Water Management History

This paper re-examines the evidence for the diffusion of foggara-based irrigation across the Sahara in ancient and medieval times. Recent fieldwork by the Fazzan project has established that the foggaras of the Wadi al-Ajal in Libya are of Garamantian origin (last centuries B.C. / early centuries A.D.), and appear to have been used perhaps until the early middle ages (ninth to eleventh centuries), but probably not beyond this. Abandonment of some of the foggaras may even have begun as early as the fourth century A.D. It is argued that foggara irrigation technology was introduced from Egypt in the second half of the first millennium B.C., and enabled the development of a Garamantian agricultural society in Fezzan, which controlled trans-Saharan trade. From the Fezzan, foggaras spread north to the fringes of the Garamantian world, to southern Tunisia and the southern Aurès in the Roman period.
An apparent collapse in North-South trans-Saharan trade in the late Roman period (fourth/fifth centuries A.D.), linked to the decline of the Tripolitanian coastal cities, weakened the Garamantian state, not least by affecting supplies of slaves used in foggara construction and maintenance. Coupled with a declining water table, problems of labour and maintenance gradually led to the abandonment of most foggaras, and a shift to smaller-scale agriculture supported by wells. Meanwhile, however, development of oasis zones in the west central Sahara (especially the Touat and Gourara) facilitated the subsequent development of new North-South trade routes through what is now the Algerian Sahara. These oases are today the zones of most highly developed foggara use anywhere outside Iran; local tradition puts foggara use here as early as the eleventh century A.D., and there are grounds for thinking it may go back to the seventh century if not earlier. There are strong similarities, in construction and nomenclature, between the foggaras of Fezzan and those of the west central Sahara, and it is most likely that the foggaras of the Touat and Gourara were introduced from the Fezzan. From these oases the foggara subsequently spread to the Tidikelt, Tafilelt and Figuig. Foggara technology spread throughout north Africa along trans-Saharan trade routes, and also enabled the development of oases as trading centres. As such, the history of the foggara in the Sahara is inseparable from the history of trans-Saharan trade.

Las sequías son fenómenos ambientales a los que se les han adjuntado una serie de fenómenos sociohistóricos de orden ideológico y operativo que han intensificado y producido la escasez de agua que actualmente viven las grandes ciudades. El presente documento tiene la intención de mostrar qué es el fenómeno de la sequía, cómo se manifiesta una sequía, cuáles son los daños que provoca, qué acciones implementa el gobierno para combatirla, de qué manera se podría resolver este problema en el futuro y de qué forma se representa este fenómeno en México.

Editorial introduction to a special issue of Water History, on the Roman and Byzantine empires. (Full document available on SpringerLink.)

Roman mastery of hydraulic engineering, and in particular of long-distance aqueduct supply systems, enabled the growth of a distinctive urban culture characterised by public
bathing and lavish water display in both public and private settings. In the rural sphere, the extension of empire around the Mediterranean facilitated, among other things, the transfer of irrigation technologies between regions of different cultural and geological backgrounds. This led to an increasing flexibility of responses to irrigation problems, and to the development of complex schemes incorporating elements of several technologies; the growing complexity and scale of both urban water supply and rural irrigation systems required the development of legislation to regulate usage and protect the rights both of the state and of individual users of the systems. The provision, and the control, of water supply and irrigation systems, and of water-using amenities such as fountains, bath-houses and
ornamental pools, became a powerful political tool for rulers and elites, courting favour with the populace for whom these structures were provided, asserting control over the resources necessary to construct them, and sometimes over nature itself, or emphasising status distinctions by the possession of display fountains, private baths, or private latrines in one’s own house. The Roman Empire, and to a considerable extent also the Byzantine
Empire which succeeded it in the east, was marked by the conscious manipulation of water resources for both usage and display, especially in the urban landscape.

