Archaeological Sources of Ancient Indian History (UPSC)
Archaeology is the study of the human past though material remains. Material remains range from vestiges of grand palaces and temples to the small, discarded products of everyday human activity such as pieces of broken pottery. They include different things such as structures, artefact, bones, seeds, pollen, seals, coins, sculptures, and inscriptions.
Archaeology is based on Scientific Observation. Thus it helps us to dig the mound in a systematic manner, in successive layers to form an idea of Material life of People in the Past. Radiocarbon or C-14 helps us to determine the age of objects and with the help of Pollen Analysis we got to know the history of climate and vegetation of the past.
Culture
Material evidence is a key to understanding human behaviour and experience. It is not enough to describe a stone tool or pot; the challenge is to get the stone tool or pot to tell their stories about the people who made and used them. As the products of craft traditions and part of the lifestyles of people, artefacts are rooted in specific cultural contexts. So, the narrow technical meaning of ‘culture’ in archaeology can be stretched to correspond to the wider meaning mentioned earlier. The rhythms and patterns of time based on material culture are generally slower and longer than those of historical events, and archaeological Indian cultures do not coincide with the rise and fall of dynasties or kingdoms.
Field Archaeology
Field archaeology deals with the exploration and excavation of sites. Sites are places where material remains of past human activity can be identified. In the plains, in areas where mud and brick were used for making houses, archaeological sites occupied by people for a very long time are often visible as mounds. Mounds get formed over the centuries due to the rebuilding of structures and the accumulation of rubbish, windblown sand, and other sediments.
Palaeontology
Palaeontology is the study of the remains of dead organisms over enormous spans of time. Within this discipline, molecular biology and DNA studies have been used to understand hominid evolution, to answer questions about what ancient people looked like, and to plot patterns of migration. Bones provide a great deal of information. The distribution of faunal remains (animal bones) at a site can indicate which areas were used for butchering, cooking, eating, bone tool making, and refuse dumping. Faunal analysis gives information about the animals people hunted and domesticated, the age of animals at death, and the diseases that afflicted them. The bones of wild and domesticated species can usually be differentiated. The joints of animals used for agriculture or draught purposes get fused and can be identified. Faunal remains can lead to inferences about aspects of environment such as climate, vegetation, and the season during which a site was occupied. Sometimes, bones reveal contacts between communities. For instance, the identification of marine fish bones and shells at Inamgaon—at least 200 km from the sea—shows that its inhabitants had contacts with coastal communities .
Cognitive archaeology
Cognitive archaeology, which deals with ways of thinking, beliefs, and religion, is a fast-developing area within archaeology. Although a large number of religious texts are available for ancient and early medieval India, an exclusively text-based view of religion will not tell us everything we want to know about religious practice. The material evidence of ancient religions can make a major contribution in this area. There are many problems involved in translating archaeological cultures into history. An archaeological culture need not necessarily correspond to a linguistic group, political unit, or a social group such as a lineage, clan, or tribe. One of the most important questions is how to explain changes in material culture, especially pottery traditions. This is an issue that has not yet been adequately addressed or understood in the context of ancient India.
Ethnography
Ethnography is the study of living cultures and communities. Ethno- archaeology studies the behaviour and practices of living communities in order to interpret the archaeological evidence related to communities of the past. The Indian subcontinent is an area where many traditional features and methods survive—for instance in agriculture, animal husbandry, house building, the clothes people wear and the food they eat. Modern crafts persons are an important guide for understanding the ways in which ancient crafts persons made things. Technology involves much more than the techniques used for making artefact. It is necessary to explore the social organization of crafts persons, the customs and beliefs that material objects were part of, how goods were marketed, the relationship between crafts persons and traders, and between crafts persons and customers. Ethno-archaeology helps answer these sorts of questions as well. For instance, a tradition of carnelian bead manufacturing exists in Khambhat, in Gujarat, today. Studying modern bead making in this region gives valuable clues about the way in which the Harappan beads may have been made and the possible social organization of the bead makers.
