The majority of the today’s cities are located adjacent to rivers, lakes, and oceans, a proximity that results in a high probability of flooding from annual precipitation as well as from storm surges. Future rising waters also are anticipated from the acceleration of late-Holocene climate change. Yet the reality of urban flooding is not new to the twenty-first century: archaeological evidence shows widespread evidence for flooding in ancient cities, which also were preferentially situated adjacent to water bodies. What lessons of past water abundance can be applied to contemporary circumstances, and to what extent can archaeological evidence be relevant in addressing our concerns for the urban future? The talk will evaluate urban water abundance from a global comparative perspective, with special attention to archaeological research on urbanism in the Indian subcontinent. 

Monica L. Smith is Professor of Anthropology and in the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at the University of California, Los Angeles, and holds the Navin and Pratima Doshi Chair in Indian Studies. Along with her South Asian colleagues she has worked in India and Bangladesh on sites of the Early Historic and Neolithic eras.  Her books include A Prehistory of Ordinary People (2010) and Cities: The First 6,000 Years (2019), as well as the edited volumes The Social Construction of Ancient Cities (2003) and Abundance: The Archaeology of Plenitude (2017).