Culture and the past
D.K. BHATTACHARYA
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Presents aspects of ethnography advocating their use in archaeology
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PAST AND PRESENT — Ethnoarchaeology in India: Edited by Gautam Sengupta, Suchira Roychoudhury and Sujit Som; Pragati Publications in Collaboration with Centre for Archaeological Studies and Training, Eastern India, Kolkata, 4382/4B, Ansari Road, Daryaganj, New Delhi-110002. Rs.1795.
This book embodies 25 papers presented in a conference at the Centre of Archaeological Studies and Training, Kolkata. Bishnupriya Basak in her opening article presents an excellent discussion on the issues and perspectives of ethnoarchaeological research in India. She concludes that most of our researches merely attempt to document the survival of tradition. She goes on to add that such research "cannot be defined as ethnoarchaeology and may be at best left as ethnography." The reviewer would like to add that these do not qualify to be proper ethnography either.
That culture does not exist in a vacuum, and also that culture is not a tangible and material quantum is common knowledge. Yet, when one goes through the delineation of most of the authors one is led to believe that it is a quantum which can be used for comparison in a selective manner. That is, non-material specificities of culture are merely epic phenomena. For instance, Supriya Varma feels that rituals have no role to play in ethnoarchaeological analysis. This is not entirely correct because choices made by human mind are determined by his cognitive mosaic. And the only window to understanding cognition for an ethnographer lies in the detailed analysis of ritual and belief structure.
Cultural change
Although Basal discusses D.D. Kosambi in the earlier paper, the reason for studying rituals that Kosambi emphasised has been totally missed. Culture does not change in a programmed and predictable manner. The choices made by an ethnic group within a given context (ecological stress, socio-economic stress) give shape to change. Cultural change, therefore, is ethno-specific and no archaeological information can ever untangle the strands of operative imperatives within a complex society where cultural pluralism is abundantly evident. Shanti Pappu raises many important issues and laments the declining interest in ethnoarchaeology in Palaeolithic research where it can be extremely rewarding.
A free and frank review of literature is bound to reveal that ethnoarchaeology in India has come to be like an appendix which has remained away from the main concerns of both archaeologists as also anthropologists. Consequently, reaching out towards processual analysis has to wait in India till horizontal excavation is undertaken or can be afforded. Most anthropologists have (Levi-Strauss, Robert Redfield to name a couple) earlier categorically rejected the practice of borrowing ethnographic experience to explain prehistoric data.
And this can explain the mutual distancing of anthropology from archaeology that Shanti Pappu notes. Sangeeta Dasgupta shows that ethnographic account can show change of perspective and hence need not be used uncritically.
Ajay Pratap proposes the basics towards attempting archaeology of shifting cultivation. Swayam Panda presents an excellent case of settlement reorganisation in Saurashtra. This paper should act as a model for future workers in ethnoarchaeology.
Cultural objects
Part III embodies the largest number of articles, which cover a wide range of material cultural objects, their technique of manufacture and social relevance. Kaushik Gangopadhyay delineates the articles used in the worship of the snake goddess by the Bauris but fails to make a case for their use in archaeology.
Vidula Jayaswal presents the workmanship of sculpturing in Varanasi Sarnath region. Asadulla Ali Ashraf describes various hunting and fishing techniques as well as implements used by the tribes of Northeast India. He goes on to conclude that ecological imperatives force the people to continue with primitive techniques. Jaya Menon describes the bead making tradition of Kathiawad and shell bangle working of West Bengal.
In another article Arati Deshpande-Mukherjee describes the same shell bangle working tradition in more detail. P. Vijaya Prakash presents pottery techniques and types from the existing villages at Kummuruputtu and Srujanakota and also excavates mounds in the same region to establish a diachronicity. Dominique Allios presents the ethnography of potters in a district of Bangladesh. Pranab K. Chattopadhyay describes Bronze workers in Bengal.
Sujit Som and P. Vijaya Prakash describe the Gond and Bondo Megaliths and their utility in preventing soil erosion and facilitating water harvesting.
The book presents a series of rather interesting aspects of ethnography advocating their use in archaeological explanations. At the end, however, one cannot help but feel that the understanding of ethnoarchaeology for Indian scholars is still not very focussed. It is, nevertheless, an extremely important publication which attempts to address the issue of interpretation in archaeology for the first time.
The editors need to be specially congratulated for organising the papers thematically. Addition of colour plates adds a distinct vitality to the issues and objects described in the text.
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