Western India is rich from unexplored historical sites, some of them having been preserved from heavy industrialisation and modernisation processes. Surveying their historical structures promises to bring light on early and mediaeval urbanisation process, city space and urban life.
The “Metrology of Indian Waters” project aims to focus on selected pre-Mughal cities and to explore their hydraulic structures. Water indeed is (was) available in multiple forms in the cities, offering to the settlement a differentiate range of water-s (see About). Which solutions were derived to provide access to waters in dense urban settlements?
Objectives
The project investigates (remains of) historical water structures in order to create a database on water technologies in the context of the medieval Western India. Following questions aims to be answered: What kind of water management structures are traceable? What are their architectural, artistic and religious characteristics? How are these structures located and what were their sphere of influence? How was water supplied to their place of use (housing, palaces, gardens, etc.)? How were shared water structures maintained, and what were the users’ restrictions?
Methodology
The main methodology of documentation is building archaeological, supplemented by historical research (archival work) and ethnological methodologies.
The collected data is gathered with GIS (Geographical Information Systems) Mapping and Database including georeferences, plans and architectural descriptions, historical data and photography. Our scientific team is surveying, georeferencing, documenting and building the database, thus participating to the reconstruction of the pre-modern city waterscape.