facilities in Third World archaeological and museum setups. As for India, there are only two radiocarbon laboratories in such a large and archaeologically rich country, and none of these laboratories are concerned only with archaeological samples. There is only one laboratory for thermoluminescent dating, and its impact is still marginal. Dendrochronology is an area where no research has been done. There has been no attempt to undertake radiometric datings on an organized basis. Electron Spin Resonance dating has been done in only one case. The metallography of ancient artifacts is a rarity and hundreds of old mineshafts are untouched. Only two laboratories undertake the identification of ancient plant remains. The identification of ancient animal bones has not made much headway. The term geoarchaeology is known but it has been unable to solve a single cardinal problem associated with Indian prehistory. The application of geographical information system technology is unknown, as is the application of various computer techniques. Appreciative noises have been made from time to time about “anthropological archaeology” or “new archaeology” (Paddayya 1990), but until there is a wide scientific base, Indian archaeology is unlikely to overcome its present, essentially history-oriented, limitations. To some extent the current situation is related to the paucity of funds to build up a proper infrastructure for such scientific investigations, but to a greater extent this is due to the lack of a correct perspective regarding the role archaeology can play in historical knowledge about the country.

Another major unifying feature of Third World archaeology is the place of archaeology in a nation’s educational structure, and here also the Indian example may be instructive. In India, although archaeology is offered in the postgraduate programs of about 20 to 25 of her 180-odd universities and university-status institutions, it is offered as an adjunct of ancient Indian history, and that too without any undergraduate component. The absence of archaeology in the undergraduate teaching program, even as an adjunct of general historical studies, severely curtails both its educational scope and the job opportunities for those who specialize in it. By no stretch of the imagination can archaeology be considered a part of mainstream Indian education, and until that is achieved it is futile to expect a rich intellectual contribution from it.

The third unifying feature of Third World archaeology is the deep-rooted neocolonialism of the historical educational system of most of these countries, India providing a classic example. India has a secure and widespread base of education, so why is archaeology not incorporated into the mainstream? There are two answers. First, Indian historical education, of which archaeology is a small and insignificant part, is basically neocolonial, concerned more with the study of history linked in various direct and indirect ways to Euro-America than with anything related to the grassroots level. This system of historical education dates from the colonial period but this is also something that the native inheritors of the colonial system have left unchanged for various selfish reasons, the most important of which is to perpetuate their own control over the vast, numerically overwhelming illiterate and semiliterate population. Another major reason is that this intellectually dominant class is eager to have access to the international network of fellowships, seminars, etc. Secondly, neocolonialism and the lack of archaeology in the mainstream are conditioned by the Indian notion of the past, which is all literary and peopled by various “races,” among whom the image of the virile blue-eyed Aryans looms inordinately large. This model of the Indian past was foisted on India via hegemonic textbooks written by Western Indologists concerned with language, literature, and philosophy who were paternalistic at their best and racist at their worst. This image was also accepted by the Indian collaborating elite and freedom-fighters alike because they were beguiled into believing that some of them shared the same racial ancestry as their rulers and that those who were privileged to share this ancestry also stood racially aloof from the downtrodden non-Aryan autochthones at the lower end of the caste hierarchy. The study of Indian history with the Indian land as its main focus formed no part of this perception. In different forms this must be the general character of historical perception