Epigraphy or Ancient Inscription
Inscriptions and coins come under the general umbrella of archaeology and archaeological sources, but they are subjects of specialized study in their own right. The study of inscriptions is known as epigraphy. An ancient inscription is any writing that is engraved on something—stone, wood, metal, ivory plaques, bronze statues, bricks, clay, shells, pottery, etc. Epigraphy includes deciphering the text of inscriptions and analyzing the information they contain. It also includes palaeography, the study of ancient writing.
As mentioned earlier, the oldest inscriptions in the Indian subcontinent are in the yet undeciphered Harappan script. The oldest deciphered inscriptions belong to the late 4th century BCE, and are in Brahmi and Kharoshthi (sometimes spelt Kharoshti). These include those of the Maurya emperor Ashoka (Ashokan Inscriptions) which are in a number of different indian languages and scripts, but mostly in the Prakrit language and Brahmi script. As there are no obvious links between the Harappan script and Brahmi or Kharoshthi, what happened to writing in between remains a mystery. There is no direct mention of writing in Vedic literature, but references to poetic metres, grammatical and phonetic terms, very large numbers, and complex arithmetical calculations in later Vedic texts are taken by some historians to indicate the possibility that writing may have been known at the time.
The first definite literary references to writing and written documents occur in the Buddhist Pali texts, especially the Jatakas and the Vinaya Pitaka. Panini’s Ashtadhyayi refers to the word lipi (script). The Brahmi of Ashoka’s inscriptions seems a fairly developed script, and it must have had a prior history of at least a few centuries. Recently, important direct evidence that Brahmi existed in pre- Maurya times has come from Anuradhapura in Sri Lanka, where excavations unearthed potsherds with short inscriptions (probably names of people) that can be dated to at least the early 4th century BCE.
There are three main types of scripts. In a logographic script, written symbols stand for a word, in a syllabic script for a syllable, and in an alphabetic script for a single phonetic sound. In the strict sense of the term, in an alphabet, the vowels should have a separate and fully independent status equal to that of consonants. Both the Brahmi and Kharoshthi scripts stand midway between alphabetic and syllabic scripts, and can be described as semi-syllabic or semi-alphabetic.
Numismatic
In modern times, money functions as a medium of exchange, a store of value, a unit of accounts, and a medium of deferred payment. In its most general sense, money is any item that is accepted by a community for the exchange of goods or services or for the discharge of debt. Currency and coinage are more specific terms. Currency is a medium of exchange backed by an issuing authority, one that can be used to immediately discharge any kind of financial obligation. Coinage is metal currency. It has a definite size, shape, and weight standard, and bears the stamp of an issuing authority. The main message-bearing side of a coin is known as the obverse and the other side the reverse. In the world context, the earliest coins appear in Lydia in West Asia in c. 700 BCE and were made of electrum, a natural alloy of gold and silver.
Metrology—the measurement and arrangement of coins by weight—is an important aspect of numismatics. In the course of circulation, coins are subjected to wear and tear and their weight gradually decreases. This fact enables numismatists to arrange them in a chronological sequence and to distinguish between coins of a hoard that have been in circulation for greater and less periods of time. Various techniques are used for ascertaining the metal content of coins. One method is to carefully inspect their colour and lustre. There are other informal physical procedures such as testing for resonance by dropping the coin on a hard surface to produce a sound or testing its ductility by biting it. A water displacement test can be conducted to measure a coin’s specific gravity. There are also several chemical testing procedures for ascertaining metal composition. These are more accurate but generally damage the coin. Non- destructive scientific techniques such as X-ray fluorescence (XRF) spectrometry, which are now being used to analyse the elemental composition of coins, provide quick and accurate results.
Mint towns can be identified by noting sites where large numbers of coin moulds have been found. An analysis of coin dies can help identify the number and sequence of issues and estimates of the volume of coins produced by these dies can be made by extrapolation.
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