Ethnoarchaeology of Yamuna Valley

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About the Book Ethnoarchaeology is emerging as a new branch of archaeology to study the socio-cultural behavior of living societies with their material culture for studying the past. The present book tries to bring out the genesis of various cultural trends, artistic activities, settlement pattern and religious beliefs of the people of Yamuna valley on the basis of the ethnoarchaeological evidence in an inter disciplinary perspective.

The present study has investigated the present day traditional practices of the ethnic communities of the Yamuna valley from an ethnoarchaeological perspective and discussed all the major practices prevailing in this polyandrous zone like transhumance pastroralism, chhans, houses, agricultural practices, exploitation of biological resources, pottery traditions, folk deities and wooden images, which gives an overview of the ethnoarchaeological study in the Yamuna vally.

The present work is a first complete systematic documentation on the ethnoarchaeological of the Yamuna valley. In this study all the archaeological, historical, cultural data are interpreted in an ethnographic framework.

The present book which is an attempt to study the ethnoarchaeology of the Yamuna valley in detail, discussing all the aspect of life and cultural of the region from past to present, and enables in tracing out the continuation of ancient tradition in the region. The work in this new branch of archaeology is only of its kind in the subject as far as ethnoarchaeological research in Uttarakhand is concerned.

About the Author Dr. Pradeep M. Saklani (b 1962), is presently Reader in the Department of History including Ancient Indian History, Cultural and Archaeology, H. N. B. Garhwal University, Srinagar Garhwal Uttaranchal. Dr. Saklani has been closely associated with extensive explorations and excavations in the central Himalayan region. He has also been associated with a number of research projects on serving traditions, technologies and Ethnoarchaeology in central Himalaya, sponsored by U. G. C. and ministry of Tourism and Cultural, New Delhi.

Dr. Saklani contributed more than 20 research papers in national and international journals, besides supervising 6 doctoral studies. He is co-outhor of the book "Central Himalayn"(Bibliographic References on Archaeology, Culture and History), which includes the bibliographic compilation of the important writing on Prehistoric, Proto-historic and historical archaeology besides early and medieval history of the region including temple architecture, iconography, religion, religious festivals, rituals, beliefs and tradition in this region.

Foreword Ethnoarchaeology is emerging as a new branch of archaeology to study the socio-cultural behaviour of living societies with their material culture for studying the past. the early 17th and 18th century the ethnoarchaeological investigations have been primarily focused on primitive and tribal societies but in the recent years all socio-cultural systems including sedentary societies, nomads, pastoral transhumance societies have also been considered within the province of ethnoarchaeology. Ethnoarchaeology deals with the ethnographic and archaeological data of a living society with the help of material culture for interpretation and reconstruction of its past.

The ethno-archaeological investigations have been reported by various scholar like Nagar, 1967, 1970, 1981-82, 1983, Medhi, 1983, Nagraja Rao 1965, Paddayya, 1978, 1979, 1981, Dhavalikar, 1977, 1982, Shinde 1991, Murty 1985, Raju 1988, Roux and Sinha 1986, Misra 1990, Jayaswal and Krishna 1986, Pandya 1973, Hashim 1989, Joshi 1986 and Saklani, et al, 1990. These ethnographic studies have been focussed on the prehistoric and protohistoric cultures of the country and also incorporated the tribal and ethnic groups to investigate and reconstruct their life style in the past.

In India, during the recent years a new concept in archaeological investigation has emerged to reconstruct and have an insight into the past through the study of contemporary tribal and ethnic communities living in the various parts of the country, which create a new branch of archaeology known as Ethnoarchaeology. The basic approach behind the new concept is to draw the analogies between the past and present. In India such studies have been carried out by Kausambi 1956, Sankalia 1977, Paddaya 1982, Murty 1985, Misra and Nagar 1992, Dhavalikar 1977, Nagraja Rao 1965, Shinde 1991, etc. which clearly indicate that in our country the ethnic communities have still retained their basic cultural identity through their traditional and ancient material culture and adaptive strategies within the environmental background and therefore, there is enormous scope of ethnoarchaeological research in India.

The present study area of the Yamuna valley, which covers an area of 8280 sq. km. from the Western most flank of Garhwal Himalaya which is a part of the central Himalaya, popularly known as Uttarakhand. The entire region of Uttarakhand is very rich ethnoarchaeologically, culturally, anthropologically and historically, as indicated by the remains of stone tools, painted rock-shelters, megalithic burials, cave burials, cup-marks, sculptures, temples, forts, memorial stones, coins and inscriptions. Equally important are the gathas and Jagars from the epics Mahabharta and Ramayana.

Preface Garhwal (mid-Central) Himalaya, the repository of ancient culture, diverse traditions, legends, faiths, practices and rituals has always remained a center of attraction since ages. In view of its rich cultural heritage, various attempts have been made to unravel its hoary past.

However, during the last one and half decades, intensive archaeological investigations have been undertaken in Garhwal (mid-Central) Himalaya. Owing to the sustained exploration and subsequent excavation, for the first time, a large number of sites have yielded the archaeological remains belonging to the pre-historic, protohistoric and early historic cultures from this region.

On the basis of these archaeological evidences, new dimension have revised the old concepts. As a result, this area, neglected over the years, has now occupied a place in the map of Indian Archaeology.

Besides new insights in the archaeological investigation, many intriguing problems are yet to be explored viz. the cultural traditions and the adaptive behaviors of the earlier aboriginals, who moved in from the different directions to settle down in the mountainous region.

