problematic to match with material evidence uncovered through excavation. Furthermore, earlier archaeologists’ failure to fully document their discoveries, particularly quotidian features, frequently make it more difficult to reconstruct detailed histories of the creation, use, and abandonment of water features. At Dura Europos, for example, Baird (Chapter 9) laments what might have been possible had the early excavators documented their findings to modern standards while early investigations at Pompeii (Chapter 6) likewise showed little interest in water features. Locicero (Chapter 7), meanwhile, explains that, while several studies have explored aspects of the water system at Roman Volubilis, the drainage network was likely significantly more complex than previous studies have indicated. Where more recent excavations are discussed, the level of detail we are missing from earlier excavations becomes clear. Startling micro-histories related to water use are revealed, such as the ingress of rodents into Pompeian houses through drain pipes and the grates installed to prevent their entry (Jansen p. 103). Similarly, Gerrard’s (Chapter 10) discussion of the stratigraphy uncovered within several Late Roman well shafts in Britain, offers a convincing account of the social world in which these water features operated as well as their fills—including details such as moss that may have been used as toilet paper before being tossed into the well shaft (p. 186).
The volume is free from noticeable typographic errors and the text across the board is clearly written. The different chapters are each accompanied with well-chosen grayscale figures which usefully illustrate the sites and features at the centre of the discussion while making the text easier to follow. A minor criticism is that the volume lacks a conclusion. This omission does not tarnish the usefulness of the volume, however, especially for readers who will dip in and out of the different chapters. Overall, this volume is an excellent compilation with engaging contributions, each exploring interesting case studies raising different, yet complementary, themes, issues, and debates.
Authors and Titles
- Water in Ancient Mediterranean Households (Rick Bonnie & Patrik Klingborg)
- Household Water, Environment and Economy in Ancient Piraeus (Jane Millar Tully)
- Social Stratification and Water Sharing on Late-Hellenistic Delos (Patrik Klingborg)
- Surveying Notion’s Residential Water Supply: Cistern Use During Hellenistic-Roman Times (Angela Commito)
- Breaking out from Imagined Household Uniformity: Diverse Rainwater Harvesting Solutions in Republican-Imperial Cosa (Ann Glennie)
- Rainwater Collection Strategies in Pompeian Houses (Gemma Jansen)
- Posthumanism, Social Justice and Pollution in the Waters of Roman Volubilis (Mark Locicero)
- Reusing Stepped Pools in Roman Palestinian Households (Rick Bonnie)
- The Significance of Household Cisterns at Roman Dura-Europos (J. A. Baird)
- Water as Social Inequality in Late Roman Britain (James Gerrard)
Notes
[1] The Late-Hellenistic cisterns of Delos, for example, may have taken up to 5,000 person/hours, or more than 1.5 years, to carve out of the limestone bedrock. Klingborg in this volume, p. 44.
[2] Brown, P.J., van Berkel, M. (2024). “Water Provision in Early Islamic Cities: A Multidisciplinary Approach to Urban Water Governance.” In: Rose, E., Flierman, R., and de Bruin-van de Beek, M. (eds) City, Citizen, Citizenship, 400–1500. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.