Small-scale water systems in the Fertile Crescent. The role of cisterns-based water systems in an arid zone between rain-fed agriculture and stockbreeding during Roman times

Mapping palaeoenvironmental data and manmade landscape developments are some of the best ways to estimate, measure and illustrate human ecological niche building. Describing and quantifying the case study of a cisterns system in Southern Syria during Roman times, we show how the development of a simple technique in the Leja arid area changes the living conditions and probably the pastoralist’s mobility for nearly a millennium and a half.