The fact that private fountains surpass public fountains greatly in number is one of the conclusions of this paper, which also concerns the delivered quantity of water.  The private fountains, and the revelation of their non-domestic display function, have produced knowledge that is incompatible with the modern urbanistic approach of how water supply to an ancient city should be viewed and understood.

hich had seven to seventeen capitals depending on how one counts them. These multicentered cities were
partially networked through their waterworks, roads, and related infrastructure in ways that can offer insights into urban history and conservation. The first part of this paper presents the challenges of multicentered cities, and the benefits of taking a historical geographic approach to them. Later sections develop this argument through a case study of Delhi. They proceed from brief consideration of physiographic factors and intangible water heritage to an extended treatment of Delhi’s historical geography. The historical geographic narrative begins with Sultanate waterworks of the twelfth through fifteenth centuries that collected hillslope runoff into tanks (hauz, kund), supplemented by shallow groundwater from wells and stepwells (baolis). A fascinating
spatial and technological shift then occurred during the late Sultanate and Mughal period (fifteenth to eighteenth centuries) when the city centers and their waterworks relocated from hillside catchments to the Yamuna riverfront. This process culminated in the Mughal capital of Shahjahanabad where canal networks augmented local well water supplies. The concluding section revisits the challenges of conserving this evolving urban landscape,
underscoring the conceptual and methodological contributions of a historical geographic approach.

This paper explores the implications of the archaeological evidence for the standards of public hygiene actually achieved in the towns of Roman North Africa. It looks first at drainage infrastructure, then at public and private toilets, and finally at evidence for public excretion and waste disposal.

Resumen: La Monarquía hispánica hubo de realizar un gran esfuerzo durante el siglo XVIII para mantener su posición de potencia europea, desarrollando una política de fortalecimiento de su poder naval. Ese exigente programa no hubiese sido posible sin el aporte de suministros navales, tanto desde el extranjero como desde los propios territorios de la Monarquía, bien por el sistema de asientos, bien por el de administración directa. En el caso de la provisión de pertrechos navales desde la península, la extracción de materiales como arboladuras, tablazón, breas y alquitranes pudo abaratarse gracias a la utilización de los cursos fluviales. Sin embargo, ello provocó una estatalización y apropiación del uso de los ríos, entrando en conflicto con las necesidades y actividades de las sociedades y habitantes de dichas cuencas. Palabras clave: Navarra, Guipúzcoa, tablazón, arboladura, transporte fluvial. Abstract: The Spanish Monarchy had to conduct a great effort during the eighteenth century in order to maintain its European leading position, performing a policy of strengthening of its naval power. This demanding programme would not be possible without the provisioning of naval supplies, from abroad as well as from the Monarchy territories, through the system of private contracts (asientos) or using the direct management. In the case of naval supplies from the Iberian Peninsula, the extraction of materials such as masts, spars, timber, tar and bitumen could be cheapen thanks to the use of rivers. Nevertheless, this caused the nationalisation and appropriation of the river uses, coming into friction with the needs and activities of the inhabitants of river basins.

The Roman public baths are one of the most salient manifestations of the Romanization of North African societies. They have retained, given their size and the multiplicity of their equipment, the same functions enjoyed by their counterparts on the northern shore of the Mediterranean. They serve as public baths and hygiene establishments without forgetting their role as a major social space in the urban fabric. Like other hydraulic installations, public baths required a permanent and regular supply of water in order to be able to fully fulfill their mission. This was achieved thanks to a set of mechanisms and systems, but also thanks to the frequency of changing the water in the basins during a single day. In this regard, it was possible to distinguish four types of baths in North African towns: (i) baths that benefited from the waters of public aqueducts and huge cisterns, (ii) baths connected to public aqueducts with cisterns that are smaller and of lesser capacity than the first, (iii) thermal baths supplied by wells, and (iv) thermal baths supplied with water by other means.

Since ancient times, irrigation has been fundamental for achieving large agricultural yields, especially in the more arid areas of the world. An example of this practice is represented by the vast water infrastructures found near Udhruḥ (southern Jordan). These engineering works were constructed, maintained and restored from

The ancient Roman water networks relied on the gravity force to achieve the motion between basins placed along the line, setting the water level to the values required to produce the wanted water motion. The water structures could also have the function of collecting of the water for the population daily access, constitute the town water reserve or distribute the water into many pressure pipes, however in some cases more that one functions co-exist, or are not completely clear from the archaeological remains. The denomination of the water structures, munera, laci, castella, piscinae, cisternae has been traditionally derived from the ancient literary sources, however in the interpretation of the archaeology remains much confusion still exists. A study of the basins hydraulic operation and its function within the water system is proposed to assist the attribution of a correct denomination to the basins.

