A collaborative study of the uses of water and the technologies employed to use it in medieval Europe. Experts on different areas of water use and of the European continent contribute separate studies to it so as to produce the first comprehensive survey of the techniques people used to harness, and defend themselves from, water in western Christendom between 500 and 1500. Each chapter sets the technologies of fishing, land drainage, irrigation, flood control, urban, domestic, and ecclesiastical water supply within a social and cultural context. Of interest to historians of technology and science, social historians, and all medievalists.

Contributions by: Thomas Glick, Richard Holt, Colin Rynne, Richard Hoffmann, Roberta Magnusson, William H. te Brake, Klaus Greve, Paul Benoit