Pushing borders for how we can frame and interpret archeological evidence in wider diachronic perspectives is a necessity in archeology-not least in regions where archeology is under threat due to modern urban development and the general lack of resources to develop cultural heritage management plans. The article focuses on how scattered archeological evidence-which is usually not published by archeological projects due to its feeble nature-can bring new knowledge to light about the ways in which water was managed in urban contexts, in particular in semiarid regions, such as the region in which Gerasa was located. Only in the middle Islamic period (13th century CE) the site was resettled. It focuses on the city Gerasa/ Jerash in northern Jordan, which was one of the middle-sized Decapolis cities that flourished from the Roman period (first century CE) until the end of the Umayyad period, when a devastating earthquake hit the city in 749 CE bringing urban life to an almost complete halt. This article tackles ways in which archeological research can give perspectives on the development of water management and the strategies behind such management systems in ancient societies of historical periods. Thus, urban use and re-use of heavy metal sources should be factored into understanding historical global-scale contaminant distributions. These represent the contamination pathways of an ancient city-hinterland setting and reflect long-term anthropogenic legacies at local and regional scales beginning in the Roman period. Distribution of heavy metal contaminants, especially Pb, observed in the urban soils and sediments within this ancient city and its hinterland wadi resulted from aeolian, fluvial, cultural and post-depositional processes. New evidence from ancient Gerasa (Jerash), Jordan, suggests that small-scale but intense Roman, Byzantine and Umayyad period urban, artisanal, and everyday site activities contributed to substantial heavy metal contamination of the city and its hinterland wadi, even though no metal mining took place and hardly any lead water pipes were used. Roman metal use and related extraction activities resulted in heavy metal pollution and contamination, in particular of Pb near ancient mines and harbors, as well as producing a global atmospheric impact.
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