SUMMARY: Lecture-5 provides a broad overview of the Early Bronze I (EB I) in the Levant, including neighboring areas, the collapse of Chalcolithic, the rise of EB I, chronology, settlement patterns, urban layout, burial customs, material culture, origins of EB I culture, cross-cultural relations with Egypt, and assessing Egypt's role in SW Levant. This lecture is designed mainly as an educational resource/aid for college students (i.e., normally posted only on my institution's course website), the public (e.g., people auditing my course), and interested colleagues from other disciplines (to whom I periodically provide copies privately).  I am posting it here, both as a broader access, educational tool, and especially to promote the study of this region and its past societies.  For further knowledge about this region and period, I refer interested parties to the textbooks and other sources from which the initial materials were extracted for this ppt. (see syllabus; e.g., initially Mazar, Archaeology of the Land of the Bible), and/or the bibliographies in these works and my online resource guides (see other files in my academia folders).  Much of this and the other lectures summarize the pertinent materials in the course textbook(s), add in other data, including my own research materials, and furnish numerous images to clarify/illustrate the wealth of information encountered in the textbook(s).  Some generic imagery (usually indicated as such) is posted to aid in transmitting various concepts visually, and/or when a specific image remains not located (temporarily).  I update and revise such lectures each time, with such elective courses normally being taught once every two years.  I try to cover the most current, mainstream views, and usually place summary notes at the end of each lecture (or in separate test study guides).  Over time, each lecture is improved, errors rectified, and additional data placed within the lecture.  These ppt. lectures take many hours to compile, but they have proved useful to many of my more serious students (who have since pursued graduate degrees), and a few colleagues, who, like me, often teach outside our main fields of specialty, and I hope they can be of benefit to others as well.  My apologies for any errors I may have made (over time, as I teach this course every two years, I try to rectify any errors that might slip in inadvertently), and for my liberal usage of educational imagery from professional sources and vetted internet sources.  In the case of my knowledge of ancient Syria-Palestine, fortunately I originally pursued a virtual specialist undergraduate and graduate degrees in this subject (under John S. Holladay), alongside my main focus in Egyptian Archaeology), subsequently examined Egypt's presence and influence in the Levant from 1550-525 BC (for my doctoral dissertation), and have since maintained my interest and research in Egypt's relations with this region (especially during the Old Kingdom [EB Age] and Late Period [Iron Age to Persian period]). UPDATES: The course is offered every two years within a classroom setting, and is updated variously every two years. The revisions to this 2014 version are mostly formatting, but do include the addition of a two slide summary of the main points in the lecture.  REVISED: Sept. 2023, including text revisions and more images. ADDENDUM: Revising title slide label to clarify the lecture sequence. Also adding in data on Tel Erani fortified gate and wall in EB 1B period

This research presents the results of an interdisciplinary study which examined how increased adoption of water management technologies from the Hellenistic–Early Islamic period transformed the formerly marginal and rain-fed Balikh Valley of Syria into a productive landscape. Data including CORONA satellite images, topographical models and archaeological surveys were used to identify and analyse systems of canals, qanats and tunnels. Analysis of this identified a peak in the use of irrigation in the later imperial
period, especially at the time of the Early Islamic empire when the city of Raqqa attained enhanced political significance, with indications that ancient systems were able to utilise most of the available water resources in the valley. Water management activity also appears to have led to changes in the environment of the Balikh, such as the formation and drainage of marshes and re-routing of existing hydraulic networks.

The article explores how Russia’s governmental authorities, scientists, engineers, and industrialists engaged with the problem of factory waste and water pollution. It argues that industrial pollution of rivers emerged as a subject of considerable public debate in Russia in the 1880s and the enforcement of water protection laws grew stricter towards the end of the Empire. However, the vagueness of the legislation and the lack of clear quality standards opened the way for contingency and arbitrariness in the persecution of violators. This persecution did not lead to the reduction of pollution in the imperial period, but it raised awareness of the dangers of industrial discharge for riverine environments.

