Ghosh, Amalananda

(1910– )

Along with Indian archaeologist hasmukh d. sankalia, Amalananda Ghosh was the most important archaeologist of postindependence India. From 1953 to 1965 he was the director general of the Archaeological Survey of India, which he had joined in the 1930s, and a tremendous surge of work that was initiated all over the country, covering virtually all phases of cultural development, occurred as a result of his leadership and guidance.

Ghosh’s early work was in Bihar in eastern India, where he surveyed early historic Asur sites on the Ranchi plateau and the Buddhist city site of Rajgir. English archaeologist mortimer wheeler supervised Ghosh’s fieldwork at Taxila, India, and earlier Ghosh had been involved in the Archaeological Survey of India’s excavations at Ahichchhatra in India. Soon after independence in 1948, Ghosh surveyed the Ghaggar Valley in the former Bikaner state of Rajasthan, which resulted in the discovery of a large number of Indus sites in that part of India. On the assumption of the office of the director-general of the survey, which greatly expanded in size under him, Ghosh had little time to be in the field for prolonged periods, but it was he who finally recommended sites for excavation and edited the reports of the survey’s officers.

After retirement in 1965, Ghosh worked briefly in Indonesia and elsewhere and wrote a thoughtful volume, The City in Early Historical India (1973). The two volumes of the Encyclopaedia of Indian Archaeology (Ghosh 1989), which he painstakingly edited, carry, for those who knew him, the unmistakable stamp of his intimate familiarity with all the ways and byways of ancient Indian historical and archaeological scholarship. These include entries on Sanskrit and epigraphy, which were the foundations of his academic career. He established a school of archaeology in the survey to train staff, and it has served its purpose well.

Dilip Chakrabarti

References

Ghosh, A. 1973. The City in Early Historical India. Simla: Indian Institute of Advance Study.

Ghosh, A., ed. 1990. Encyclopaedia of Indian Archaeology. Delhi, Leiden, and New York: E. J. Brill.

Gjerstad, Einar and the Swedish Cyprus Expedition

(1897–1979)

Einar Gjerstad first traveled to cyprus in 1924 to undertake postgraduate research. His Studies on Prehistoric Cyprus (1926) presented a summary of all known Bronze Age sites, and a critical evaluation of past research was presented alongside the results of his pioneering excavations of settlement sites. The typological and chronological systems he developed at this time and later remain fundamental to Cypriot research. After completing his doctoral work, Gjerstad conceived and organized the Swedish Cyprus Expedition.

There are few projects in the history of archaeology that match the scale and professionalism of the Swedish Cyprus Expedition. Together with the other three members of the expedition (Alfred Westholm, John Lindros, and Erik Sjoqvist—and their families), Gjerstad spent the years 1927–1931 surveying and excavating a series of twenty-five sites of all periods across the island. The expedition’s professional approach to excavation, recording, analysis, and publication resulted in the efficient production of the first three volumes of very substantial detailed site reports in 1934, 1935, and 1937 (The Swedish Cyprus Expedition). Six further volumes, containing syntheses and overviews, were published over the next thirty-five years. One of these, volume four, published in 1948, was Gjerstad’s own study of the Cypro-geometric and Cypro-archaic periods. The Swedes set new, and very high, standards of efficiency, quality, and thoroughness for Cypriot archaeology, and the data they collected and the frameworks they developed continue to structure approaches to research on the island.

In 1935, Gjerstad turned his attention to the archaeology of early Rome following his appointment as director of the Swedish Institute there, but he maintained a continuing involvement in Cypriot archaeology.

David Frankel

References

Åström,P., E. Gjerstad, R. S. Merrillees, and A. Westholm. 1994. “The Fantastic Years on Cyprus”: The Swedish Cyprus Expedition and Its Members.