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the Solutrean stone tool industry. The site is also notable because it contains the remains of many horse, reindeer, and bovids, giving rise to the interpretation that Solutré was a major ambush site (perhaps by chasing animals over the cliff to be killed and butchered below).

Tim Murray

South Asia

Introduction

Considering the enormous geographical area involved, the number of its modern nation states, and the rich spectrum of its archaeology, one would expect the literature on the history of archaeology in South Asia to be fairly analytical and detailed. This is not the case. Straightforward narrative accounts, sometimes viewed in relation with contemporary government policies and other historical factors, are available for the period up to 1947 when the British rule of the subcontinent ended (see Roy 1953, 1961; Ghosh 1953; Allchin 1961; Imam 1966; Chakrabarti 1988a, 1988b; Possehl 1990; Mirsky 1977). These histories deal fully (see Roy 1961; Chakrabarti 1988a) or partly with the history of archaeology in British India, which was dominated almost exclusively by the official Archaeological Survey of India that came into existence, although tentatively, in 1861. But at least two other dimensions of this period remain unresearched. First, some major “native” states of the subcontinent that enjoyed varying degrees of autonomy during British rule, such as Hyderabad, Mysore, Travancore, Gwalior, Kashmir, Baroda, and Nepal, ran, on the British Indian model, their own archaeology departments. The history of these departments lies untouched. Second, the different nuances between archaeology and nationalism provide great scope for research, especially in view of the long struggle for Indian independence, but this is another field of study that remains neglected. The development of the concept of an Indian past among the different sections of Indian people is closely related to this issue. The main source of study in this case is the great amount of vernacular literature from the second half of the eighteenth century onwards in different parts of the country in different major languages. This concept has to be seen separately from the Western concept of the past of India. In any case, the interaction between these two major concepts of the Indian past should provide a separate field of study in itself.

After 1947 the history of subcontinental archaeology becomes the history of archaeology in its different nation-state components. For obvious historical reasons, one of which is the difference in majority religion between these countries (Hinduism in India and Nepal, Islam in Pakistan and Bangladesh, Buddhism in Bhutan), the concept of the past in these individual nation states need not exactly be the same. Still, the model of archaeological organization in them has a lot in common because of close ancestral links with the pre-1947 Archaeological Survey of India, and, more significantly, this possible difference in attitudes to the past has not changed the pattern of archaeological research in these countries. Also, the interaction between the Western concept of the past of South Asia and the concept of the past developed by South Asians themselves merits close study even in the post-1947 period, mainly to analyze the extent to which the hegemonic ideas of Western Indology still retain their grip over the intellectual tradition in a Third World region like South Asia.

The Beginning

The middle of the eighteenth century is as convenient a starting point for South Asian archaeological studies as any. At about this time Anquetil du Perron, a Frenchman with knowledge of Oriental languages, and Karsten Niebuhr, a Danish engineer and voyager, wrote about the need to open up India as a field of scientific inquiry. They also prepared measured drawings of the West Indian monuments of Elephanta and Kanheri, both easily accessible to Europeans because of their proximity to Bombay. In fact, these and other conveniently located monuments had been drawing the attention of European travelers and sailors since the sixteenth century, and although most of these descriptions were fanciful and deprecatory, some writers like the Italian Pietro della Valle of the seventeenth century insisted on some accuracy, aided in the case of della Valle by a few temple plans. There are two other reasons for selecting the mid-eighteenth century as our starting point. First, in 1753 J.B. D’Anville, a French geographer, published a book on Indian geography with detailed discussions of the locations of some ancient sites mentioned in classical writings on India. Second, in the writings of the French philosophers of Enlightenment, which attempted to move away from Judaeo-Christian thought, there was a strong emphasis on India as the original center of culture and religion (seeMitter 1977; Chakrabarti 1988a, 1–15).