Parting the Sea and Draining the Swamp: A Critical Review of Binary Approaches to Water Management

Summary

Archaeology has the unique ability to observe how past societies’ water systems were organized and managed. Indigenous approaches to water management in pre-colonialist societies, in both a conceptual and practical sense, often differed largely from those of their colonizers. Through three case studies, we evaluate and contrast indigenous relationships with water and those imposed by colonial powers. These case studies include the draining of lake of Texcoco by the Spanish in modern day Mexico city, modern development in Siem Reap, Cambodia, and the construction of the Aswan Dam to control the floods of the Nile river. We contend that decision making parties on water management in these contemporary cities have problematically based decisions for the organization and management of their water system on binary models of seasonality (i.e., wetlands/drylands). We find that a strict adherent to dichotomous treatments of water management may reduce the productive capacity of water management systems. A more faithful interpretation of indigenous approaches to water systems in these three cases may have led to a different outcome of improved productive capacity.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 22749