Towards an Archaeological Theory of Infrastructure

Darryl Wilkinson

doi:10.1007/s10816-018-9410-2

Abstract

Infrastructure makes up a considerable portion of the material culture that archaeologists study. Whether measured in terms of spatial extension or just sheer mass, infrastructural entities are often among the biggest artifacts that archaeologists encounter in the field. Yet there is no overarching theoretical framework for the archaeological study of infrastructure, and its different varieties tend to be treated in a rather piecemeal fashion. This article therefore seeks to lay some foundations for a more theoretically unified approach to infrastructure within the discipline. It offers a general definition or infrastructure, as well as a basic typology. The typology presented is fourfold, encompassing (1) static infrastructure (e.g., terraces, harbors and storehouses), (2) circulatory infrastructure (e.g., highways, canals, aqueducts, and sewers), (3) bounding infrastructure (e.g., palisades, ditches, and corrals), and (4) signaling infrastructure (e.g., lighthouses and beacons). By analogy with more heavily theorized categories such as urbanism, it is suggested that infrastructure should be a topic of global comparative analysis within archaeology and its allied disciplines.

Highlights

In one sense, archaeologists have always studied infrastructure
In my outline of a basic definition of infrastructure, I argued that neither the state nor urbanism was a necessary prerequisite for its existence
Infrastructure does not have a simple relationship to urbanism or any other index of “complexity.” In particular, there is little evidence for a general evolutionary trajectory for infrastructure, and different regions and time periods appear to offer their own distinctive patterns

Summary

Introduction

Archaeologists have always studied infrastructure. We could hardly say the discipline has ignored things like roads, aqueducts, field systems, or canals over the years (Morrison 2015). Infrastructure often actively promotes human organization at a larger scale—uniting dispersed households and settlements through their integration with physical entities like irrigation systems and roads.

Results

Conclusion