AbstractsAnthropology

Using the Wadi Sana watershed of Hadramawt Governate, Yemen as a case study, this dissertation examines how environmental and social factors structured the origins of irrigation in prehistoric Southwest Arabia. It applies three methods, archaeological survey, geomatics, and ethnoarchaeology set within a framework of scientific and humanistic landscape archaeology. Results of archaeological survey and radiocarbon dating confirm that irrigation originated in Southwest Arabia during the mid 6th millennium calibrated BP and identify shrûj surface runoff irrigation as one of the earliest irrigation techniques in the region. Conflicts between explanations emphasizing environmental versus those stressing social factors have long structured investigations of prehistory and models of transitions to agriculture. To evaluate the relative, interconnected influence of environmental versus social factors this study applies: 1) geomatics to evaluate the hypothesis that locations of ancient irrigation structures in Wadi Sana are closely associated with hydrological variables reflecting close behavioral ties to environmental conditions, and 2) ethnoarchaeology to interpret sociocultural, political, and ideological parameters of ancient irrigation. A sample of 174 irrigation structures is statistically compared with satellite imagery-derived data including landform and hydrological Geographic Information System (GIS) map data layers. A cross-cultural overview of irrigation, synopses of typological and social aspects contemporary irrigation in Yemen, and a preliminary ethnoarchaeological study of water-use and irrigation in present-day Wadi Sana help illustrate how organizational/logistical challenges and perceptions of landscapes and water-rights shaped irrigation’s origins. Collective results illustrate why a combination of processual and postprocessual perspectives including both quantitative hypothesis testing and qualitative interpretation best illustrate the relative importance of environmental and social factors. Research findings demonstrate that ancient forager-herders in Wadi Sana chose irrigation structure locations based on intimate knowledge of low-energy monsoon runoff along rocky hillslopes, and that new understandings of landscapes as hydraulically malleable domains of anthropogenic control, exclusive rights to water, and new forms of territoriality were crucial to irrigation’s origins.