How to Dig a Drinking Well: Watery Politics on China’s Han Frontier

Summary

Water plays an undeniable role in the constitution of politics and society, presenting an elemental force to be controlled for the expansion of agrarian economies. The political life line linked with water is perhaps nowhere better illustrated than with the Han Empire whose massive canalization and irrigation works were necessary to facilitate state expansion into deserts and tropics. The archaeological focus on water and agrarian infrastructure has however overlooked other capacities of water, for instance, as a potable substance in the production of life. Because an anthropocentric viewpoint begins with water as a matter of control, water appears as an object existing independently of the wider physical phenomenon. However, if archaeologists are to approach imperial projects as involving new ways of perceiving difference, this paper argues that water presents a contentious form at the intersection of frontier ecologies. Shifting away from infrastructures of water, this paper explores how water forms distinctive assemblages in colonial households beginning with the building of drinking wells in a newly established frontier. Where and how deep and wide to the shape of a well confronted Han settlers with water’s tangibility, an encounter which enmeshed people with water’s less controllable presence in soils and plants.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 21031