The idea of combining historical river studies with research into ancient urbanism on the Iberian Peninsula was fundamental to the creation of this book. The volume originated in the 2022 workshop of the TOLETUM network, which has been providing a platform for dialogue between Spanish and German scholars from a wide range of fields in classical studies since 2011. The topic of the 13th conference was ‘Hispaniens Flusstäler in diachroner Perspektive – Interdependenz von Mensch und Umwelt zwischen Republik und “long Late Antiquity” (3. Jh. v. – 9. Jh. n. Chr.)’. The book under review brings together 13 of the original 23 conference presentations. The essay by H. Clarke – the only one in English – was added later at the request of the editors. The other contributions are written either in German (4) or Spanish (9), but all are preceded by an English abstract.
A brief foreword is followed by an introduction in which the two editors outline the general theme of the conference (and thus also of the volume), provide brief summaries of the contributions and attempt to establish coherence between them. However, they are able to accomplish this last task only to a limited extent, since there is a lack of clear focus both in the introduction and throughout the volume. According to Hettinger and Lehmann the book reflects current research trends and methodological approaches to river research on the Iberian Peninsula. Thus, as the title of the book suggests, the core theme should be rivers and their valleys, whether as borders, transport routes or economic areas. However, when one looks at the individual essays, it becomes clear that by no means all of them centre on rivers.
The essays are arranged into four thematic parts. The first section – loosely titled ‘Mensch und Umwelt. Fluss- und Küstenlandschaften im Wandel der Zeit’ – comprises four papers. M.J. López Medina describes in a diachronic analysis the region of the upper reaches of the Almanzora River and the territory of the ancient settlement of Tagili from the Iron Age to late antiquity. J. Schneider makes a nail-hitting contribution to the topic of ‘fluid spaces’. In a broad comparison he examines the rural settlement structures along the three major rivers Ebro, Duero and Guadalquivir. Even if some questions remain regarding the assessment of the underlying data, the article nevertheless offers a perspective on how river valleys can be comprehensively investigated archaeologically. The variances identified are particularly interesting: during the Republican period the Ebro is dominant, and in late antiquity the Duero; their settlement areas developed differently from each other.
One of the highlights of the volume is Clarke’s essay on landscape relationships in the Durius River Valley in the Late Iron Age and the Early Roman Empire. Clarke takes Strabo’s statement (3.3.8) that the landscapes and peoples of Northern Iberia are wild, intractable and remote as the starting point for a well-founded comparison of the Upper and Lower Duero/Douro valleys. Clarke convincingly shows that in the Late Iron Age there were differences in land use and settlement systems between the two regions, which did not disappear under the Roman Empire despite shifting settlement patterns, an upgrading of communication networks and intensified exploitation of the landscape.
J.M. Martín Casado’s essay focuses on water, but in a marine rather than a fluvial context, dealing with so-called Extreme Wave Events such as tsunamis in the Gulf of Cádiz in the late Roman period. The interdisciplinary approach, incorporating geological, archaeological and historical-literary evidence, is impressive, but the question arises as to this contribution’s relevance to the topic of ‘rivers’.
The next part, ‘Infrastruktur, Neuorganisation, Konnektivität’, also covers a broad field. The paper by P. Castillo Pascual is one of those dealing with the subject of ‘rivers’, even if the main title is broad. The subtitle – ‘Algunas puntualizaciones sobre el flumen Hiberus’ – is more accurate in terms of content. Castillo Pascual puts forward two noteworthy theses, namely that in Roman times the Ebro was navigable from Logroño not to its mouth, but only as far as La Zaida, and that the terra sigillata Hispanica produced in Tritium was an important commodity for transport on the river. I. Rondán-Sevilla has little to contribute to the overarching topic. Although her essay is an interesting study of the water supply at the Sierra Aznar–Calduba site, it hardly goes beyond that and does not encompass the Guadalete river in more detail. The same can be said about the contribution by G. Ripoll et al. Although water plays a role insofar as the long history of a thermal bath complex is traced, references to the Llobregat river are limited to a few remarks. E. Aragón Núñez and P. A. Argüelles Álvarez follow a broader approach by analysing the settlement history of the modern province of Almeria, but this paper does not focus on rivers either.
