67 introduction I n the ancient world, agriculture was the prime mover of settled life and subsequent urbaniza- tion. Ancient societies understood that water is a vital provision for ensuring high food production to supply their settled communities and accompanying population growth, and they soon developed various techniques to collect, carry, and redistribute the natural water sources of springs, rivers, and rainwater. These techniques included dams, aqueducts, barriers, reser- voirs, earthen banks, and canals. Such techniques were designed to manage water on the surface for domestic and agricultural purposes. These contributed signii- cantly to the evolution of complex societies in the an- cient Near East, especially in Mesopotamia and Egypt (Murphy 2007; Gamble 2007; Bazza 2007). It was only in the irst millennium b.c. that societies learned how to extract underground water for daily use and agricultural utilization. This development heralded a new phase in agricultural evolution and human–en- vironmental interaction, as it enabled people to carry water in larger volumes into more arid and remote re- gions. The new water system was based on a series of shafts, commonly placed at intervals 20 to 30 m apart and connected at their bottoms by a tunnel with a controlled slope. Such a technique has become widely known in the literature as the “Qanat system” (English 1968; Lightfoot 1997; 2000; Bazza 2007). the qanat system Although there are various deinitions of the Qa- nat system in the literature, all agree that it is a tech- nique for extracting underground water by conveying it from aquifers in the highlands or alluvial fans, or from shallow aquifers in stream valleys, to the sur- face at lower levels via a horizontal tunnel that taps underground water through gravitational efect. The tunnel is always connected to the surface by a series of shafts. The same technique occurs all over the world, but it is concentrated in the Middle East, mainly in Iran and Arabia, and is identiied under diferent names. It is known in Iran, South Asia, and northern China as Karez (Cressy 1958; English 1968; Rahman 1981; Khan and Nawaz 1995; Hussain et al. 2008), Alagg in Arabia (Wilkinson 1977; al-Nasif 1981; Sutton 1984; al-Tikriti 2002), Qanat Romani in the Levant (Light- foot 1997), Foggara in Tunisia and Algeria (Cressy 1958), Khettara in Morocco (Lightfoot 1996a), and mina and Yafuga in Spain (Beekman, Wiegand, and Pint 1999; Barnes and Fleming 1991). In our study Innovation or Technology Immigration? The Qanat Systems in the Regions of Udhruh and Maʾan in Southern Jordan Fawzi Abudanh Department of Archaeology Al-Hussein Bin Talal University P.O. Box 285 Wadi Musa-Petra, Jordan fawziabudanh@ahu.edu.jo Saad Twaissi Center for Nabataean Studies Al-Hussein Bin Talal University P.O. Box 285 Wadi Musa-Petra, Jordan This paper investigates the Qanat system, one of the most elaborate water supply sys- tems developed in the ancient world, with special reference to the newly recorded evi- dence from the regions of Maʾan and Udhruh in the southern part of Jordan. The origin and date of this system in the region are studied, along with its impact on the economy of the peripheral and arid regions of southern Jordan during late antiquity. The origin and difusion of the Qanat system in the ancient world are also considered.