In the popular imagination, the Fens and other wetlands were seen as lawless places where thieves and outlaws ruled the roost and where the few small and isolated communities lived in constant fear of attack. Archaeology and local history, however, have shown that the reality was altogether different. There were some places where it was too wet to

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Barnes reports that Egyptian farmers in the Nile Valley maintain irrigation ditches not just to keep the water flowing, but also to “sustain communal ties with other farmers.” 20 Similar protocols prevail in Nikhil Anand’s Hydraulic City, in which the anthropologist shows how the maintenance of water infrastructures binds residents, plumbers,... See more