Therefore, to probe into these intricate problems, the author has undertaken an ethnographic investigations on the polyandrous, ethnic communities of Jaunsar-Bawar, Jaunpur, and Rawain, occupying the small pocket of Yamuna valley in the western flank of the Garhwal Himalaya. On the whole this ethnic pocket retained not only the element of its social traditions but also material culture and adaptive behavior over the ages.

Keeping in view the rich ethnographic background of this area and its cultural continuum, this particular relict zone provides a most fertile ground for undertaking an ethno-archaeological investigation. Based on this fresh approach, the author has made a modest attempt to study and investigate the unexplored area of the region to understand the development of various phases of culture in adaptive context and also throw some new light on the integrated history of Garhwal (mid-Central) Himalaya. The entire present work has been divided into five chapters.

The first chapter, which is the Introduction, bring forth the brief study of ethnoarchaeological studies done by scholars in the country and abroad.

Introduction Ethnoarchaeology was primarily developed in the early 17th and 18th Century in Europe as a branch of anthropology for investigating the socio-cultural behaviour of the living societies particularly the tribals, primitive, nonliterate and non industrial societies. The earliest French publication of "Moeurs oes sauvages Amerquines campares aus Moeurs des premiers" and another Danish publication gives the brief accounts of the principal institution, customs and ideas of the savage people illustrating the human origin and evolution (Klindt Jensen, 1976).

Ethnoarchaeology was used by Fewkes as early as 1900, to make use of the ethnographic data for archaeological interpretation but its full potential was realised later on when theoretical or a systematic methodology was introduced, so that the validity of analogies could be increased substantially. The earliest reference to ethnoarchaeological studies can be found in Solla's work (1911) who has compared the mousterian, the Aurignacian and Magdelanian culture with those of the Tasmanians, the Bushman and the Eskimoes. Ascher (1962) provided a new thrust to ethnoarchaeological studies and provided a new paradigm for the coding of ethnographic data. Ascher (1961a) carried the work amongst Seri tribes to study the relationship between artifact typology and behavioural realities to interpret the general analogy. Since 1950, there had been a greater emphasis on ethnography by archaeologist (Yallen, 1977). Over the years the archaeologist have clearly formulated the data base in ethnography from which analogies have been and interpretation are tested (Shiffer, 1975; 1976) and in recent years it has emerged as a distinct discipline in its own right.

The term has been defined in various ways by various workers therefore, there is a divergence of views, Stills (1977) and Gould (1978a) have defined it as the comparison of ethnography and archaeological data. Stanislawski (1974) defines it as a field method. Hodder (1982) defines it as an original ethnographic data in order to aid archaeological interpretation. Schiffer (1978) defines it as a study of material culture in a systematic living context for the purpose of acquiring information both special and general in archaeological investigation. Reid, et al, (1975), defines it as a strategy of behavioural archaeology for investigating the present day material culture in order to provide information needed for studying the past. While Gould (1968) and Stills (1977) treated it as a study of material culture in an ongoing behavioural system and hence referred as a Living archaeologist who catches his archaeology alive (Kluckhonn, 1950). Tringham (1978) defines ethnoarchaeology as a structure for observation of behavioural patterns of living society which is designed to answer archaeologically oriented question. Though Hodder (1982) has some reservation on this observation because for him the ethnographer records the behaviour from a social and lingustic point of view and does not study the material culture that is relevant for the archaeologist.

Oswalt (1974), defines ethnoarchaeology as a study from an archaeological perspective based on a verbal information about artifacts obtained from persons or from their discendents who were involved with the production. However, Stainslawaki (1974) defines it as a direct field observation of the form, manufacture distribution meaning and use of artifacts and their institutional setting and social units for the purpose of constructing better explanatory models to aid archaeological analogy and inference. On the other hand Kramer (1982) offers another definition and adds that ethnoarchaeology investigates aspects of contemporary social cultural behaviour from an archaeological perspective and it attempts to systematically define relationship, between behaviour and material culture.

Though the ethnoarchaeological investigations have been primarily limited to primative and tribal societies but in recent years all sociocultural systems including traditional sedentary societies, nomads, pastoral transhumance societies have also been considered within the province of ethnoarchaeology, (Leone, 1972; 1973; Deetz, 1970; Salwen, 1973; Ascher, 1974; Brown, 1973; Hole, 1980; Nagar, 1975; 1981-82; 1983; Pandya, 1973; Raju, 1988; Dhavalikar, 1982; Medhi, 1983; Jayaswal and Kalyan Krishna, 1986; Rox and Pelegrin, 1988-89; Hasim, 1988-89; Roux and Sinha, 1986; Murty, 1985b; Joshi, 1986; Misra, 1990; Shinde, 1991a; Saklani, et. al., 1990). The ethnoarchaeological approach has been further divided into two categories (Dhavalikar, 1982).

Direct historical approach as defined by stills as a method of investigating a large group of primitive societies who truly represent the past stages of human culture and therefore, the ethnography of such societies enables us to interpret the past culture.

In the recent category the tribal groups and village folks who have retained many ancient practices and material culture in their life style may provide some analogies for drawing some parallels. Watson (1979), has very appropriately suggested that where cultural continuity is great the ethnoarchaeological research is bound to be highly productive. To substantiate these observations, various studies have been done in various places in USA (Stanislawski, 1978), in Near East (Jacobs, 1979; Kramer, 1979a; Watson, 1979), and Australia (Gould, 1979; 1980).

The other method of ethnoarchaeological investigation is through examining the ethnographic records (Olson, 1962; Wylie, 1980), defining ethnographic method as the utilize data in the solution of anthropological problem.

Book's Contents and Sample Pages