• DOI:10.1086/381044
• Corpus ID: 149773944

Archaeology at the Heart of a Political Confrontation

@article{Ratnagar2004ArchaeologyAT,
  title={Archaeology at the Heart of a Political Confrontation},
  author={Shereen Ratnagar},
  journal={Current Anthropology},
  year={2004},
  volume={45},
  pages={239 - 259}
}

• Shereen Ratnagar
• Published 1 April 2004
• Sociology
• Current Anthropology

Despite its recourse to scientific (laboratory) investigations, archaeology is a social science, researching the cultures of past societies through their material culture residues. No social science proceeds in an ideological vacuum, and historians or geographers who claim not to be theoretical may simply be unaware of the conceptual or ideological underpinnings of the paradigms they use. Being “apolitical,” in turn, often amounts to an acceptance of the status quo. Thus archaeological methods and paradigms are bound to be ideologically inscribed in some way. Moreover, the past is too important for societies to leave the matter to their academics. The earliest known “history,” the Sumerian King List (ca. 2000 b.c.), for instance, was in all likelihood composed at the behest of a ruling dynasty that had usurped power and lacked a Sumerian pedigree. In the postcolonial context, it is often in the process of delineating the past that societies construct their identities. Therefore it is not surprising that archaeological interpretation is prone not only to controversy but also to politicization. Archaeology has become central to the current conflict over sacred space in the North Indian town of Ayodhya, located on a northern tributary of the Ganga River. There, it has been claimed, a general of Babur (the founder of Mughal rule in India in the sixteenth century) destroyed a temple of the deity Rama in order to build