Landscapes of Water

Anthropological studies about water are underdeveloped, customarily policy-driven and health-focused, while archaeological studies often attend to agriculture. But water is more than a necessary fluid that sustains bodies or a vector for disease. Water connects the system of the human body to other systems – biological systems, like plants and soils, and sociopolitical systems, like trade and migratory networks – and develops these, also. To address the significance and role of water in human existence, we expand the dimensions of the study of water to include landscapes that are political and social, ontological and magical, in addition to being physical and economical. We review the often mechanistic archaeological frameworks and particularistic applied research on water abundance/quality/access. Highlighting geographical, political, and historical processes we propose ways to examine health and demography in the Near East and Amazonia, contrasting landscapes that are, nonetheless, made internally coherent and subject to transformation through movement of water.