Abstract
Apart from hydraulic systems linked to major rivers, the control of water in the Near East is exercised by exploitation of complementary seasonal resources: springs and temporary river floods. Southern Syria preserves many traces of this exploitation. The principal techniques of water catchment and storage were elaborated during the fourth millennium bc. The waterworks of the two following millennia constituted the basic and sustainable infrastructure of the water supply of the area. The technical innovations and the political reorganizations of the Roman, Byzantine and Umayyad times built a second layer of structures. All these systems were in use until the first half of the twentieth century. One can thus follow over six millennia the processes of technical innovation, the periods of collective investment in large-scale waterworks and the reasons for the resilience or the disappearance of the technical systems and their attached social organization.
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