Past human spatial dynamics are strongly influenced by water availability. Since the development of agrarian sedentary societies, water is seen as an essential ressource. Yet quantifying its influence on past populations across different environmental and chronological contexts remains methodologically challenging. This study investigates the relative importance of thirteen water-related variables alongside five additional environmental covariates in shaping archaeological site distributions. Using machine learning model of Maximum Entropy (MaxEnt), a total of 461 Bronze Age and Iron Age (3,500 - 50 BCE) sites from four regions with contrasting climatic conditions - the Rhine Valley, Lazio, the Shephelah, and the Kurdistan region of Iraq - were analysed. Results show that distance to water flow and stable topographic variables consistently emerge as the strongest predictors of settlement location. Palaeoclimatic variables, particularly precipitation seasonality and precipitation of the wettest quarter, outperform modern remote sensing indices. Despite contrasting environmental conditions, the four regions share broadly comparable settlement trajectories, with a consistent shift toward greater site density and spatial dispersion from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age. These findings highlight the value of temporally robust environmental proxies for modelling past human-landscape interactions and offer a replicable framework for water-focused archaeological predictive modelling across diverse climatic settings.