ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates water infrastructures in the Hittite cities of the Anatolian Bronze Age and demonstrates the theoretical possibilities that new materialism and political ecology offer to the study of ancient urban landscapes. It discusses the unusual associations between karst geologies and the mimetic architectonics of built monuments in urban and rural environments that provide sites of access to the Underworld, ritual practice associated with ancestors, as well as liminal sites of political significance. The chapter considers water infrastructure as a nature/culture assemblage that brings together religious practices and political spectacles. Water infrastructure in Hittite cities has been the subject matter of archaeological research in the capital cities of the empire and in Hittite rural landscapes, while the studies of water in Hittite religion and literature are also expanding. The political ecology of water in Hittite Anatolia, especially in the context of its karst upland geologies, is characterized by powerful hybridization of religious and practical infrastructures.
