Today our societies face great challenges with water, in terms of both quantity and quality, but many of these challenges have already existed in the past. Focusing on Asia, Water Societies and Technologies from the Past and Present seeks to highlight the issues that emerge or re-emerge across different societies and periods, and asks what they can tell us about water sustainability. Incorporating cutting-edge research and pioneering field surveys on past and present water management practices, the interdisciplinary contributors together identify how societies managed water resource challenges and utilized water in ways that allowed them to evolve, persist, or drastically alter their environment.

1. Introduction: Interdisciplinary research into water management and societies Yijie Zhuang and Mark Altaweel Part I: Modelling long-term change2. Holocene evolution of rivers, climate and human societies in the Indus basinPeter D. Clift and Liviu Giosan 3. Habitat hysteresis in ancient Egypt Judith Bunbury 4. Geoarchaeology of prehistoric moated sites and water management in the Middle River Yangtze, China Duowen Mo and Yijie Zhuang 5. Rice fields, water management and agricultural development in the prehistoric Lake Taihu region and the Ningshao Plain Yijie ZhuangPart II: Technologies across time and space 6. Recognition criteria for canals and rivers in the Mesopotamian floodplain Jaafar Jotheri7. The Udhruh region: A green desert in the hinterland of ancient Petra Mark Driessen and Fawzi Abudanah 8. Flowing into the city: Approaches to water management in the early Islamic city of Sultan Kala, Turkmenistan Tim Williams 9. Water management across time: Dealing with too much or too little water in ancient Mesopotamia Mark Altaweel 10. Framing urban water sustainability: Analysing infrastructure controversies in London Sarah BellPart III: Water and societies11. Early Indian Buddhism, water and rice: Collective responses to socio-ecological stress: Relevance for global environmental discourse and Anthropocene studiesJulia Shaw 12. Water for the state or water for the people? Wittfogel in South and South East Asia in the first millennium Janice Stargardt 13. Agricultural development, irrigation management and social resilience in ancient Korea Heejin Lee 14. Quoting Gandhi, or how to study ancient irrigation when the future depended on what one did today Maurits W. Ertsen