Pointers are very much a language concept and very much not an architecture concept. I enjoy this particular writeup that touches on some of the distinctions. Of particular interest is the fact that the C standard itself states that two pointers are not equivalent simply by virtue of having the same address value.

https://www.ralfj.de/blog/2018/07/24/pointers-and-bytes.html

I also happen to very much enjoy this piece on how the C abstract machine has very little in common with modern architecture.

https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=3212479