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This is a study of the organization and provision of the water supply of Constantinople in Late Antiquity, which also provides a comparison with the case of Rome. It integrates textual evidence with the detailed evidence provided from recent structural and hydrogeological research undertaken by the author. As the New Rome came into the ascendant throughout the fourth and fifth centuries surviving legislation reveals divergent approaches to the maintenance of the urban water supply in the two cities. The evidence further demonstrates the symbolic as well as the practical value of investment in the urban infrastructure. In particular the sources appear to suggest how the maintenance of the aqueducts came to dominate urban euergetism at Constantinople at the expense of other aspects of civic display. Finally, the comparative element of the study helps deepen our understanding of the diverging narratives of the two imperial cities.

This chapter provides detailed information about the Roman aqueducts, ranging from the position and importance of the water sources to the course and volume of the aqueducts and the number and organization of the personnel employed in this critical branch of the Roman public administration. It presents the summary created by Frontinus about the history of how Rome's citizens obtained water during the centuries stretching from the city's foundation to the creation of the aqueducts.

This chapter is concerned with the organization of complex settlements in the Islamic period. These can be defined as towns, cities, and palaces although the boundaries between such categories are not always well defined. The first section considers the nature of urban spaces in early Islam, and particularly the ways in which archaeology can refine our understanding of Arabic terms like madina and misr. This section also explores the evolution of large-scale Islamic palaces which take on some of the characteristics of cities. The second section assesses the evidence for urban material culture in different Islamic regions. The final section is devoted to the provision of water to urban areas, and explores the archaeology of aqueducts, drainage, fountains, and cisterns.

In the sixth century BCE, Greek philosophers acquired the elements of geometry and of surveying from Egypt. However, it was only in the early third century BCE, when the famous library and museum at Alexandria was established, that more sophisticated surveying theory and of more versatile and accurate instruments were developed. As a result, surveying instruments entered the realm of high technology for the first time, drawing on scientific theory and feeding back to it. This chapter examines the instruments, techniques, and achievements of surveyors in ancient Greece and Rome, with special reference to the planning of roads, aqueducts, and tunnels. Two such instruments are the groma, the exact counterpart of the dioptra in horizontal mode, and the libra.

Pre-modern settlements generally grew around some major source of water, such as a river, a lake, or a pond. This would provide not only potable water but also a security barrier. Fathpur Sikri was located beside a natural seasonal lake which was regulated by the construction of barrages to control the flow of water and result in a perennial supply. Towards the old settlement a bund defined the limits of this artificially created water body, which from the north-west and the south was contained by the ridge. Elaborate arrangements were made to lift water to the palaces and supply it to the various areas where it was needed. A number of water tanks, some open, while others closed, and elaborate channels, ducts, and aqueducts were also constructed besides wells and step-wells (baolis). In order to lift the water from the ground to the top of the ridge, a series of Persian-wheels were put to use.

This chapter examines the complex effort undertaken in Rome to rediscover the entire course of an ancient aqueduct, the Acqua Vergine and to repair it in order to make it fully functional. It discusses the ancient Roman aqueducts and their remains in the sixteenth century. It also discusses the papal librarian, Agostino Steuco's investigation of the entire course of the Acqua Vergine in the 1540s, and later, in the 1560s under Pius IV, Antonio Trevisi's failed effort to repair the aqueduct, and Pirro Ligorio's bitter complaints about the project and his exclusion from it. The chapter treats the many conflicts between the Capitoline Council and the papacy concerning financing the repair and concerning Treviso's contract. Finally, it investigates the successful repair of the aqueduct under Pius V by two architects, Giacomo della Porta and Bartolomeo Grippetto, under the supervision of the jurist and member of the Capitoline Council, Luca Peto, and the oversight of Cardinal Montepulciano. The chapter focuses on the processes of repairing the aqueduct, and the conflicts engendered by that large-scale hydraulic infrastructure project. It also discusses the Roman fountains that were constructed after the completed repair made sufficient water available.

