Abstract
This volume presents the results of an ambitious five-year project (2005–2009) based at the University of Reading ‘to assess the changes in the hydrological climate of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region and their impact on human communities between 20,000 BP and
In keeping with the ambitious scope of this research agenda, no less than 40 authors contribute 27 chapters that are book-ended with detailed introductory and concluding discussions by the editors. In light of the academic disciplinary realities alluded to above, this project is an amalgam of five sub-projects in meteorology, palaeoenvironmental research, hydrology, archaeology and development studies, which correspond roughly to the thematic parts of this volume in which the chapters are organized. Although the volume considers evidence spanning the last 20,000 years, its social focus lies on ‘civilisation’, i.e. the agrarian societies of the last five millennia characterized by social, economic and political complexity, as defined by archaeologists. This project adds the attribute of sophisticated systems of water management for the purpose of understanding ‘the complex relationships between water availability, water management and the emergence of social complexity’.
With this social orientation in mind, the editors turn much of their attention to the myriad impacts of climate change, arguing for the importance of testing Global and especially Regional Climate Models in the past to assess their applicability to the future. They note, for example, that Holocene aridification in the Middle East may parallel predicted regional decreases in rainfall. The contributions of the editors in particular (they co-author 15 of the 29 chapters), turn an eye from the past to predicted rises in global temperatures through the twenty-first century that threaten the future availability of water and food on a worldwide basis.
This project’s interdisciplinary research programme calls for building a chain of models: a Global Circulation Model that informs a Regional Circulation Model, which informs a more localized hydrological model, which informs archaeological and ethnographic studies, especially of water utilization. The formal climate modelling encompasses the entire Mediterranean Basin and utilizes the Regional Climate Model HadRM3, which was developed originally to predict twenty-first century climate change in the UK. The volume’s large regional study area is entirely appropriate, given the westerly storm tracks that fuel the meteorological and climate dynamics of southwestern Asia.
The palaeoenvironmental, hydrological, archaeological and developmental studies, on the other hand, are much more concentrated geographically in southern Jordan, especially along the Wadi Araba and southern Jordan Valley. This focus on the southern portion of the southern Levant raises an interesting paradox. On the one hand, this region, largely arid and agriculturally marginal through the Holocene, provides an ideal setting in which to monitor the effects of climate change on agrarian society. For these same reasons, however, this region was never as densely settled as the Levantine coastal plain and foothills (especially during the urbanized Middle Bronze Age), much less the Nile Valley or Mesopotamian floodplain. Thus, a major challenge for archaeologists lies in developing comparably multidisciplinary projects to address climatic, environmental and social dynamics in the less-marginal and more heavily populated heartlands of past and future civilisations.
Various discussions throughout the volume underscore the importance of dramatic episodes of climate change (e.g. the increasingly celebrated 4.2 ka event) as major factors affecting Near Eastern cultural trajectories, while reviewing the inherent difficulties in substantiating climatic causes for social and economic effects. In the course of linking individual studies to sub-projects and larger project goals, the editors highlight hydrology as a key link between climate change and human society greatly in need of study (once again harkening back to the volume’s title). An equally significant inference, noted more subtly and addressed only modestly in this volume, notes the importance of vegetation dynamics that link climate perturbations to the changing landscapes that mould and are moulded by agrarian civilisations.
Water, Life and Civilisation presents a first-rate compilation of the rationale, design, methods and results of a very ambitious research agenda. The editors and authors are forthright in discussing successes and difficulties in equal detail (a hallmark of sound science), thereby providing substantial intellectual contributions that can be explored and applied in other temporal or geographical contexts. This volume is a timely addition to current academic literature seeking the means to contribute meaningfully to future global discourse on environmental–cultural interaction, especially regarding the agricultural basis of modern civilisation.