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Abstract

This paper studies how canals in Qaraqalpaqstan, an autonomous republic of western Uzbekistan, function as a form of environmental memory to preserve pre-colonial knowledge of water management, while being simultaneously reinterpreted by state narratives of heritage and modernization.

The lower Amu Darya is a highly dynamic floodplain, whose shifting course has led to frequent shifts in the distribution of arable land. As a result of efforts to optimize agricultural production, the basin has undergone particular desiccation over the last 70 years.

I refer to the basin through the framework of hydro-heritage, denoting the cultural meanings connected to a water body, which carry importance for a community’s past, present and future. In Qaraqalpaqstan heritage has been used to understand how communities manage water in a deltaic landscape facing rapid desertification.

My research reflects on 6-month fieldwork under the Arts and Culture Development Fund (ACDF). I examine how canal heritage is constructed through institutional narratives “from above” and compare these with local experiences of hydro-heritage “from below”. Locally, canals are described in four ways: jap (main/secondary canals), salma (tertiary canals), qaryq (field furrows) and zeykash (drainage). This system, described in pre-Russian sources and still in use today, stores and transmits pre-colonial understandings of water management.

The region was annexed by the Russian empire in 1873. By combining contemporary ethnographic data with Russian ethnographic and archaeological sources from 1873–1936 and Khivan historical accounts, the paper shows how imperial scholarship, Soviet modernization, and present-day heritage initiatives have reshaped interpretations of irrigation history. I likewise study the contribution of artists like Taras Shevchenko and Igor Savitsky, participating in the Butakov and Tolstov expeditions, on interpretations of the basin. As such, my analysis highlights how competing interpretations of canals continue to influence how communities remember their local hydraulic histories.