Archaeologies of Surveillance: Seeing and Power in the Material World

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Archaeologies of Surveillance: Seeing and Power in the Material World" at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Surveillance—the act and apparatus of observation—is a key fixture in the behaviors and materials of human societies. While narratives of power, authority, domination, and resistance feature prominently in the literature, surveillance remains undertheorized in archaeology. This relative lack of attention is perhaps because articulations of surveillance in other contexts, such as Bentham’s panopticon and Foucault’s essays on power and knowledge, were explicitly modern in their conception and application. Nevertheless, the social significance of watching and being watched is also apparent in the archaeological record of many premodern societies, especially states and empires. This session presents case studies on the archaeology of surveillance from a variety of disciplinary and societal contexts. In particular, it aims to examine the materiality and landscapes of surveillance. What are the material culture correlates for watching and, equally important, for the watched? Where and when do human groups invest in the architecture of surveillance and what effects can be detected or inferred from such investments? Where are material vestiges of surveillance conspicuous in their absence? By examining the conditions of surveillance (forced labor, borderlands, colonialism, imperialism, bureaucracy) in a number of global contexts, we also demonstrate how archaeology can contribute to broader dialogues in surveillance studies.