This research consists mainly of introducing the hydroarchaeological method, especially as related to issues of drought. The article outlines how this multidisciplinary method can provide insights into the success and failures of an archaeological site, in this case the Maya site of Palenque. We also detail convincing evidence that shows that the Maya of Palenque did not leave their city because of deficiencies of water, as some paleoclimatologists and archaeologists have asserted. The first logical step toward understanding any settlement’s water system is to use basic hydrologic methods and theory and to understand the local watershed. There is great potential for watershed-climate modeling in developing plausible scenarios of water use and supply and of the effect of extreme conditions (flood and drought), all of which cannot be fully represented by atmosphere-based climate and weather projections. The research demonstrates how the local watershed, land-use, and ecological conditions interact with regional climate changes. The archaeological implications for this noninvasive “virtual” method are many, including detecting periods of stress within a community, estimating population by developing caps based on the availability of water, and understanding settlement patterns, as well as assisting present local populations in understanding their water cycle.

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What type of implement was used to cut and move earth in prehistory? In the Mississippian culture at least, the key tool was the stone hoe -formed from a chert blade strapped to a handle. These blades were hoarded and depicted in use, leaving little doubt that they were for digging, in the service of agriculture and extracting earth for building. Drawing on a series of controlled experiments, the authors deduce the capabilities and biographies of the stone hoes, evoking the admirable efforts of the people who constructed the massive mounds of Cahokia.

Archeological research often provides a glimpse into the daily lives and generational outcomes of our collective past, but rarely does it lead to significant effects on living (and possibly future) populations. Understanding the impact early civilizations had on their environment has been an active area of study since the 1950s. As one of the most vital resources, water is central to many of these scholarly endeavors. Research has shown that land use is a primary factor on the functionality of a watershed. Our hypothesis is that simulating past climate and hydrology of a watershed with probable land use scenarios can create a virtual experiment to explore a range of conditions for water availability and use in prehistoric landscapes. The ancient Maya lived in a varied environment with highly seasonal precipitation and landscapes that required vastly different water management strategies. Many of these ancient centers maintained dense populations that ultimately forced unsustainable land use practices. Our approach is to apply simulated climate projections to evaluate the hydrologic performance of watersheds surrounding the Classic Maya sites of Palenque, Mexico and Tikal, Guatemala. An important conclusion from our work at Palenque is that virtual data can provide a plausible framework for assessing the sustainability of water use strategies, past and present. This article is categorized under: Engineering Water > Planning Water Science of Water > Water and Environmental Change Science of Water > Water Extremes

Throughout the world, past and present, social organizations develop to cope with restricted water sources. Relying on traditional archaeology, labor estimates, and ethnographic data, the Palenque Pool Project set out to better understand a series of interconnected artificial water features located in the western sector of this Classic Maya site. Here, we detail our 2014–2015 fieldwork. First, there is consideration that the Picota Group was a civic-ceremonial center first established in the Early Classic period (a.d. 250–500), one km to the west of the “downtown” nucleus of the site. A review of labor estimates for the construction of architectural features of the Picota Group follows. We then explore the ethnographic component, comparing similar pool configurations investigated in the highland Tzotzil community of Chamula in 2015. The article concludes with a theoretical discussion of how and why social organizations evolve to manage water resources in the region, with reference to ethnographic information from highland Tzotzil communities.

Water supply is widely recognized as one of the greatest challenges to urban living today. Whether negotiating shortage or excess, securing and sustaining a reliable supply of water for human consumption, health and sanitation, processing and manufacturing of goods, and all other aspects of life is a complex undertaking in urban contexts. To complicate provision even further, sources and resources of water are diverse, change over time, and interact with and are influenced by complex biophysical and cultural processes. People have been living in cities for millennia and across very different environments: from the earliest urban centers of the Near Eastern arid lands to the market towns growing along waterways and wetlands of northern Europe to mention but two profoundly different cases. How did ancient cities obtain water? What was water needed for? To inform these questions, we have curated a collection of articles that address how ancient urban societies have dealt with water, securing supply and negotiating changes over time across a wide spectrum of cultures, environments, and periods of time. Within the wide range of articles offered by WIREs Water to date, our selection currently presents case studies that illustrate different regional and cultural contexts for two main reasons. First, we want to illustrate the sheer diversity and complexity of past water-city interactions, with a focus on the creativity, dynamism, and flexibility expressed by historical water supply systems. Second, we aim to expose some of the links between opportunities and challenges shaping the water-city interplay over the long term. In our globalized world, urban living is characterized by increasing speed in the way we operate, relate to our surroundings, and satisfy our needs. Modern urban water supply is largely dependent on pipeline provisioning for fast and reliable delivery. While this collection does not explore the contribution of historical developments to issues concerning present and future urban water systems, we hope that the articles presented will inspire thinking beyond our times and reflecting on how past urban societies have secured water provision over the long term. Featuring profoundly different historical developments, the case studies in this collection illustrate some general threads running across three main topics. 1 | WATER AND URBAN LANDSCAPES Local environmental conditions have played a critical role not only in shaping approaches to and maintenance of past water management strategies but also in the spatial organization of the urban settlement. For the same services, chiefly water supply to the urban population, ancient societies developed adaptive strategies that appear tailored to their environments. This is clearly demonstrated in the examples from Mesopotamia (Altaweel, 2019) and Mesoamerica (Chase & Cesaretti, 2018; Mejía Ramón & Johnson, 2019) that show how water supply was organized across urban landscapes, whereby conditions in the hinterlands had direct implications for the central areas and vi...

Archaeological imagination [is] finding new ways of asking questions that link the most empirical of research projects with innovative social theory.