This chapter focuses on two important areas of Roman infrastructure: the repair of bridges over the Tiber River and the construction of a new aqueduct, the Acqua Felice. For both, it discusses the struggles between the papacy and the Capitoline Council about raising the money and carrying out these costly and complex projects. Urban finances were an on-going problem. Concerning the bridges, the chapter discusses Pius IV's failed attempt to repair the Ponte Santa Maria, and its later successful repair by Matteo Bartolini da Castello under Gregory XIII. The same architect failed in his attempt to accurately measure the gradient for the Acqua Felice. The construction of this aqueduct was finally completed by Giovanni Fontana, brother of the more famous Domenico Fontana. The chapter details the complex construction methods for building the aqueduct, and discusses the Moses Fountain,which was built at its terminus. Its success brought plentiful water to the hills of Rome, especially the Quirinal, and the palaces and gardens that were built there.

This chapter explores how Americans followed John Muir in celebrating the natural wonder of California, especially as represented in paintings by the Rocky Mountain School. Settlers, however, following the call of Edward James Wickson, were attracted by the state’s agricultural potential, and men like William Hammond Hall and William Mulholland engineered a mighty infrastructure of dams and aqueducts rivaling the structures of ancient Mediterranean civilizations. The state set up cooperatives to help small independent growers prosper in viticulture and citriculture, fulfilling the Jeffersonian ideal of a culture of engaged citizen farmers. In the early twentieth century a new generation of plein-air painters (John Bond Francisco, Elmer Wachtel, and Maurice Braun) depicted the arcadian landscape thus being shaped.

The wealth and peace which marked the first decades of the Ostrogothic rule over Italy ushered in a time of intense building activity. As a revival and restoration of Roman culture and tradition, Theoderic promoted the renovation of public monuments and infrastructures in key centres such as Rome, Milan, Verona, and Ravenna, but also in several other towns of the kingdom. In this context the upkeep of urban supply systems and waterworks figures prominently in the archaeological evidence and authors of the time. In this respect, Ostrogothic Italy shows a high degree of technological, administrative, and ideological continuity with regard to the Roman past. Notwithstanding the growing involvement of the church in water management, public authorities remained the main actors in this field.

Right as John was trying to establish his new business, Pittsburgh found itself in need of a new aqueduct to carry the Pennsylvania Canal over the Allegheny River. John got to work immediately: designing, promoting, corralling, and influencing. While waiting to hear about the bridge contract, John wrote a long, revealing letter home to his father, in which he pondered the nature of life and death, along with issues of matter and the soul. John’s philosophyowed much to Hegel’s Weltgeist (“world spirit”) and Ralph Waldo Emerson’s ideas on nature and the soul. John was certainly a man of strict science, but he was also a bit of a spiritual mystic, inclined to the hard lines of the Enlightenment as well as the soft textures of Romanticism. The work on the Allegheny Aqueduct was extremely difficult and the effort was massive, but all was proceeding well until a fire broke out on the other side of town.

Between 1847 and 1852, John built four separate aqueducts for the Delaware and Hudson Canal; moved his home, family, and wire rope factory from western Pennsylvania to Trenton, New Jersey; secured the contract to build a huge railroad bridge over the Kentucky River; and continued to mount substantial campaigns to win contracts to span the Ohio at Wheeling and the Niagara Gorge. The four D&H spans were mini masterpieces of engineering and planning. Each structure was very different; each required new solutions to site-specific problems. One of the spans, the Delaware Aqueduct, exists to this day, the oldest suspension bridge in the United States and one of the oldest “modern” suspension bridges in the world. On the larger projects, John again lost out to his old rival Ellet on both the Wheeling and the Niagara spans.

Although there is good evidence that irrigation played an important role in Roman agriculture, it has so far received too little attention. This paper seeks to address the subject of its funding at different scales. Among the different choices landholders had to make, investments in hydraulic infrastructure were guided by their particular needs for cultivation and breeding, the environmental context, and the management of a natural and sometimes limited resource. The attention is here turned towards the financial, human, and material nature of the investment required. The cross-reading of archaeological sources with literary and legal texts shows that the costs of irrigation in single estates varied according to the technical constraints (length and construction of the conduit, necessity to store water, etc.), but the efforts made to invest also reflect the profits expected. A key element concerning investments towards irrigation, in any case, lies in the access to water. In that respect, Roman law played an essential role through servitude rights.