Excerpts from Trigger (2006)

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" A fanatical German patriot, Kossina declared archaeology to be the

most national of sciences and the ancient Germans the most noble

subject for archaeological research. He criticized German

archaeologists for their interest in classical and Egyptian

archaeology, which he viewed as indicating a lack of patriotism.

Before 1918, however, some caution was required, as the German

emperor, Wilhelm II, was both a zealous nationalist and an

enthusiastic supporter of classical and Middle Eastern archaeology.

Although Kossina had been trained in philology, he turned from

linguistics to archaeology in an effort to discover the original

homeland of the Indo-European speaking peoples and hence the Germans

(Trigger 2006, p. 236). "

" One of the two main themes of John L. Myres's (1869-1954) The Dawn

of History (1911) was the spread of technology from Egypt and

Mesopotamia to Europe. The second was his belief that all

hierarchical societies developed when politically dynamic, pastoral

peoples, such as the Semites and the Indo-Europeans, were forced by

drought to leave their homelands and to conquer and rule politically

less innovative peasant societies. This scenario was, like the

Hamitic hypothesis, based on the widespread belief that pastoralists,

who were equated with medieval European aristocracy, were natural

rulers, while farmers, like medieval peasants, were by nature

submissive and predisposed to be ruled by others. According to Myres

the Indo-Europeans, whom he believed to be nomads from the steppes of

central Asia, were particularly adept at imposing their language,

beliefs, and socials customs on conquered peoples, while adopting the

latter's material culture. Out of the encounter between cultural

influences that had been transmitted to Europe from the Middle East

and Indo-European political skills a vital and distinctive European

way of life was created (Trigger 2006, p. 241). "

" Yet, although equating archaeological cultures and peoples, as

Kossina had done, Childe developed grave doubts about the possibility

of tracing specific peoples in the archaeological record. Unlike

Kossina, he attributed great importance to diffusion and had come to

believe that over time this process could obscure even the most

tenacious cultural continuities. Because of this he abandoned his

efforts to use archaeological data to identify the homeland of the

Indo-Europeans. In Prehistoric Migrations in Europe (1950a), he

tentatively associated the Indo-Europeans with the Urnfield culture

but that identification was refuted within a decade (Childe 1958b;

73). His avoidance in the Dawn of the European Civilization of the

Iron Age, with its connecting links to the historic period, may have

been related to his decision to avoid discussing specific ethnic

identities. In any case, although not doubting that cultures had

been produced by prehistoric peoples, as a diffusionist Childe was

far more skeptical than Kossina, or even Montelius, had been about it

being possible to trace specific ethnicities far back in

archeological record (Trigger 2006, p. 246). "

" Childe, despite his left-wing political radicalism, did not wholly

escape racism that was part of this new outlook. In The Aryans

(1926), which may have been based on material he had written before

The Dawn of European Civilization, he argued that the Indo-Europeans

succeeded not because they possessed a material culture or natural

intelligence that was superior to those of other peoples, but because

they spoke a superior language and benefited from the more competent

mentality it made possible. He pointed out that the Greeks and the

Romans had only a diluted Nordic physical type but that each had

realized the high cultural potential that was inherent in their

language. This interpretation contrasted with Kossina's belief that

ethnic and racial mixture in these countries had resulted in cultural

decline. Yet, at the end of The Aryans, Childe bowed to prevailing

racist sentiments by suggesting that the " superiority in physique " of

the Nordic peoples made them the appropriate initial bearers of a

superior language (Childe 1926: 211). In later years, as he adopted

other explanations for cultural variation, he repudiated these early

speculations, which he had come to regard as shameful (Trigger 2006,

p. 248). "

" The primary message was that India was unable to change without

external influences. In this scheme, the British presented

themselves as the latest and the most advanced standard bearers of

progress in India, while acknowledging a distant ethnic affinity to

the allegedly racially superior Indo-European elements in the

population of northern India. In this way, the Indian caste system

was racialized and the higher caste portrayed as a separate ethnic

group. Dilip Chakrabarti (2001: 1192) notes that British-educated

colonial collaborators and freedom fighters alike were pleased to

believe that they stood racially aloof from the non-Aryan

autochthonous peoples at the lower end of the caste hierarchy. This

use of " Aryanism " to coopt the Indian elite into high status position

in the racial and class hierarchy of colonial India may explain why

most Indian historians did not seriously challenge a migrationary

view of their country's past (Chakrabarti1997), (Trigger 2006, pp.

269-270). "

" It is largely within the framework of this model that India's

archaeological heritage was understood by those who brought India to

independence in 1947 (Trigger 2006, p. 270). "

" As late as the 1980s, it appeared to outsiders that Indian

archaeologists continued to adhere to what they had learned during

the late colonial period (Trigger 2006, p. 270). "

" Within the growing influence of Hindu nationalism in Indian

politics, marked changes have occurred in archaeology. Archeologists

who support Hindu nationalism have challenged traditional

explanations that derive changes from outside India. There now is a

tendency to search for innovations inside India, including once that

relate to the domestication of plants and animals, iron- working, and

the development of India scripts. Some Indian archeologists assign

the " Aryans " a local origin along the now dried-up Sarasvati River in

northwestern India. In southern India, Dravidian speaking

archaeologists analogously emphasize the primordial status of

Dravidians as India's first people. Reacting against such

tendencies, Dilip Chakrabarti (2003) rejects ethnicity as a

legitimate focus of archaeological enquiry, and stresses the

importance of an approach that traces the gradual development of

Indian culture in relation to India's landscape as a way of uniting

India's diverse peoples. Although the Hindu and Dravidian

nationalist approaches remain resolutely culture-historical,

Chakrabarti's might better be described as processual-historical.

The internalist viewpoint that is shared by his approach and the

nationalist ones has the great advantage of encouraging

archaeologists to examine India's prehistory and early history on

their own terms rather than treating them as reflections of what was

happening elsewhere (Trigger 2006, pp. 270-271). "

Trigger, B. G. (2006). A history of archaeological thought: second

edition. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. ISBN-13: 978-0-

521-84076-7 (hardback)

 

M. Kelkar