Terrace cultivation

Agricultural terraces are man-made flat or slightly inclined surfaces on the slopes of landforms or in valley bottoms. They are supported downslope and sometimes also on the sides by earth banks and/or stone walls. The precise functions of agricultural terraces vary according to time, place and environment.

In Southwest Arabia (Fig. 1), mountain-side terracing — for rainfed farming and runoff harvesting — goes back at least as far as the 3rd millennium BCE (Wilkinson 1999: 187). In parallel, valley bottom terracing developed, leading, in the first half of the 1st millennium CE, to the building of several-hundred-metre-long structures, which could have been used to retain wadi floods and/or sediments in order to create rich soils for agriculture and/or grazing (Wilkinson & Edens 1999: 11). In the desert margins of Southwest Arabia, terracing characterised valley bottoms and mainly aimed at adapting the topography to irrigation systems fed by wadis, such as in Shabwa (Gentelle 1991: 44–46). In the oasis of Masāfī, located in the mountainous areas of Southeast Arabia, combined archaeological and geoarchaeological studies have revealed a succession of terraces from the mid-2nd millennium BCE to the present, and the different phases of land development (Purdue et al. 2019).

See also Water Management

Julien Charbonnier

References and suggested readings

• Gentelle, P. 1991. Les irrigations antiques à Shabwa. Syria LXVIII: 5–54. DOI: 10.3406/syria.1991.7261.

• Purdue, L., J. Charbonnier, E. Régagnon, C. Calastrenc, T. Sagory, C. Virmoux, M. Crépy, S. Costa & A. Benoist 2019. Geoarchaeology of Holocene oasis formation, hydro-agricultural management and climate change in Masafi, southeast Arabia (UAE). Quaternary Research 92: 109–132. DOI: 10.1017/qua.2018.142.

• Wilkinson, T. 1999. Settlement, soil erosion and terraced agriculture in highland Yemen: a preliminary statement. PSAS 29: 183–191. www.jstor.org/stable/41223538

• Wilkinson, T.J. & C. Edens 1999. Survey and Excavation in the Central Highlands of Yemen: Results of the Dhamār Survey Project, 1996 and 1998. AAE 10: 1–33. DOI: 10.1111/j.1600-0471.1999.tb00124.x.

_{Alternate spellings: Terrace wall, Terrace}