The Romans had a remarkable engineering knowledge of water supply (Viollet, 2000). Water was carried to the Roman cities through aqueducts that could reach more than 100 km. Within the cities, the water was distributed through a complex
Fig. 8.8 Flow of water in the most recent water system
Fig. 8.9 Outer aqueduct, cistern inside the guard tower, inner aqueduct, first derivation and cistern at the end of the first derivation. Color version available in Appendix
Fig. 8.10 Entrance of the water in the guard tower (point 2 in Fig. 8)
Combination of water towers and pipes. Wastewater was evacuated from the cities by drainage systems. Only a few Roman writings on this engineering practice were preserved, but archaeology, as in Apamea, offers some precise illustration of their techniques.
The surviving written records of Frontinus (Evans, 1994) (Herschel, 1973) and Vitruvius (Morgan, 1960) provides some understanding of water supply systems in Roman times. While these works give insight into the design methodology of water supply systems of that period, they also reflect pre-scientific views of hydraulic
Fig. 8.11 Picture taken from the inside of the inner aqueduct. Calcareous deposits on the aqueduct walls can be observed
Fig. 8.12 Room of visit in the first derivation. The aqueduct is on the left of this picture
Principles (Ortloff and Crouch, 2001). For instance, in the work of Frontinus, a concept such as the flow rate is not known.
As a modern resource, Computational Fluid Mechanics software provides researchers and archeologists the tools to unearth the engineering details of the Roman water supply systems. These computational means allow the simulation of the flow of water through archaeological remains that are well preserved, opening
Fig. 8.13 End of the first derivation in a cistern. Color version available in Appendix
Fig. 8.14 Remains of the room of visit in the second derivation. The aqueduct is at the rear of this picture
New possibilities for the analysis of these ancient water systems. An analysis of this type has been performed for Apamea and is presented in this chapter. The political and administrative status of Apamea has allowed archaeologists to piece together an excellent picture of the most advanced Roman technology in late antiquity.
Fig. 8.15 Terracotta decanter excavated in the second derivation
The first objective of the work presented in this chapter is to characterize the operation of the third hydraulic system (Byzantine period). The water flow rate in the inner aqueduct is computed using the Manning equation. The flow rate and the energy losses in each of the two derivations are computed using global energy balances, coupled with local CFD simulations, realized with the commercial software Fluent 6.3. The time needed to fill the cistern is also evaluated. The results of this characterization, presented in Section 8.4, provide a new quantitative description of the water supply system of the city, supplementing the usual field observations. The methodology followed for this characterization is presented briefly in Section
8.2 And deeply in Appendix 1, while the CFD simulations realized are presented in Section 8.3.
The second objective of this work is to analyse the results of the hydraulic characterization from an archaeological point of view. Three open historical questions about Apamea are tackled. The first one is whether or not the aqueduct was the only water supply system of the town. The second question is whether or not the Byzantine city was able to develop new efficient water systems. The third question is whether or not, during the Byzantine period, the hydraulic system was able to deliver water beyond the Cardo Maximus. Today, none of these questions has a clear answer (Balty, 2000) (Viviers and Vokaer, 2009).
It is shown in Section 8.5 That the analysis of the data provided by the hydraulic characterization provides new interesting elements regarding the answer to these questions. It demonstrates the ability of this modern approach, coupled with classical field observations, to analyse ancient well preserved remains.
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