ABSTRACT
Ditches are usually dug to create tiered drainage networks that are laid out in curvilinear, dendritic, trellis, rectilinear or gridded forms. The availability of soil water for crops in wetlands ensures more reliable yields during times of climatic stress, such as the increased frequency of droughts in the highlands following intensification of El Nino Southern Oscillation events during the mid-to-late Holocene. The oldest archaeological evidence of ditch digging in the highlands is the Tambul spade and the ancient ditch from which it was collected. Extensive archaeological excavations were undertaken at Kuk in order to map and investigate early ditch networks. The advent of ditch digging not only marks a technological innovation in terms of the practices involved, but it also represents a watershed in terms of how people were able to project technology onto the landscape.
