Theorizing Infrastructure

Summary

Accounts of ancient infrastructure are very common. Almost every archaeologist who deals with complex polities regularly encounters infrastructure in some form - including roads, irrigation canals, bridges, harbors, aqueducts, recording systems and forts - just to name a few of the most common varieties. That said, the concept is rarely explicitly theorized or defined within the discipline - and is usually identified on the basis of "we know it when we see it". In contrast, this paper seeks to reflect on infrastructure as a theoretically rich category. Thus infrastructures will be elaborated upon as, 1) networks where political and technological projects are fused and 2) as material apparatus that mediate relations between political subjects and states.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• The Technopolitics of Ancient Infrastructures

Keywords