Theorizing the Intersection of Space and Power: Lessons from the Landscape Archaeology of the US Southwest

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Along with many other disciplines, Space and Power are both topics of long-standing interest within archaeology. Space has been heavily theorized by authors such as LeFebvre, de Certeau, Soja, and Adam Smith. While there has not been an equivalent to the “Spatial Turn,” Power has also received much attention, and authors such as Marx, Althusser, Bourdieu, and Foucault have been deployed by archaeologists. However, while Space and Power have occasionally been considered together (e.g., Foucault), the linkage has not been formally theorized. In addition, one of the most sustained and developed theorizations of Power, Michael Mann’s “four sources” model of social power (Military, Economic, Ideological, and Political) has not been drawn upon by archaeologists, even though he applies it to ancient societies himself in his first volume. This paper seeks to contribute to filling the first gap by proposing the idea of “spatializing” Mann’s model. The Landscape Archaeology of Hohokam canals and Chacoan roads will be utilized as examples to show how this idea can be operationalized, and to illustrate its potential for archaeological application and the development of theory linking Space and Power.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 37393.0