The Work of Boundaries: Critical Cartographies and the Archaeological Record of the Relatively Recent Past

Abstract

Discussions of boundaries have enjoyed a renaissance in anthropological archaeology of recent years, especially as conversations surrounding forced migration and border walls look toward the material record for clarification about what borders are and what they do. Since 1995, when the Annual Review of Anthropology last addressed a similar issue, numerous methodological and conceptual changes in the field have led to a large proliferation in the literature. A brief Google Scholar search of the words “archaeology,” “boundaries,” and “work” between 1995 and the present produces 365,000 results and makes one point clear: Archaeologists have had a lot to say about the topic. By framing this review around the work of boundaries, I signal two trends in the field of archaeology with conceptual and methodological implications. The first trend is the increased centrality of materiality as a theoretical register as new questions relating to object agency, human/nonhuman boundaries, and new models of environmental archaeology have populated the literature. In such climates it is important to focus on boundaries as a kind of assemblage of actants that takes on agencies beyond notions of territory. Associated border, crossing, transnational, and refuge assemblages are discussed. The second trend is the increased attention to boundary work in archaeology. Whether it is in the form of postcolonial/decolonizing archaeologies, new materialities/symmetrical archaeologies, or contemporary archaeologies, there has been increased pushback against attempts to define anthropological archaeology along processual lines. In this article I review one thread of that literature, critical cartographies, and how they have used the archaeological record to develop radical renditions of political space where boundaries are involved. I focus on scholarship surrounding the relatively recent past (ca. 1200 CE to the present). Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Anthropology Volume 51 is October 2022. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.