Water Infrastructure As An Archaeological Urban Landscape

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Historical Archaeology of Cities: Unearthing Complexity in Urban Landscapes", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Water is undoubtedly an essential element for human life. In cities, it creates and configures an infrastructure that involves nature, networks, materials, discourses, and trades, for its use and disposal. This conference will approach the analysis of the archaeological landscape constituted by the materiality of the infrastructure and intersected by worldviews, the sensory and bodily experiences, and practices associated with water. The examination covers its impacts under the colonial regime and its consequences on the modernisation of the cities, mainly in regard to its distribution and maintenance. To this effect, a water itinerary is traced through the geographies of place and time, the natural environments from which the resource is extracted, the streets, the houses, and the uses of their spaces, up to its discharge into other bodies of water. This route is captured in cartographies that embody this complex landscape.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2023   •
• Historical Archaeology of Cities: Unearthing Complexity in Urban Landscapes

Keywords

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Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow