Bureaucratic Archaeology
State, Science, and Past in Postcolonial India

An ethnography of archaeological practice in postcolonial India that reveals the bureaucratic culture in the making of knowledge about past.

Ashish Avikunthak (Author)

9781316512395, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 3 February 2022

358 pages
23.7 x 16.2 x 2.6 cm, 0.6 kg

'A curious feature of postcolonial studies in archaeology is how scholars from the very countries involved in colonial enterprises dominate its discourse. Avikunthak's brilliant book not only counters that dominance but also provides an extraordinary analysis of the micro-politics of archaeological practice unmatched by his western peers. Through meticulous study of the bureaucratic intricacies and tentacles of the ASI we are presented with an account of a postcolonial scholarly reality rarely acknowledged. By following the entire assembly line of meaning production from the artefacts uncovered in ASI excavation trenches to their transformation into published facts and court evidence, he painstakingly uncovers the convoluted and mediating networks between archaeology as a scientific discipline and nationalistic fundamentalism. He argues that the epistemology of archaeology in India is a symptom of a postcolonial bureaucratic rationality where science, state, and religion are contrived to manufacture a nation with a seemingly empirical past.' Bjørnar Julius Olsen, The University of Tromsø - The Arctic University of Norway

Bureaucratic Archaeology is a multi-faceted ethnography of quotidian practices of archaeology, bureaucracy and science in postcolonial India, concentrating on the workings of Archaeological Survey of India (ASI). This book uncovers an endemic link between micro-practice of archaeology in the trenches of the ASI to the manufacture of archaeological knowledge, wielded in the making of political and religious identity and summoned as indelible evidence in the juridical adjudication in the highest courts of India. This book is a rare ethnography of the daily practice of a postcolonial bureaucracy from within rather than from the outside. It meticulously uncovers the social, cultural, political and epistemological ecology of ASI archaeologists to show how postcolonial state assembles and produces knowledge. This is the first book length monograph on the workings of archaeology in a non-western world, which meticulously shows how theory of archaeological practice deviates, transforms and generates knowledge outside the Euro-American epistemological tradition.

Preface
1. Anthropology of archaeology
2. Making of the Indus-Saraswati civilization
3. Bureaucratic hierarchy in the ASI
4. Spatial formation of the archaeological field
5. Epistemological formation of the archaeological site
6. Theory of archaeological excavation
7. Making of the archaeological artifact
8. Performance of archaeological representations
9. The absent excavation reports
Conclusion
Index.

Subject Areas: Central government policies [JPQB], Politics & government [JP], Physical anthropology [JHMP], Anthropology [JHM], Sociology & anthropology [JH], Regional & national history [HBJ]