Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Arid Environments journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jaridenv Water harvesting as a key for understanding adapted ancient livelihoods in an arid environment – Approaches to dryland archaeology in the Eastern Marmarica (NW-Egypt) Thomas Vetter a,∗ , Anna-Katharina Rieger b a University of Greifswald, Germany b University of Graz, Austria ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Runof agriculture Libyan desert Catchment hydrology Reconstructing ancient dryland livelihoods ABSTRACT The Marmarica, an arid region in NW-Egypt between the Jebel el Akhdar to the west and the Nile Valley to the east, ofers rich evidence for understanding the interlinkages of scarce natural resources, above all water and soil and their human utilization in antiquity. Analysing the natural hydrological regime depending on rainfall, soils and topography in the region and the man-made interventions lies at the heart of this landscape archaeological study. Integrating evidence from various disciplines (hydrology, geomorphology, soil science, archaeobiological methods, ceramic studies, evaluation of literary sources based on papyri) and from various periods (late 2nd millennium BCE to 7th century CE) allowed for the reconstruction of the ancient water management and the related life-strategies. An assessment of climatic conditions and morphological features of the Eastern Marmarica is provided, where wadis, alluvial fans, but also lateral wadi slopes and to a certain extent even parts of the vast tableland plains represent favourable geomorphological units for water harvesting and hence, agricultural production. Yet, a characteristic that sets the Marmarican systems apart from those in other arid regions are cultivated terrace systems (run-in areas) that are located on lower lateral valley slopes and even on the tableland plains. The results provide insights into the long-term responses of the inhabitants in antiquity to catchment hy- drology by water harvesting and the efects of their interventions, the adapted livelihoods, regional speciali- zation of rural production and intra- and interregional exchange of goods. However, new questions arose re- garding i) the implications of the ancient water management strategy for the social organisation of the local people, ii) the destinations of locally produced pottery, iii) the habitational and land-use patterns before the Graeco-Roman period, iv) the role and range of climatic shifts, and v) reasons for the decline of the sophisticated runof management. 1. Introduction The Eastern Marmarica, modern Northwestern Egypt, between the coast and the Western or Libyan Desert, represents a transition zone between rainfed and desert regions and according to the UNEP Aridity Index is a characteristic region of an arid climate (UNEP, 1992) (Fig. 1). These regions globally cover 26.8% of earth's land surface and host some 1.1 billion people (excluding population in deserts and dry sub- humid rangelands; UNDDD, 2011). Livelihoods for the local population are based on a combination of agriculture on favourable land and some amount of mobile livestock breeding, so-called barley-livestock sys- tems, in varying proportions according to climatic conditions on vast scarce pastures. Since decades, governmental agencies have made and still make eforts to improve the conditions for the rural population, however, with limited success since the approaches are not based on scientifc rationales. Humans in the past relied much more on a fne-tuned interaction with environmental regimes and conditions than today since techno- logical aids were not at hand resulting in a greater vulnerability of li- velihoods. Survival and livelihood depended on the successful man- agement of local resources and adaptation to natural uncertainties. Regional ancient water-harvesting systems that were developed over decades or even centuries manifest the long-term experience of their builders and triggered special water and sediment dynamics. The understanding of ancient runof agriculture in the Eastern Marmarica and its potential is of particular interest because it reveals https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaridenv.2019.02.009 Received 27 February 2018; Received in revised form 18 June 2018; Accepted 18 February 2019 ∗ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: thomas.vetter@uni-greifswald.de (T. Vetter), anna.rieger@uni-graz.at (A.-K. Rieger). Journal of Arid Environments 171 (2019) 103940 Available online 13 June 2019 0140-1963/ © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. T