Resumen:
La dura sequía de 1455-57 motiva que la ciudad de Valencia impulse en 1457 el desagüe de los caudales de la laguna de Tortajada (Teruel) en el río Alfambra para así incrementar, aguas abajo, el aforo del Turia y paliar de este modo las deficiencias de riego de la Huerta valenciana. El presente artículo reconstruye todo el proceso de gestación del proyecto, documentado con una notable precisión para lo que es común para estas fechas. Tras su ejecución, no obstante, los resultados se revelaron decepcionantes condenando la conducción al abandono. Con todo, completa la historia hidráulica medieval valenciana y turolense y es un buen ejemplo de las dificultades e incertidumbres técnicas y jurídicas a que se tenían que enfrentar los promotores de este tipo de empresas en la época. Por otra parte, el trabajo hace también un seguimiento biográfico del único artífice identificado en relación con las obras, Rodrigo Marquina, un maestro constructor tenido por “experto” en la materia, cuya carrera muestra una marcada predilección hacia áreas que hoy reconocemos como propias de la ingeniería, como son la poliorcética y la hidráulica.

Abstract:
The city of Valencia favours in 1457, because of the tought drought of years 1455-57, the draining of the pool of Tortajada (Teruel), in order to increase the flow of river Alfambra an so, therefore, the volume of river Turia all his so as to improve the watering of the “Huerta” of Valencia. The present article reports with accuracy on the realization of the project. Although, the results were really disappointing and so, the project was left, this article represents a part of the valencian and turolian hydraulic medieval history and it is as well a good example of the difficulties that promoters of that era ideas had to face up with. Another part of this job is the biography of Rodrigo Marquina, the only one maker that has been identified with the project and he´s known as an “expert” in the topic, in fact, he seems to have been very interested in areas that are nowadays related to engineering.

Medieval estate borders were mostly formed by natural borders, such as hills, ditches, forests, meadows, etc. Of course, in many cases trees were marked in some form, or small mounds were built to clarify the running of estate borders. Almost none of these would seem at a first sight as firm as a border along rivers and streams. However, a closer look at law codes, customary law collections, and legal disputes that arose in connection with estate borders makes clear that, as borders of estates, bodies of water could be a basis for conflict. In this essay, I discuss sources from the medieval Kingdom of Hungary from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries that concern the problem of the change of land ownership as a consequence of changes in riverbeds. In the late medieval compilation of the customary law of Hungary by Stephen Werbőczy, the Tripartitum, a surprisingly long section is dedicated to this problem. He clearly suggests that landownership does not change if a piece of land...

Medieval estate borders were mostly formed by natural borders, such as hills, ditches, forests, meadows, etc. Of course, in many cases trees were marked in some form, or small mounds were built to clarify the running of estate borders. Almost none of these would seem at a first sight as firm as a border along rivers and streams. However, a closer look at law codes, customary law collections, and legal disputes that arose in connection with estate borders makes clear that, as borders of estates, bodies of water could be a basis for conflict. In this essay, I discuss sources from the medieval Kingdom of Hungary from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries that concern the problem of the change of land ownership as a consequence of changes in riverbeds. In the late medieval compilation of the customary law of Hungary by Stephen Werbőczy, the Tripartitum, a surprisingly long section is dedicated to this problem. He clearly suggests that landownership does not change if a piece of land is attached to another person's land by changes in the course of a river. Historians have drawn attention to this section of the Tripartitum and have suggested that this is one of the few parts in which Werbőczy does not apply Hungarian customary law, but rather uses Roman law. In my paper, which is based on a collection of similar lawsuits, I aim to demonstrate that there are a number of examples of cases in which Roman law prevailed before Werbőczy's work, and, thus, the land in question was left in the hands of the previous owners as well as decisions according to which the shifting riverbed went with a change in ownership.

El presente trabajo explora sobre la injerencia gubernamental, a través de la regulación de las aguas del río Tunuyán a fines del siglo XIX y cómo fue moldeando uno de los tres oasis más importantes de Mendoza. La investigación historiza y problematiza sobre los litigios de aguas que sentaron bases para la jurisprudencia en torno al manejo, control y apropiación del recurso. En los casos analizados queda manifiesto la importancia de reconstruir los contextos históricos y sociales de los litigantes. De esta manera, proponemos generar un marco explicativo más amplio de los procesos de apropiación de recursos por parte de las élites locales. Para ello nos valemos tanto del análisis documental como de la cartografía oficial histórica. Se concluye que, si bien dichos litigios se presentaron como una discusión sobre el dominio público y privado de las aguas, propendieron a incrementar la institucionalización y el dominio estatal de esas aguas favoreciendo a las élites locales que formaban parte del poder político.

