“Water and power”: what is left? An introduction to the workshop “Waterscapes. New perspectives on hydrocultural landscapes in the ancient Near East”

Water and its availability are among the main concerns of the contemporary world, and water crisis has been recurrently mentioned among then main risks of more significant concern of our modern times in the “Global Risk Report” of the World Economic Forum in the last years. Sustainability and water management are currently perceived as crucial challenges the modern times have to face and thus, the research and preservation of hydro-cultural landscapes rooted in the past, especially in arid countries, have received much attention in recent years. The ancient Near East represents undoubtedly a rich field of research as far as ancient systems of water management are concerned, and a field providing fervid stimuli for theoretical discussion on the crucial "water and power" relation. The present paper aims at presenting different developments in the debate on models dealing with ancient Near Eastern water systems, from the hydraulic society depicted by Wittfogel in 1957 to the more fragmented and multi-disciplinary perspectives of contemporary researches.