Page - 213 - in The Power of Urban Water - Studies in premodern urbanism

BettyArndt 13 Medieval andPost-MedievalUrbanWaterSupply andSanitation Archaeological Evidence fromGöttingenandNorthGermanTowns Abstract:Accessibility tocleanwater isafundamentalneedofmedieval towns. Itwasanecessa- ry supply inprivatehouseholds, in craft and industry, formills and for livestockhusbandry. To assure this, natural streams and riverswere used, forming dividing, aswell as connecting el- ements in the townscape. InnorthGerman towns,withGöttingenasanexample,water supply wasprovidedbyprivatewells andbypublic infrastructure, suchaswaterpipes.Archaeological evidence for both exists and examples are given. Some towns needed aWasserkunst (water- works) to lift thewater in thepipeswithsufficientpressure.Mostplotsof landalsohadacesspit for thedisposal of faeces. Thevicinityof the freshwater supplyandsanitationhaveoftenbeen cited as an example of poor hygienic standards. Evidence for this statement – often repeated unchallenged– isdiscussed in thispaper.Waterqualitywasmonitoredandattended to,which is shownnot least in thepraiseof fresh, clearwater in texts, and incostly fountains inmarket- places. Introduction The region of the northwest German lowlands forms anold cultural landscape that contains a series of high and latemedieval towns.Manyof these northGerman townsparticipated in the Hanseatic League, the famous network of merchants that, for centuries, was responsible for successful trade and constantly growingwealth. The regional, butmainly long distance, trade in theNorth Sea and in theBaltic reached as far as LondonandBruges in thewest and as far asNovgorod inRussia in theeast. It connected themetal-minesof theHarzRegionandthesalt- worksofLüneburgwith the fishinggroundsofSwedenandNorway,andconnected themarkets with the inland trade. The high and late medieval towns, many of them founded during the 12th century, canbecharacterizedascommunitiesofburgessesandcouncil, containingchurch- es andseats ofnobility, surroundedby fortificationsofwall,moat and rampart.Unlike in rural areasof the time, theburgesseswerecomparatively free,with theirownurbanself-government and legislation. Evenwithdifferingnatural conditions, the towns therefore canbe regardedas comparable. Inside the towns, the accessibility to cleanwaterwas a fundamental need. Itwas anecessary supply inprivatehouseholds, in craft and industry, formills and for livestockhus- bandry. The text below tries to give a roughoverviewof private andpublicwatermanagement infrastructure, quoting examples from different towns, with the main focus on Göttingen in Lower Saxony. It also discusses connected problems ofwastewater andwaste disposal in the townswith their highhousingdensity. Naturalwaters Ditches, creeks and rivers in medieval towns had a dividing and a connecting impact at the same time. The location of the proto-urban settlement of Gutingi in the 7th century and the Note: This articlewill try todescribeand referenceexamplesof urbanwater supply of towns innorth-western Germany, butwill focusmainly onGöttingen,where theauthorhasbeen responsible for archaeology formore than25 years. OpenAccess.©2020BettyArndt, publishedbyDeGruyter. Thiswork is licensedunder theCreativeCommons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives4.0 License. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110677065-013