The present work analyses the government interference, by means of the regulation of the waters of the Tunuyán River at the end of the nineteenth century and how it was shaped one of the three most important oases in Mendoza. The historical and problematic research on water litigation that laid the foundation for jurisprudence regarding the management, control and appropriation of the resource. In the analyzed cases, it is evident the importance of reconstructing the historical and social contexts of the litigants. In this way, it is proposed to generate a broader explanatory framework of the processes of appropriation of resources by local elites. For this we use both the document analysis and the official historical cartography. It is concluded that, although these litigations were presented as a discussion on the public and private domain of the waters, they tended to increase the institutionalization and state dominance of those waters, favoring the local elites which were part of the political power.

With the realization of the industrial plant of Pile, Dubrovnik inaugurated in 1416 the production of fabrics according to the standards of Italian manufacture. In the organization of the putting-out system, the use of water resources for cleaning and dyeing required experimentation of the ever-changing forms of management. This article examines both the firms and the artisans who managed the hydraulic factories in the first twenty years of the textile manufacturing in Dubrovnik. This period witnessed a mix of public and private investments, import of significant foreign human resources, and the rise and fall of various dyers.

The use of irrigation in Roman times has been analysed in different parts of the Empire and evidence for irrigation has been found in Rome and other cities in Italy, France, North Africa and the Near East. Although there is increasing archaeological evidence for the use of irrigation in the Iberian Peninsula during the Roman period, the full extent of irrigation in Hispania is only now coming to be appreciated, as a result of work like Beltran Lloris on the Lex Rivi Hiberiensis irrigation inscription. This paper will focus on one particular phenomenon that can be used to prove the use of this practice in these western provinces, the extra urbem use (use outside cities) of the water from urban aqueducts.

Nederland is niet alleen bekend om zijn brede rivieren, maar het is ook
ontstaan door die rivieren. Gelegen in een lage delta waar bijna alle
grote Europese rivieren in zee uitstromen, werd het land gevormd
door de sedimenten die hier werden neergelegd. Maar niet alleen de rivieren bepaalden het ontstaan van land. Door een stijgende zeespiegel
werd het laaggelegen gebied in het westen en noorden steeds natter, wat
leidde tot veenvorming. Normaal gesproken worden plantenresten afgebroken door oxidatie en wormen, maar in dit natte gebied werden ze
afgesloten van de lucht, en hoopten ze zich op. Dit vormde dikke pakketten veen die beschermd raakten tegen de zee door de vorming van strandwallen en duinen. Dit leverde in West-Nederland een landschap op dat te verdelen is in vier hoofdzones: een relatief hoog gelegen rivierkleigebied rondom Utrecht en langs de Vecht, smalle stroken langs de grote rivieren met kleiige oeverwallen, een smalle strook hoog gelegen land langs de kust, en daartussen een uitgestrekt, ondoordringbaar veenlandschap. Dit landschap bepaalde ook het gebruik door de mens. De relatief hoge riviersedimenten waren zeer vruchtbaar, en uitermate geschikt voor landbouw. In deze zone ontstond dan ook als snel een grote dichtheid in nederzettingen, en zelfs een vroege stadsvorming. Het landschap in het westen kenmerkte zich door verspreide bewoning langs de binnenduinrand en op de oeverwallen langs de rivieren. Dit waren ook de enige plekken waar je door het landschap kon komen; het veen was een ondoorgankelijk moeras. Vanaf de Romeinse tijd werden allerlei pogingen gedaan om dit moeras geschikt te maken voor menselijk gebruik. Door het veen te ontwateren kon het geschikt gemaakt worden voor akkerbouw. Dit deed het veen ook oxideren, waardoor het inklonk en de bodem daalde. Dit leidde in Friesland en vooral in Zeeland tot grote zee-inbraken bij storm en hoogwater, waardoor grote delen land verloren gingen. Het veen in Holland was door de relatief hoge en brede strandwallen nog redelijk goed beschermd tegen de zee, en werd aanvankelijk nog niet ontgonnen, waardoor het ook nog lang boven zeeniveau bleef.

