Book Review
The term ‘ethnoarchaeology’ was coined around 1900 by
American ethnographer and
archaeologist Jesse Walter Fewkes to bridge over gaps in archaeological data
recovered from a given site. Fewkes applied studies of actions and behaviours
of contemporary people (the present) as an analogy to illuminate the gaps (the
past). Today, at a basic level, ethnoarchaeology may be identified as a
sub-discipline of archaeology, which claims the methodological distinction of applying
ethnographic data from material and non-material traditions of a people living in the present as an analogy for comprehending
the lifeways of a people of the past. This needs to be
qualified at least on two grounds: firstly, a link between the temporal gap of
the two peoples needs to be established and secondly, a similar set of
environmental circumstances of the two peoples needs to be seen to exist. The
claim is, tradition persists in unbroken and linear
continuum from the past to the present. Recently, quite a few archaeologists,
such as Lewis Binford, Patti Jo Watson and Nicholas David, have argued for caution against uninterrogated
application of ethnographic data in reconstructing ancient lifeways. Others
have argued against application of anthropological data because in many cases,
not enough attention is paid by anthropologists as to how material remains are
created and discarded by societies and how these remains vary with variance in
social organizations. Taking these cautions on board, contemporary
ethnoarchaeological studies in
Hence, when one receives a
copy of Past and Present, a volume on ehtnoarchaeology published in
The volume is divided into
three parts which cover the following themes:
(i) current state of ethnoarchaeology in India, (ii) anthropological
investigations executed in the 19th and 20th centuries
before the formal introduction of ethnoarchaeology as a field of study, and
(iii) the role of analogy in archaeological interpretation of four aspects of
material culture (viz. settlement and subsistence, artifacts, technology and
mortuary practices). In the first part, Bishnupriya Basak and Supria Varma
review the current state of ethnoarchaeological research in
Part Two opens with one of
the most interesting essays in the volume, in which Swadhin Sen interrogates
“the historicity of modern conditions to understand how dominant ideals of
ethnoarchaeology and time have been constructed and are being constructed” and
proposes, “that questions about time must be seen in
the culture-power dynamics” (p. 81). One may add, that
the notion of constrictivity is inherent in any study of the past. Hence, the
questions that he raises are valid not only for archaeology but historiography
in general. Ajay Pratap studies archaeology of shifting cultivation in Santhal
Parganas by adopting a historical approach in ethnoarchaeology. On a slightly
different trajectory, M. L. K. Murty presents a case study of the
Of the eighteen essays
included in Part Three, three included in the first section
are devoted to the theme of settlement and subsistence. In one of these,
Shahida Ansari focuses on the hearth pattern of Mesolithic, Neolithic and
Chalcolithic cultures and demonstrates, with the help of ethnographic study of
the Musahars, the Kols and the Mallahs inhabiting south-central Ganga Valley,
that a hearth is not necessarily a marker of a unit or a family and that unless
hearth remains and floor areas are found in the same context, it may be
premature to infer the existence of a population at a given site. Because the
bulk of material culture in humid tropics quickly disappears from
archaeological record, Sukanya Sharma draws on ethnological research on the
Garos, and makes a case that prehistoric sites exhibiting ground and polished
tools in the Ganol and Rongram river valleys in
The third section of the
volume explores the overlap of ethnoarchaeology and experimental archaeology to
illuminate on techniques and organization of crafts production in ceramics,
metal objects, shells and beads. In the first essay of the section, Jaya Menon
offers a critical analysis of tradition and technologies from the perspective
of the ethnographers and the ethnoarchaeologists. She cautions that
ethnoarchaeologists should disassociate themselves from the notion of an
unbroken tradition as far as craft production is concerned. Anup Mishra follows
this thread of argument and shows that the pottery making tradition in central
Bibha Tripathi again
argues in favour of continuity of tradition from the past to the present. She
combines archaeological evidence of iron working with an ethnographic study on
the Agaria and the Asur communities (who inhabit the hilly tract lying at the
meeting ground of Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand and Orissa)
so as to reconstruct the mellurgical process of the past. Interestingly, she
posits that the Agaria and the Asur communities may have been the inventors of
iron technology in
The last two essays of the
fourth section explore mortuary practices, which is an area that still remains
unexplored to a great extent. In one of these, Tiatoshi Jamir brings in archaeological data from an excavation of a burial site
at Jotsoma in Nagaland and ethnographic data on funerary practice of the Angami Nagas to arrive at coherent
understanding of past mortuary customs of the community.
Undoubtedly, Past and
Present: Ethnoarchaeology in India, rich and varied in its collection, is
an important contribution in the field of archaeology. Unquestionably, it will
prove to be extremely valuable for archaeological studies in
However, not all essays in
the volume rigorously follow the research strategy of ethnoarchaeology.
Consequently, this shortcoming has undermined the objective of the volume.
Contrasted to some essays such as Alok Kumar Kanungo’s, Prabhakar Upadhyaya and
Bibha Tripathi’s joint essay does not even provide data collected from field
study and rely, almost exclusively, on published ethnographic accounts. Pranab
K. Chattopadhyay’s essay on the kansaris of
Shahnaj Husne Jahan*