Suryanarayan, Akshyeta

English

Apollo (Cambridge)

 July 2017  |   In Sickness and In HealthScholarship on the historiography and mapping of the creation of India’s archae-ological knowledge has proliferated in recent years. Guha’s monograph is a welcome addition to this growing field, and interrogates the established narra-tives of the creation and dissemination of archaeological knowledge in India. She successfully challenges the evolutionary history of disciplinary progress within archaeology, and casts a critical eye towards the search for ‘origins’ and the celebration of ‘discoveries’ and archives within archaeological discourse, phe-nomena still widely observable in Indian archaeological research today. In her examination of the historical relationship between methodologies, inferences and the subject of enquiries within archaeology, Guha demonstrates how the practices and scholarship of archaeology and traditions of historiography are themselves ‘artefacts of history’. She calls upon archaeologists and historians to question inherited disciplinary attitudes, practices and claims about the past.Her introductory chapter presents the aims of the book and sets the stage for the four main areas she critically appraises in the history of Indian archaeolog-ical research. Chapter One covers the roots of antiquarian practices and colo-nial historiography’s role in dictating present ideas of histories of archaeological research. Chapter Two presents the relationship between the politics of imperial-ism and the local histories of museums in India through the example of the cura-tion of Assyrian collections in Bombay in the mid-nineteenth century. Chapter Three shows the uncertainties and anxieties of the development of philology in colonial India and its relationship with archaeology; and Chapters Four and Five Artefacts of History: Archaeology, Historiography and Indian PastsBy Sudesha Guha2015. New Delhi: Sage Publications India Pvt Ltd.Pbk. 273 pp. 93 B/w illus.ISBN: 978-93-515-0164-0Reviewed by Akshyeta SuryanarayanDepartment of Archaeology, University of CambridgeArchaeological Review from Cambridge   32.1136 |   Book Review: Artefacts of Historycover the theoretical history of scholarship of the Indus Civilization and its effects on colonial and nationalist heritage. Her concluding chapter, A Vision for Archae-ology, addresses the creation and proliferation of ‘nationalist’ archaeology prior to Partition; its relationship with communalism and positivism; and its systemic exclusion of issues concerning gender, interdisciplinary research and pluralism.In her discussion about antiquarian practices in India, Guha joins other critics of colonial historiography by questioning historians’ tendencies to follow the colo-nial ‘origin story’ in Indian archaeology, providing examples of pre-colonial and indigenous historical investigations. She contextualizes and criticizes the com-monly-held attitude by archaeologists that field discoveries are more important than text-based philological scholarship, demonstrating how colonial antiquar-ian scholarship used visualization within knowledge claims to define notions of true histories, ‘correct’ observations and ‘proper’ modes of historical enquiry. The Assyrian displays exhibited in Bombay (discussed in Chapter Two), demon-strates how the politics of imperialism came alive visually. This case study pro-vides a synthesis of the ideas covered in the book, demonstrating how the pro-duction and representation of archives, artefacts and social memory come to form the historiography of archaeological practice. The reasons behind the distance between philology and field studies within Indian archaeology is further explored in Chapter Three, which is a critical read for all South Asian archaeologists. The fourth chapter, fifth chapter and conclusion will be of particular interest to Indus archaeologists. Although Guha covers fairly familiar ground in her discussion about how theoretical influences from North America and Europe define Indus Civilization research, these chapters raise provocative questions that must be considered by researchers and students studying the Indus Civi-lization. These include being wary of following established conventions of interpretations (that are often guided by essentialist, colonialist or nationalist frameworks) and interrogating why certain narratives and questions have come to dominate Indus research. Also of relevance is Guha’s discussion on the cre-ation of civilizational heritage through archaeological scholarship. She notes how ‘heritage industries’ in India mutate and conflate conflicting historiograph-ical traditions, a trend that reflects a general lack of engagement with historio-graphical constructions. Finally, the concluding chapter touches upon a myriad of issues that are central to all archaeological research in India today, particu-larly multivocality and plurality in archaeological representation and research.  July 2017  |   In Sickness and In Health137Akshyeta Suryanarayan  | Two themes are prominently explored throughout this book. Firstly, the value of investigating networks and relationships between persons involved in the documentation and creation of India’s past, not just the history of institutions or ‘officialese’ archives. Guha mines several sources—archives, personal correspon-dences, photographs, textbooks and material objects—to recreate the politics of professional (and personal) relationships and social networks embedded within the histories of archaeological knowledge creation. Secondly, Guha demon-strates how the very acts of archiving or collecting, and the neglect of certain archives, create epistemic truisms. Life histories of collections and archives convey how certain histories of archaeology are created or erased, and archaeolo-gists of South Asia must actively be more reflexive in their practices and question why some evidence is more visible and considered more ‘accurate’ than others. Guha’s book is an important contribution to historiography and archaeol-ogy in India. Contrary to other histories of archaeology of the subcontinent, it does not have a structured, linear argument or a narrative of the history of archaeological research. Instead, it highlights different moments within the histories of archaeology in India, demonstrating that they each require much more critical engagement by those who study them. Guha’s book is a reminder of subcontinental archaeologists’ failure to recognize the histori-cal ties between objectivity, ‘dogmatic empiricism’ (the proclivity towards positivism in archaeology), and national and imperial politics; and presents the challenges that lie in the future towards pluralistic, interdisciplinary and multivocal archaeological research within the ‘national’ heritage agenda.

Artefacts of History: Archaeology, Historiography and Indian Pasts, by Sudesha Guha

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Artefacts of History: Archaeology, Historiography and Indian Pasts, by Sudesha Guha

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