Water appears as a powerful and influential medium in a tight network of relations between human action and the material world with complex impacts. The use, management and control of water constantly led to processes of negotiation regarding competence and responsibilities between the actors involved. It was not only about control and distribution, but also about protection against risks and how to manage them, about the control of abundance or scarcity and the evaluation of alterations in the landscape resulting from dams. This article will reflect on water as a medium and investigate the influence water had on urban communities in the Middle Ages by using the example of the towns Krems and Stein on the Danube. It discusses the system of planning, coordination and resource management required by the construction and maintenance of urban facilities as part of public infrastructure. From this viewpoint , water supply and its communal organisation it will raise questions about the social function of water infrastructure in an urban context.

Since ancient times, irrigation has been fundamental for achieving large agricultural yields, especially in the more arid areas of the world. An example of this practice is represented by the vast water infrastructures found near Udhruḥ (southern Jordan). These engineering works were constructed, maintained and restored from

The Portuguese discovered the uninhabited Azores archipelago in 1427 and started to settle it during the fifteenth century. Angra, located on Terceira Island, soon became the most important Azorean city, leading to rapid urban development. This article investigates the overlooked role of streams in the rise of Angra as a pivotal Atlantic urban centre. Through the intersection of historical and flood modelling methods, it makes a unique contribution to our understanding of Angra's urban morphologic development, highlighting the potential of applying urban flood modelling to analysis of the rise of coastal urban settlement.

