The notion of delegation refers to the moment when one entity comes into contact with another in such a way as to detour and redirect the path of relation to the world which would have been followed by that entity in absence of any contact (refer to Latour 1999, 185-190). Acts of delegation change the directions of our goals, research, understandings, practices, etc. in relation to the world in which we are entangled. They are the key shifts of historical
genealogy born out of a collective encompassing human beings, other companion species, and the material world. Delegation ‘allows us to mobilize in an interaction movements which have been executed earlier, farther away, and by other actants, as though they are still present and available to us now’ (Latour 1994, 792). I argue that two of the key acts of delegation in the case of classical archaeology occurred in the context of survey practice in military geography during the early 19th century.
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