Bureaucratic Archaeology: State, Science, and Past in Postcolonial India

by Ashish Avikunthak

Overview

Bureaucratic Archaeology is a multi-faceted ethnography of quotidian practices of archaeology, bureaucracy and science in postcolonial India, concentrating on the workings of Archaeological Survey of India (ASI). This book uncovers an endemic link between micro-practice of archaeology in the trenches of the ASI to the manufacture of archaeological knowledge, wielded in the making of political and religious identity and summoned as indelible evidence in the juridical adjudication in the highest courts of India. This book is a rare ethnography of the daily practice of a postcolonial bureaucracy from within rather than from the outside. It meticulously uncovers the social, cultural, political and epistemological ecology of ASI archaeologists to show how postcolonial state assembles and produces knowledge. This is the first book length monograph on the workings of archaeology in a non-western world, which meticulously shows how theory of archaeological practice deviates, transforms and generates knowledge outside the Euro-American epistemological tradition.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781316512395
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	02/03/2022
Series:	South Asia in the Social Sciences , #17
Pages:	358
Product dimensions:	6.38(w) x 9.33(h) x 1.02(d)

About the Author

Ashish Avikunthak is an Associate Professor of Film/Media at the Harrington School of Communication and Media, the University of Rhode Island. He is a filmmaker and a cultural anthropologist. His scholarly works have been published in the Journal of Social Archaeology, Journal of Material Culture, Contributions to Indian Sociology and The Indian Economic and Social History Review among other publications. He has a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from Stanford University and before coming to URI, he had taught at Yale University.

Table of Contents

Preface; 1. Anthropology of archaeology; 2. Making of the Indus-Saraswati civilization; 3. Bureaucratic hierarchy in the ASI; 4. Spatial formation of the archaeological field; 5. Epistemological formation of the archaeological site; 6. Theory of archaeological excavation; 7. Making of the archaeological artifact; 8. Performance of archaeological representations; 9. The absent excavation reports; Conclusion; Index.

Editorial Reviews

'This book breaks completely new grounds in shifting attention from the history of archaeology in colonial India to the bureaucratic infrastructure and the epistemological landscape of the field in post-colonial India. It undertakes a rigorous ethnography of the inner workings of the gargantuan, state-sponsored edifice of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), to uncover the deep entanglements of the ideology of Hindu nationalism in determining its policies of excavations and the nature of the evidences it has produced on the nation’s ancient pasts. Avikunthak’s focus on this single institution, its controversial Saraswati Heritage Project, and its excavations of Harappan sites in western India allows for a thick description of materiality and practice - of sites and trenches, of digging and documentation protocols, of the transformation of artifacts into facts, of the hierarchy of personnel, and (not least of all) of the absence of reports. All of this comes together in a gripping narrative that acts as an expose’ on the compromised state-sponsored discipline in contemporary India. Unsparing in its criticism of the institution and the archaeology it performs at the commands of the state, this book offers a hitherto-untold ground-level account of the workings of the ASI and its modes of excavating pasts for the present. This is a powerful study whose implications go beyond the domain of archaeology to a larger critique of the institutional apparatus of the nation-state and the politics of knowledge-production.' Tapati Guha-Thakurta, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta

'In this meticulously researched and elegantly written, hard-hitting ethnography of archaeology, Ashish Avikunthak examines what he calls the 'largest archaeological bureaucracy in the world,' the Archaeological Survey of India, in the seemingly 'postcolonial' period. He demonstrates that through the protocols and habitual practices of bureaucracy, this apparatus produces 'facts on the ground' while the regime of coloniality remains intact and maintains oppression and corruption. At the same time, it becomes the vehicle for advocating and enforcing extreme nationalist discourses and practices, with deadly consequences. This is a rare book and an important contribution to the field of archaeological ethnography, the politics of archaeology, and the ethnography of the state, and it deserves to be read widely. I expect that it will be an inspiration for many other researchers around the world.' Yannis Hamilakis, Brown University

'A curious feature of postcolonial studies in archaeology is how scholars from the very countries involved in colonial enterprises dominate its discourse. Avikunthak’s brilliant book not only counters that dominance but also provides an extraordinary analysis of the micro-politics of archaeological practice unmatched by his western peers. Through meticulous study of the bureaucratic intricacies and tentacles of the ASI we are presented with an account of a postcolonial scholarly reality rarely acknowledged. By following the entire assembly line of meaning production from the artefacts uncovered in ASI excavation trenches to their transformation into published facts and court evidence, he painstakingly uncovers the convoluted and mediating networks between archaeology as a scientific discipline and nationalistic fundamentalism. He argues that the epistemology of archaeology in India is a symptom of a postcolonial bureaucratic rationality where science, state, and religion are contrived to manufacture a nation with a seemingly empirical past.' Bjørnar Julius Olsen, The University of Tromsø - The Arctic University of Norway

From the Publisher