Using multi-methods in archaeology: Circulatory infrastructure, cybernetics and 19th-century communication technologies in Australia

The Overland Telegraph system linked Australia to nascent global information and communication networks. Its arrival marked a key milestone in what we call Australia’s ‘telegraph time’—a fifty-year period from 1854–1904 when telegraphic systems were a significant driver of changes in economic, political and cultural activities. This British colonial infrastructure also marked the beginnings of the displacement of First Nations people along the route. In this paper, we explore how a multi-method and cybernetic, or complex systems, approach to the study of large-scale systems like telegraphy can make these histories and heritage more legible and meaningful today. We combine industrial, historical and indigenous archaeologies, systems engineering, cultural anthropology, photography, and critical theory to research the Overland Telegraph Line (OTL) and, in so doing, better reveal the socio-technical scale and impact of the OTL as a circulatory infrastructure. Our multi-disciplinary study of the ‘flows’ of the OTL—the material, the archival, the decommissioning, the repurposing, and the corridors of connection that remain—make visible its workings and highlight its enduring impacts. This multi-methods approach case study provides a model for archaeology generally, but especially the archaeology of linear features, such as pathways, journeyscapes, Songlines and linear infrastructure.