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How do landscapes-defined in the broadest sense to incorporate the physical contours of the built environment, the aesthetics of form, and the imaginative reflections of spatial representations-contribute to the making of politics? Shifting through the archaeological, epigraphic, and artistic remains of early complex societies, this provocative and far-reaching book is the first systematic attempt to explain the links between spatial organization and politics from an anthropological point of view. The Classic-period Maya, the kingdom of Urartu, and the cities of early southern Mesopotamia provide the focal points for this multidimensional account of human polities. Are the cities and villages in which we live and work, the lands that are woven into our senses of cultural and personal identity, and the national territories we occupy merely stages on which historical processes and political rituals are enacted? Or do the forms of buildings and streets, the evocative sensibilities of architecture and vista, the aesthetics of place conjured in art and media constitute political landscapes-broad sets of spatial practices critical to the formation, operation, and overthrow of polities, regimes, and institutions? Smith brings together contemporary theoretical developments from geography and social theory with anthropological perspectives and archaeological data to pursue these questions.

Landscape assessment. --- Landscape archaeology --- Political anthropology. --- Assessment, Landscape --- Environmental perception --- Landscape evaluation --- Landscape perception --- Perception, Landscape --- Human ecology --- Land use --- Landscape protection --- Archaeology --- Cultural landscapes --- Anthropology, Political --- Government, Primitive --- Ethnology --- Political science --- Political aspects. --- Anthropological aspects --- Political anthropology --- Political aspects --- Landscape assessment --- anthropological. --- archaeologists. --- artistic works. --- classicists. --- complex societies. --- cultural identity. --- early societies. --- epigraphs. --- formation of governments. --- formation of polities. --- maya. --- national territories. --- nations. --- nonfiction. --- overthrow of regimes. --- physical world. --- political anthropology. --- political formation. --- political history. --- political institutions. --- political landscape. --- political power. --- political rituals. --- political science. --- social theory. --- systematic approach. --- textbooks. --- urartu.

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The Political Machine investigates the essential role that material culture plays in the practices and maintenance of political sovereignty. Through an archaeological exploration of the Bronze Age Caucasus, Adam Smith demonstrates that beyond assemblies of people, polities are just as importantly assemblages of things-from ballots and bullets to crowns, regalia, and licenses. Smith looks at the ways that these assemblages help to forge cohesive publics, separate sovereigns from a wider social mass, and formalize governance-and he considers how these developments continue to shape politics today.Smith shows that the formation of polities is as much about the process of manufacturing assemblages as it is about disciplining subjects, and that these material objects or "machines" sustain communities, orders, and institutions. The sensibilities, senses, and sentiments connecting people to things enabled political authority during the Bronze Age and fortify political power even in the contemporary world. Smith provides a detailed account of the transformation of communities in the Caucasus, from small-scale early Bronze Age villages committed to egalitarianism, to Late Bronze Age polities predicated on radical inequality, organized violence, and a centralized apparatus of rule.From Bronze Age traditions of mortuary ritual and divination to current controversies over flag pins and Predator drones, The Political Machine sheds new light on how material goods authorize and defend political order.

Sovereignty. --- Material culture --- Bronze age --- Political aspects --- Caucasus, South --- Antiquities.

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Eurasia