Political Geography

A great deal of academic attention has been paid to the formation and workings of the ‘state’ in past and present complex societies, and although this term can be problematic, it nonetheless represents an important unit of cultural analysis. The establishment of political authority beyond a certain demographic scale typically requires ideological, social and territorial re-ordering (often but not exclusively involving greater hierarchical structure). My interests have so far been in exploring ways in which past political geography might be understood through archaeologically-recoverable evidence, for example, in particular object value hierarchies or through physical manifestations of political territory (see publications list).