The next part deals with ‘Flüsse und Flusstäler. Adern der Wirtschaft’. A. Orejas et al. provide a good summary of their extensive and fruitful research on mining landscapes in north-western Spain, especially Las Médulas. However, in relation to the topic of ‘rivers’, the article only offers a few rather scattered notices that are not further systematised. I.A. Oates attempts to visualise ancient water channels in GIS with the help of remote sensing data. The Roman mining area of Las Médulas is again chosen as the study area. As Oates admits, the attempt failed in every respect. While it is interesting to read about the method used, and the author’s honesty is refreshing, one wonders why the article was included, as rivers are not the focus of the paper.
The essay by M. González Nieto and J.L. Domínguez Jiménez on the passes across the Sierra Morena deals mainly with the territories of the municipalities of Sisapo, Solia, Mellaria and Baedro. The function of the Alcudia and Guadiato river valleys as structuring elements (estructuradores) is not specifically addressed, contrary to what the title suggests, as the focus is more on transport routes and resource use. Despite its title, ‘El papel del valle del río Sado en la articulación y gestión del territorio a lo largo del tiempo’, A.C. Silveira’s essay is more of a treatise on the city of Setúbal and its surroundings, with a clear historical focus on the period after ‘long Late Antiquity’.
The next part, ‘Flüsse im literarischen Diskurs’, consists of two papers, which cover very different periods. V.A. Berthoud Frías comes to the slightly unsurprising conclusion that Pliny primarily describes the cultural and strategic significance of rivers in greater detail, while Ptolemy focuses on precise geographical information about their sources, courses and mouths. What is striking about this article is that it makes no mention of secondary literature: the bibliography lists only editions of the works of Pliny and Ptolemy. G. Fassbeck’s paper starts with a concise overview of research on rivers as ‘liquid history’, going back as far as the book Le Rhin. Problèmes d’histoire et d’économie by A. Demangeon and L. Febvre (1935), but also discussing more recent studies such as B. Campbell’s Rivers and the Power of Ancient Rome (2012) before Fassbeck gets to the main topic. Although these systematic explanations are interesting and helpful, it has to be asked why a contribution on the significance of Iberian rivers in literary texts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is included in this collection.
These critical remarks concern only the relevance of the contributions to the topic (or what the topic should be according to the title of the volume), not their quality as individual studies. In most cases they are very good summaries of extensive research projects that are well worth reading. The extensive bibliographies show how much intensive scholarly work the individual studies are based on.
As interesting as these individual papers are, it is difficult to see the present collection as a coherent treatise on rivers in Hispania. Due to the lack of focus on rivers, there is a lack of correlation between the papers. One indication of this is that the three essays on the Duero do not refer to each other. It would have been primarily the task of the editors to tie the individual contributions together into a larger whole and to establish context. As there are neither a geographical or subject index nor an afterword or concluding commentary, the task of creating an integrated volume from the individual papers falls solely on the introduction. As indicated, this is not achieved because there is no clear focus on the main topic. It is symptomatic that the first sentence of the introduction does not mention ‘rivers’ as the subject of the book, but rather the more general term ‘water’. The text then meanders thematically from water scarcity to the attribution of personal rights to a saltwater lagoon, to rivers in Asia Minor and Hispania, finally arriving at general remarks on the spatial turn.
The book is therefore best viewed as a substantial collection of good to very good essays offering concise summaries of current extensive research projects. Beyond that, the essays by López Medina, Clarke and Schneider, as well as – with some reservations – that by Castillo Pascual, form the solid core of the volume and provide a well-founded insight into the histories of the most important rivers of Hispania over a period of more than 500 years.
