Cistern

Résumé/Abstract Rainwater samples were collected from rainwater harvesting (RWH) systems at seven sites located in a 30km radius around the City of Guelph in Ontario, Canada. From October 2006 to October 2007, a total of 360 samples were collected from ...

A utilização de cisternas para a captação de água já é utilizada a mais de 2 mil anos; é uma forma simples e intuitiva de se armazenar água da chuva (CIRILO et. al., 2010 apud GNADLINGER, 2000). O sistema de captação é feito através do escoamento das águas das chuvas nos telhados das habitações, que é coletada por calhas que caem diretamente em cisternas onde são armazenadas.
É uma das formas mais baratas para de se obter água de boa qualidade para o consumo ou mesmo para o a agricultura; sua utilização é em larga escala por todo o semiárido brasileiro e é de grande importância para o abastecimento principalmente nos períodos de grandes secas (GNADLINGER, 2006). As cisternas têm capacidade de armazenamento médio entre 7 e 15 m3representando uma média de consumo per capita de 50 litros de água por dia durante 140 a 300 dias ( CIRILO, et. al., 2010).
O semiárido brasileiro é considerado um dos mais úmidos do mundo, pois possui uma média pluviométrica anual de cerca de 800 mm (ALVES, 2012), em contrapartida o nível de evaporação chega a 2.000 mm por ano (CIRILO et. al. 2003) dificultando assim o armazenamento da água da chuva em pequenos e médios reservatórios.
Projetos como, o Programa 1 Milhão de Cisternas (P1MC)1. De acordo com o site desse programa, o mesmo tem o objetivo de levar água de qualidade para os moradores dessa região e que até hoje com esse projeto já foram construídas mais de 550 mil cisternas no semiárido brasileiro, vem trazendo um pouco mais de tranquilidade de vida para a população da região.
Disponível em: http://www.editorarealize.com.br/revistas/aguanosemiarido/resumo.php?idtrabalho=239

בור which means “cistern,” occur as a synonym for שאול “the underworld” in biblical Hebrew. It is described as a place of the dead, especially in Psalms and the prophetic texts. However, according to some legal texts in Exodus and accounts of the Chronicles, it seems to have originally meant a rock-hewed pit for the storage of rainwater used in daily life. On the other hand, a tomb, which is regarded as a proper burial place, has the functions of commemorating the name of the buried and to be a place where the dead and the living meet each other through mourning rituals. בור does not have these functions. The “burial in a בור” is actually an abandonment of the corpse, showing an insult to the dead. The description that the dead who inside בור have no connection with the living world is caused by בור is not a tomb. This peculiarity of בור as a “burial place” is especially emphasised in the context of being a synonym for שאול, and it implies that both בור and שאול refer to a dishonorable place for the dead.

Article contains zooarchaeological animal remains analysis from two cisterns discovered at  Nea Paphos archaeological site in Cyprus. First cistern was discovered during excavation campaigns of the Polish Mission in 1996 - 1997, another one in 2008 campaign. Both of them contained various antiquities as well as animal remains. Whole material from both cisterns was well preserved. Cistern STR1/96-97 had totally 1552 remains, other cistern HA/NEH S.16.3 only 822 remains. Both cisterns contained domesticated and wild mammals. In first cistern, dated to Hellenic period, wild mammals were represented by 99 bones. Most of them, belonged to the least weasel (Mustela nivalis vulgaris), as same as in material from second cistern (HA/NEH S.16.3), which was dated to Early-Roman period. Different situation occurred within domesticated mammals. In material from cistern STR1/96-97 sheep/goat bones were predominant (60.04%), while in material from cistern HA/NEH S.16.3 pig remains were the most common among domesticated mammals (66.67%). Further analyzes of material showed also bird, fish bones as well as remains of sea urchins, marine and terrestrial mollusks and corals.

Water is essential for life. It is needed not only to survive but also to sustain daily life activities. The maintenance of daily life activities related to hygiene as well as prevention of epidemic diseases and accidents involving fire was as important in the past as today.
Powerful empires built many open-air and covered cisterns for water reservation and constructed aqueducts to bring water from hinterland to these cisterns. The first prototypes of cisterns were constructed in the Neolithic age. Byzantine cisterns such as the Basilica Cistern and Aqueduct of Valens are excellent examples that are remnants from the past to present. Similar to these social measures for water preservation, biological structures exhibit their own measures. In the human body,
subarachnoid cisterns of central nervous system are the best-known cisterns, despite the presence of the cisterna chyli and Golgi body. The central nervous system produces and stores water in the form of cerebrospinal fluid in the subarachnoid cisterns for mechanical and immunological protection of the anatomical structures and for autoregulation of cerebral blood flow every day. Any condition that may adversely affect the cisterns, public or subarachnoid, may cause serious and irreversible damage to life. Hence, we should appreciate the importance of water for life; moreover, “if there is water there is life” is not a great prophecy.

The archaeological site of Qasr Tilah, in the Wadi Araba, Jordan is located on the northern Wadi Araba fault segment of the Dead Sea Transform. The site contains a Roman-period fort, a late Byzantine Early Umayyad birkeh (water reservoir) and aqueduct, and agricultural fields. The birkeh and aqueduct are left-laterally offset by coseismic slip across the northern Wadi Araba fault. Using paleoseismic and archaeological evidence collected from a trench excavated across the fault zone, we identified evidence for four ground-rupturing earthquakes. Radiocarbon dating from key stratigraphic horizons and relative dating using potsherds constrains the dates of the four earthquakes from the sixth to the nineteenth centuries. Individual earthquakes were dated to the seventh, ninth and eleventh centuries. The fault strand that slipped during the most recent event (MRE) extends to just below the modern ground surface and juxtaposes alluvial-fan sediments that lack in datable material with the modern ground surface, thus preventing us from dating the MRE except to constrain the event to post-eleventh century. These data suggest that the historical earthquakes of 634 or 659/660, 873, 1068, and 1546 probably ruptured this fault segment.