In het kader van de civiele werkzaamheden aan de Maassluissedijk te Vlaardingen, en de hieraan gekoppelde vergunningsprocedure, heeft Vestigia Archeologie & Cultuurhistorie in opdracht van het Hoogheemraadschap van Delfland (HHD) een archeologische begeleiding van de grondroerende werkzaamheden verricht. Het doel van de archeologische begeleiding was het vaststellen van de eventuele aanwezigheid van (al dan niet behoudenswaardige) archeologische resten en, indien dit het geval is, het beschrijven, documenteren en veiligstellen hiervan. In het kader van deze doelstelling zijn de onderzoeksvragen uit het Programma van Eisen (PvE) zo volledig mogelijk beantwoord in hoofdstuk 5 van deze rapportage.
Voor de uitvoering van de archeologische begeleiding is, conform de Kwaliteitsnorm Nederlandse Archeologie (KNA versie 3.2) een Plan van Aanpak (PvA) opgesteld, gebaseerd op een door het bevoegd gezag goedgekeurd Programma van Eisen (PvE). Bij dit PvE is uitgegaan van een archeologische begeleiding conform ‘protocol opgraven’. De doorgraving van de Maassluissedijk is getrapt’ aangelegd en uitgevoerd met behulp van een graafmachine met gladde bak. Vanaf de kruin is zo een diepte van circa 7,5 m gerealiseerd. De werkwijze was zodanig dat elke ‘trede’ in principe direct op niveau is gebracht; van een laagsgewijze verdieping was dus geen sprake. Het (zuid)profiel en het vlak van de ontgraving opgeschaafd (machinaal en met de schep) en vervolgens gedocumenteerd. Bij de aanleg van de vlakken en profielen is eventueel vondstmateriaal verzameld en ingemeten. Tijdens de begeleiding zijn tevens enkele archeologische boringen verricht om voor de dieper gelegen bodemopbouw in kaart te brengen.
Op basis van de resultaten van onderhavig onderzoek is het dijklichaam met behulp van verschillende onderscheidende factoren ingedeeld in de volgende opbouwfasen (zie afbeelding 11, bijlage 1-3 ):
Fase 0: betreft de natuurlijke ondergrond (onder de dijk), die bestaat uit zandige/siltige klei met zandlagen, op een dunne veenlaag, op een kleipakket. De bovenste kleilagen zijn geïnterpreteerd als oeverwalafzettingen behorend bij een kreek, vermoedelijk gelegen ten zuidoosten het plangebied. De natuurlijke lagen liggen richting het noordwesten (onder de dijkkruin) steeds dieper, als gevolg van compactie onder de druk van het dijklichaam. Aan de noordwestflank van de dijk, zijn deze lagen aanmerkelijk dunner en ligt de veenlaag vrij ondiep. Op basis van de verrichte 14C-datering (203-107 v.Chr.) kan het bovenste natuurlijke kleipakket chronostratigrafisch gecorreleerd worden met het onderste deel van de Binnenpolderlaag (199 v.Chr. en 217 n.Chr.), gekarteerd ongeveer 1,0 km ten westen van het plangebied bij de Vergulde Hand. Deze ouderdom komt overeen met de vroege Duinkerke I afzettingen. De veenlaag en de kleilaag die hieronder
zijn aangetroffen, zijn nog ouder: mogelijk Late Bronstijd - Vroege IJzertijd.
Fase 1: de lagen van fase 1, aangetroffen in het oosten van het huidige dijklichaam, markeren vermoedelijk de kern en oudste generatie van de dijk. De kern bestaat uit humeuze zandige klei, vergelijkbaar met de aangetroffen natuurlijke ondergrond. De dijk is dus vermoedelijk aangelegd met materiaal uit de zeer directe omgeving. Fase 1 onderscheidt zich met name op basis van de structuur (geen plaggen) van de bovenliggende lagen. Indicatoren voor materialen of methoden gebruikt voor het funderen van de dijk zijn niet aangetroffen. Door het ontbreken van archeologische indicatoren kan de kern van de dijk alleen op basis van eerder historisch brononderzoek worden gedateerd in het tweede kwart van 12e eeuw.
Fase 2 en 3: de lagen van deze twee fasen hebben een opbouw waarin de plaggen duidelijk waarneembaar zijn. De lithologie en textuur van de plaggen komt overeen de natuurlijke ondergrond, zoals aangetroffen in het bovenste kleipakket. Mogelijk heeft het gat in en het grillige verloop van de natuurlijke ondergrond aan de buitendijkse zijde van fase 2 en 3 te maken met afgravingen voor de ophoging van de dijk. Buitendijks van fase 3 is mogelijk een vulling van een greppel aangetroffen die vermoedelijk aanwezig was tijdens fase 3.
Qua structuur, textuur en lithologie zijn fase 2 en 3 moeilijk te onderscheiden. De overgang tussen deze twee fasen is daarom bepaald op basis van het gradiënt verschil. In fase 2 en 3 is de top van de dijk richting het zuidoosten verplaatst, vermoedelijk door het aanbrengen van grond aan deze zijde. Op basis
van de het aardewerk van vondstnummer 3, aangetroffen in de lagen van fase 3, kan worden bepaald dat fase 2 dateert uit de periode tussen 1150 en 1250 n.Chr en dat fase 3 dateert van na 1250 n.Chr. Fase 4 en 5: op de ophogingen met plaggen van fase 2 en 3 liggen de homogenere kleilagen van fase 4 en 5. De structuur, textuur en lithologie van fasen 4 en 5 zijn wederom zeer vergelijkbaar. De bodemvorming in spoor 21 vormt echter een duidelijke scheiding tussen fase 4 en 5. Aan de top van fase 5 is op de kruin van de dijk een verharding van het oppervlak in de vorm van grind (S9) aangetroffen. Dit zou een oud wegdek kunnen voorstellen. Op basis van de baksteen van vondstnummer 2 kan worden vastgesteld dat fase 5 in ieder geval dateert uit de Nieuwe Tijd. Door het ontbreken van vondsten in de lagen van fase 4, kunnen deze niet nader worden gedateerd dan de periode tussen 1250 n.Chr. en de Nieuwe Tijd (1500-1950 n.Chr.).
Fase 6: boven de grindlaag aan de top van fase 5 bevinden zich tot aan het huidige maaiveld / wegdek de meest recente ophoging, bestaande uit wegdek, talud, greppels en de huidige bouwvoor. Deze lagen zijn gedurende de laatste 50 jaar aangebracht. In zijn algemeenheid is het opvallend dat de lagen / sporen van fase 2 tot en met 5 allen worden afgesneden door de bouwvoor in het noordwesten van het dijklichaam. Dit toont aan dat de dijk ter plekke van de afgraving gedurende zijn bestaan niet alleen steeds buitendijks is versterkt, maar dat hij tevens enigszins is verlegd in zuidoostelijke richting. Tijdens het verleggen zijn de oudere lagen aan de binnendijkse zijde vergraven / opgeruimd en wellicht (her)gebruikt voor het ophogen van het dijklichaam aan de buitendijkse zijde.